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Big chunky bastard (now with more lowpoly fun)

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polycounter lvl 17
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LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
dude1.jpg
dude1a.jpg

I'm in a bit of a dilemma at the moment, and figured this tends to be the best place to ask questions. This is probably my only "good start" in a while, with the last 2 weeks of doodles being rather disastrous. I'm getting kind of happy with the overall silhouette and proportions, and the polyflow seems decent enough for now.

Currently, it's looking to hit around 1k tris after dropping in the feet, so the dilemma is, doesn't that tricount fall somewhere in no-man's land? Current-gen tends towards the 2k and up number, right? while ds/psp/mobile tends towards a much lower number (500ish and below?). I guess at this point, I'm trying to figure out if I should continue with this level of detail, or to start cutting in more edges for better definition (face, maybe proper hands/more detail on the gloves), or alternately, to start cutting out edges for a more handheld set of specs (maybe even both).

And of course, general crits for the model so far.

In case you're wondering, the hands are going to be boxing gloves (currently intersecting, hence the extraneous edges), and the head was originally meant to be the neck, but after pushing the proportions to their current state, I felt like that extrusion would work better as a head. Proportions are heavily stylized at the moment, but let me know if they work, need tweaking, etc etc.

Fire away!

Replies

  • Ott
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    Ott polycounter lvl 13
    I would suggest you get more details in the models, work on your textures and UVW unwrapping, poly-flow, etc before you start worrying about your triangle counts.

    Current "Next-gen" platform consoles can easily support 5-10k triangle animated characters - But the budget is dependant on what the character is used for, where the character is at in the game, and how close the player is going to get to it, how many copies of the character are there...etc...etc.

    I wouldn't even worry about a lot of that stuff before you get real serious about the "goods" first. Character artists are few and far between - and until you can master texturing, unwrapping, normal mapping, etc, people aren't going to be nearly as turned off by whether or not you have 5k triangles or 10.

    That will take a backseat to a pisspoor model. Focus on making a good creature or character that works, give yourself a 10kish budget and just make something that LOOKS good.

    Attention to edges and tris is important - but you gotta crawl before you can walk.
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    All fair points, thanks.

    I guess my initial concern was wondering if not venturing far past this current tri count of about 1k would leave the model in the no-man's land of a little too low for "next(current?)gen", and way too high for "pastgen" (handheld).

    I'll go ahead and take your advice of leaving myself a healthy budget for this, and just allow myself to go to town. I may do a handheld version as well, since lowpoly is a fun challenge in and of itself.
  • PolyPutty
    I tend to build my models with a basic feeling of the polycount. I know roughly how many edges I can have around the arm and such, mostly a gut feeling. I model until I am happy with the level of detail for my given polycount. Then I go back and optimize and see what polygons I could do with out until I reach my target count. Its alway a very hard choice to cut detail, but its become a lot easier for me. I feel its always great to start with a good model first.
  • Steve Schulze
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    Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
    PSP will handle 1000 poly characters quite happily. Whether thats still no man's land depends on your opinion of that particular console.
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    i want more bastard
  • petrol
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    lol shepeiro.

    polyputty, normally I try to work towards a target polycount, but this has been pretty much doodling up til this point, working towards something pleasing. I'll figure something to shoot for soon. smile.gif

    jackablade, thanks, I hadn't realised the psp could comfortably push that many tris.

    At this point I'm still more or less riffing. Didn't spend a whole lot of time at home today, so I decided to work downwards, ending up with a (currently) 175-tri model that reads decently even at tiny sizes. I might add accessories, etc, and hit an even 200, before unwrapping and texturing.

    (the right wire is back and front, just in case)
    dude2.jpg
    dude2a.jpg
  • Japhir
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    Japhir polycounter lvl 16
    cool stuff! i do think the boxing gloves are a bit too large, looks like he can't move them at all :P but the texture might change my mind. What is with the drastic reduction of polies? almost everyone suggested to first make a model and don't worry about the polycount and reduce it later and now this :P lol
    keep it up!
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Ha, I dunno, I figured a big beefy guy needs big, oversized, beefy boxing gloves. laugh.gif I'll piss around a bit more and figure out as I go.

    As for the poly reduction, I had long ago decided I wanted to do a DS-spec model, and this just happened to have recognisable-enough proportions to possibly pull it off. That and the fact that I really only had about an hour or two at home today before heading out. tongue.gif

    Don't worry, I've still got the 1k-tri version lying around waiting for me to upres. smile.gif Just got done watching footie, so I'll work on this some more tomorrow.

    oh, tit. Did another count after adding some bits and bobs, and realised I had forgotten that silo doesn't count your instance mirror's polies. Previous pic should've been about 350 tris, and currently about 380. Doh.
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Right, haven't spent a whole lot of time at home these past few days, so not much of a chance to work on this. I did a bit of optimising, taking the mesh down to 300 tris, and then spent a crapload of time putzing with the unwrap. I'm not at all used to dealing with pixel-perfect unwrapping for handheld/ds spec stuff (no filtering, etc), so it took a while to get the unwrap done properly.

    Gonna give the texture a shot at 128x64.

    dude3.gif

    btw, any tips on unwrapping for handheld-spec stuff (ie, tiny texture sizes)? I know some of the basics, like trying to keep edges as straight as possible, as few diagonals as possible, packing the uv islands together (instead of keeping them apart to take filtering account). What about the actual unwrapping to make sure borders sit inbetween (and not "on") the pixels? Do you simple do the unwrap, and then adjust after putting solid colors on (that's what I ended up doing)?
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Managing to slowly work through this somewhat painfully (I'm learning lessons the hard way about unwrapping stuff for these specs). This shot is about 80% self illum, with some quick vertex color (just monochrome for now) thrown on.

    dude4.jpg

    and the flats so far (blown up x4):

    dudelp2.png

    Main question for now is, for stuff this small, how much is typically left to vertex color/light, and how much to texture?
  • Japhir
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    Japhir polycounter lvl 16
    pretty cool, although i wouldn't squash the textures into squares, it makes them stretch a lot. (for instance the collar bones) Also you could add lots of mirroring, the head (or at least the sides of it), the chest, the back, the legs, the ... well anyways: a lot more mirroring :P
    i like the head texture so far!
    keep it up!
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out the best tradeoff between straight rows of edges, and stretching. Good point about the partial mirroring. I normally try and mirror stuff like the side of the head, and side of torso, if possible; dunno why I forgot this time round. :\ For the rest I've kept them non-mirrored just so I can make the texture asymmetrical, though I did at some point have a version that was mostly mirrored.

    The previous pics didn't have vertex color; these are the ones with vert color (and rendered out at a size somewhere around what it might be on a DS screen, assuming a tight camera zoom).

    0006.jpg0001.jpg
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Right, had a bunch of other crap to do, so this got set aside for some time. Spent a bit of time today completely redoing the UVs, and doing a bit of texturing. Still quite wip, but anything that jumps out, please comment on (lack of sat in a lot of the shadows is getting worked on). smile.gif

    dude1-ortho.pngdude1.png
    dudelp3.png
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    After too long, I think I'm ready to call the lowpoly one done, unless there's anything I've overlooked:

    dude6.png
    dude6a.png

    And pimpage with flats:
    dude6b.jpg
  • Mark Dygert
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Danke Vig! laugh.gif
    Made some minor changes to the boxer (changed the heart tat since I was getting comments that it wasn't reading well at the small size, and that it looked like a weird nipple), and minor tweaks to the texture.

    Hmm. I'll get screengrabs when windows stops being pissy about the clipboard. o_O

    Also started another lowpoly model, this time attempting to stick to 4-bit color. Still very wip, and I'll be toning down the harsh black lines.

    fiat500-2.jpg

    Don't mind the square wheels, Silo doesn't do alpha transparency (that I'm aware of, anyway). 160 tris at the mo, 128x64 texture. I'm considering alphaing out the glassy bits and adding a simple interior since I have both tris and a bit of texture space to spare (that would likely kill any realistic hope of 4-bit color though).
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    These things are just too much fun. Ok, managed to get a couple posed screengrabs of the big chunky bastard:
    bigChunkyBastard.jpg

    Also worked a little more on the Fiat. I think I maybe got a little carried away :scream: I'll probably have to tone the yellow down a tad, if only so i can place highlights that can actually be seen tongue.gif

    fiat500-3.jpg

    edit: Better shot with alpha:
    fiat500-4.jpg
  • Slaught
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    Slaught polycounter lvl 18
    Great low poly stuff!
    Love the boxer...the new tattoo looks good.
  • Pavel
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    Pavel polycounter lvl 10
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    paint some highlights on that car and dont blend to black shadows,..... doh, saturate them more for a better finish.

    cool work
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Finally got around to redoing the uvs and texture for the Fiat. Stuck to a 4-bit pallete this time. 188 tris including 1-quad shadow. Thanks Shep, the black blending came from my starting with a black and white and overlaying colors on top, doh.

    fiat500-pimp.gif

    edit: I lied. I added another 4 tris for the exhaust pipe, bringing the total to 192 tris
  • giasgrace
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    giasgrace polycounter lvl 11
    Love the car. It's sooooooo cute. I want it.
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    I fell in love with the new 500 when they announced it. :]

    Here's another shot with monochrome vert lighting:
    fiat500-pimp-vertlighting.gif
  • Rhinokey
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    Rhinokey polycounter lvl 18
    i like these, altho i think the boxers mouth is too red. its like a red hole with some white dots for teeth. maybe darken the center of the mouth. car looks awesome tho
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Thanks rhinokey, never even noticed that before. Fresh set of eyes never hurt! laugh.gif Fixed up, but I haven't updated the shots.

    Something a little more poly heavy this time, less stylised, somewhat of a self-portrait, psp-ish spec. 1010 tris including the accessories, 256x256 for the main texture, 128x128 for the bag, 128x64 for the hair, and 64x16 for the shades (the texture sizes may change as I get to work on each of them).

    psp-ish sized render, 100% self-illum, just getting started on the main texture:
    preview.gif
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Hm, slow texture day.

    preview6.gif
    preview6a.gif

    edit: forgot this
    Ortho wires
  • Japhir
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    Japhir polycounter lvl 16
    sweeet looks great!
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Thanks japhir :]

    Slooooowly getting there:
    preview9.gifpreview9a.gif
  • Japhir
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    Japhir polycounter lvl 16
    you are going to add wrinkles to his shirt right?
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Wrinkles were always going to be in the equation. :]

    I can't for the life of me figure out what I wanna put on the tshirt. Did a bunch of tweaking of the mesh (arms, lots for the head/face), and did a bunch more painting. Almost done, I think. Any crits up til this point? I've gotten to the point where I'm likely to miss obvious mistakes or things to fix.

    Oh, don't mind the Matrix neck-nipple. I added that as a joke and forgot to remove it for the render. :X

    preview13.jpg
  • Japhir
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    Japhir polycounter lvl 16
    cool! the neck is looking a bit filthy, in the front image the shadows are a bit overdone. also don't forget to add wrinkles to the base, now it is as if the sleeves are the only part of his shirt that is wrinkling (but i figure you where still working on that).
    i like the sandals :P makes him very very nerdy
  • EricElwell
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    EricElwell insane polycounter
    heh linkin park goes to skool


    i like him, but the hands really bother me being so flat like that
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Thanks japhir, I thought I fixed that at some point, but I musta gone in and repainted that crap again. o_O

    Eric: Thanks! Yeah, I guess the hands were a bit of a gamble, but the way I figure, it shouldn't be too obvious on a PSP in the majority of situations.

    I've gone and tweaked the hell out of the head geom, uvs, and texture, played with the shirt texture a bit, did some vert painting, and boned up the model. I need to move on to some other stuff, so I think I'm calling this one done.

    preview15.gif
    preview15a.jpg

    Flats for interested parties:
    Main texture
    Bag
    Glasses: Flat and Alpha
    Hair: Flat and Alpha
  • Snowfly
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    Snowfly polycounter lvl 18
    dude, looks just like you!
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Only with better cheekbones! laugh.gif

    Been making notes for some ds stuff I've got planned, so nothing tangible from me right now, but my buddy's been using the big chunky bastard for animation practise, so I figured I'd throw some links up.

    Pissing about
    Sparring
  • Nate Broach
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    Nate Broach polycounter lvl 17
    That sparring animation is awesome, I want more!
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    He's cleaned up the animations a bit and thrown it on his demoreel, both come up from 00:33 to 00:44
    Khet Yee Sang animation demoreel

    Got bored and did another pose for the self portrait. Sometime (probably this weekend) I'll try and knock together some environments for the three models to date, so they don't simply exist in limbo.

    preview15b.jpg

    Started pissing about with getting some base models done for that aforementioned personal DS project. Planning on all having swappable parts, hence the segmentation. The ridiculous polycount stems from wanting to be able to throw 8 characters onscreen at a time if necessary, including weapon (small silhouettes to the right are roughly the same pixel size I want them to be on the DS, ie 1/5 screen height).

    The big-headed dude might possibly be a close relative of a...... sectoid? crazy.gif

    Doing the unwrap now; I'm thinking each character will have the equivalent of a 64^2 allocated (32^2 each for head and torso, 16x32 for each arm, 32x32 for legs, non-mirrored). 4-bit, naturally.

    Wires

    silhouettes2.gif
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Haven't spent much time on this, been too busy partying... doh.

    base.gif

    Wires, if anyone's interested

    The original tri-ceiling has been upped a bit, since I realised I had completely forgotten about backface culling when I originally laid out my anticipated specs. Note that most of the additional tris went to optional stuff like pouches, etc. Added a pistol, changed the sniper rifle (far left) to a conventional rifle grip instead of the pistol grip in the previous shot. Added "armored" versions of both male and female. General tweakage all around.

    Started on some environmental building blocks, but I'm not nearly far enough along to show anything on that front
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Some snafus with silo2's unwrapping set me back a number of times, but the unwraps are done and I've gotten started on some textures. Instead of being serious about it, I decided to pay homage to the game that kicked off my desire to make a DS homebrew. Hopefully fans of this classic will actually recognise these. smile.gif (70% self-illum)

    light-armor-teaser.png

    Still wip. I've unwrapped all human models from the previous shot, and the UVs are setup so that they can all share the same textures if need be (the above male and female models are using the same texture). As stated before, the textures come to a total of 64x64 pixels:

    light-armor-flats.gif

    (Magenta border separating the various flats). I've still got a few slots remaining in my 4-bit pallete, so I'll be refining further. There's currently no asymmetry, but that's primarily because the source I'm drawing from had no asymmetry. smile.gif Future textures will likely make use of at least some asymmetry.
  • Maddness
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    Maddness polycounter lvl 11
    the boxer was bad ass! you should animate a fight!
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    I may do that eventually, but i'm no animator. :] My friend did some animations of the boxer, though, linked a couple posts up.

    Got slightly sidetracked, lol (wip):

    oldsnake.gif

    (yeah, based off the older shots where he was still in the mostly-blue outfit)
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Whee, I knew I had a good reason for splitting the mesh and textures up like that! Just testing out some mix n match with the previous textures.

    mixnmatch.png
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    wip. Still trying to nail down a cohesive texture style.
    resistance1b.png
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Took a break today, decided to reskin Mr Big Chunky Bastard. Still wip, obviously.

    bcb-suit.png

    It's funny, when I first started texturing him, I was thinking about how small a 128 is. Now after working on a bunch of 32s, 128 seems positively humungous. laugh.gif

    ps. Anyone interested in an sdk?
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Didn't really do a whole lot more with Millionaire Tycoon Bastard, just tweaked the hands, mainly. I'll probably finish him up and do another variation soon, but I was itching to get back to the DS project. tongue.gif

    Kiss the ring, bitch.

    bcb-suit2.gif

    Started putting together a test environment, just to get a better idea of the sort of per-frame polycount I can expect to be dealing with. The terrain is a hopeful at the moment, and whether the final product will be triangulated depends on whether the DS hardware will consider a non-planar quad as a quad, or a pair of tris (if the former, it'll help just that little bit with the DS' 2048 poly limit).

    Did up a 2-storey (plus rooftop deck) house that's currently not very practical. I'll be adding rooms and whatnot soon enough. Currently the [vastly incomplete] scene stands at about 1250 tris (though mostly in quads, which will give me more leeway with the DS poly limit), and with occlusion and backface culling, between 500-700 tris (mind you, only a portion of the scene will be visible in gameplay, or so the plan goes).

    A silly anigif showing the floors:

    house2.gif
  • dabu
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    dabu polycounter lvl 18
    wow, great use of minimal texture and polys.

    The cheeks are reading a little too dark to me, but maybe you need to exaggerate them so they read small.

    slight wrinkles around armpits?

    Logo on chest?

    I _adore_ that car, whats the wire look like for it?
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Thanks dabu. The Millionaire Tycoon Bastard texture isn't finished, and I'll revisit it again later on to finish it, but yeah, wrinkles, etc are in the cards. Or were you talking about the 100-tri guys?

    edit: oops, forgot wires for the fiat
    fiat500wire.gif

    Haven't touched the building model, but started work on some tiles. These are still going to be worked on, and I expect to do 2-4 variants per tile, depending on expected repetition. The parquet needs to be reworked, since the imperfections I've added currently serve to make it look raised and rounded. :\ Bricks are still first-pass. This shot is what I expect will be a good angle/fov/distance for the default camera.
    stuff3.gif

    Larger shot (double resolution)

    tiles1.gif
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Haven't had too much time to devote to this, but redid the grass tiles since the previous ones were way too noisy (haven't worked on the dirt-grass transition tiles yet), some stone path tiles, an interior wall tile, and also spent some time working on the vertex lighting.

    mockup3h.jpg

    Also, added folds to the Billionaire Tycoon Bastard and called him done
  • LoTekK
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    LoTekK polycounter lvl 17
    Took a breather from this for a little bit.
    mockup4.gif
    This is as of just before my mandatory week of fun in the Army Reserves.

    Had a bit of time after that to have a serious think about the DS hardware specs again, and decided that, happy as I was with the stupidly low polycount of the character models, they were still too heavy, realistically speaking, and I'd much rather use those polies for the environment. So, I'm dropping the character models and going with 8-way sprites, a la FFTactics, FF12 Revenant Wings, etc.

    After about 50 bloody variants, I've finally settled on proportions, etc, that I'm fairly happy with. Temp colors (just there for color separation) and rifle (needed that to check the pose). Threw in a quick and unfinished idle animation as well. South-facing for now:

    male_idle1c.gif

    I'm also pulling the camera further back since I can now afford the poly budget on the enviro, so I'll more than likely have to redo the enviro textures (reducing from 32x32 to 16x16, 32x64 to 16x32). Doh.
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