Looking for advices about low poly car modeling

Waz0

Hi everyone, last days I've been working on a real time car for my first time, experimenting the "full poly" technique used in curent gen racing games. I would like to have your opinions on the model, not really about the artistic accuracy but more on the technical part. I want the model to be game ready so tell me about anything that could go wrong. Thanks





Things I wonder : Is the tricount correct / are essential loops missing (e.g. for deformation) / should I make two UVs of my car (main body & tires) or just one ?

Some infos to save time : 
- The original model is a Ferrari 250 GTO 1962 edition
- Tricount : 36k
- The full poly concern the main body and all the little parts attached to it, the tires will be normal baked
- It's more an exercise to get a taste of full poly, so I'm probably not going to model the bottom and the interior of the car
- Sry fot the screens quality

Apple_hardcore

Looks good but I've never done a game ready vehicle "full poly" so there might be things I'm missing. 

I can tell you about the uvs though, tires should have a different layout and anything you might want to be able to customise/swap in game. Most games let you swap out different variations of tires so I'd recommend for that reason a different uv layout would be advised.

Waz0

@Apple_hardcore Thanks for the advice it sounds logical, I'll try it that way

@perna I think you got me wrong on that thread. I'm not expecting to get the ultimate and only way to go through that process of modeling real time cars, but to gather ways peoples are doing it, and takes what I find usefull, wich is imo better than doing it without consulting anyone. If you don't want to answer due to the reasons you explained - wich i get however, at least don't pretend that no one else is able to

AlecMoody

You are way too low on the triangle count for racing game on consoles or PC. As you have it modeled now, it is closer to a mobile spec car. Building dense car models for real time use is a skill and there is value in practicing it. You can't really do this work with a diffuse material- switch to a cubemap so you can see how the reflections behave.

As perna said, how you spread out UV sheets is going to be something the client defines for you. Often there will be a sheet for the body work and another sheet for things done as more conventional baked game art (tires, interior parts, lights, suspension parts...)

Waz0

@perna I understand the meaning in your answers, maybe I didn't explained well my needs, still it's nice to know a little more about the multiple ways it's worked those days, as you and AlecMoody told about

@AlecMoody  Well that's what I worried about, the reflections are not working well actually. I'm not gonna improve this one anyway as I'm beginning my first job soon and had less time than i thought to do it (otherwise i'll never finish it ^^), but i'll sure take ctare of that polycount for the next one, thanks !

Sooo here's my latest renders for this model. If anyone have comments to do on the presentation go on, I'm still looking for improvement !




Also if someone is interested, I found threads on the forums that are interesting in that matter
http://polycount.com/discussion/94200/car-modeling-techniques
http://polycount.com/discussion/154664/a-short-explanation-about-custom-vertex-normals-tutorial/p5