Car for Portfolio specs o.O
polycounter lvl 10
Hey guys, Im working on a next-gen car model for my portfolio and I had some questions about specs.
So polycount,
I know everyone always asks that, and a quick google search would work, but if anyone has any strange or really specific info that would be great!
Damage,
How does damage work in games nowadays? its dynamic right?
how would you prepare a car for that kind of damage?
like a set of meshes that are switched out? or a fully rigged and ready to be bent body set?
This is also for my portfolio, so would a fully sculpted and damaged version in addition to the clean model be the right way to go?
Textures,
If each piece gets damage dynamically or not, does each piece get a texture set?
like, 16 x 512 x norms,spec,diffuse ?
or 1 2048 set for the entire body?
is damage painted into the model? or is it dynamic as well?
should I just make two 2048 map sets (clean and dirty) for my portfolio?
and any other useful stuff anyone would have, please speak up!:)
So polycount,
I know everyone always asks that, and a quick google search would work, but if anyone has any strange or really specific info that would be great!
Damage,
How does damage work in games nowadays? its dynamic right?
how would you prepare a car for that kind of damage?
like a set of meshes that are switched out? or a fully rigged and ready to be bent body set?
This is also for my portfolio, so would a fully sculpted and damaged version in addition to the clean model be the right way to go?
Textures,
If each piece gets damage dynamically or not, does each piece get a texture set?
like, 16 x 512 x norms,spec,diffuse ?
or 1 2048 set for the entire body?
is damage painted into the model? or is it dynamic as well?
should I just make two 2048 map sets (clean and dirty) for my portfolio?
and any other useful stuff anyone would have, please speak up!:)
Replies
Just google around, see what game developers blog about and get inspired. Just today for example:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/bizarre-creations-blur/62635
(1:10 for example, they seem to use some kind of array of dots or sphere volumes to define the deformation or desturction)
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13586356&linkID=13567375
(small snippet of that @ 1:47 though its short, there is another in depth video about there somewhere on the nets)
Could be that sometime you are hired and you meet some coders or tech artists that wrote a pipeline that
- swaps meshes
- uses simple realtime vertex deformations
- uses animated deformations
- vertex color deform shader
- sub objects that act on their own (plates, front, door, window,...)
- just swaps textures, or jumps UV offsets (different part of the texture)
- attaches destruction decals (bullet holes, scratches,...)
It can go any direction and usually most game engines always get a new pipeline or tech involved so its never exactly the same, and it really depends on the tech and the pipeline.So my suggestion would be to think YOURSELF of something on how you can get most out of a presentation. Because after all that should be you main goal, make a nice presentation (of your car that can be damaged or so).
Maybe if you are a animator or a bit of a tech artist you can think of how to use the animation system of you app to use it for a animation? Or maybe if you know a existing game engine research on how you could use some deform effects (again google it) and then record it into a animation and some stills that show how the damage takes action.
Be creative - thats just as important as the execution itself.
Usually that is creating two models, by taking the undamaged one once it's all finished and morphing it into a damaged state. Then take the textures and change them to fit the modeled damage. Seperate parts can be created that can detach and so, but how far you go is really up to the game. Games that don't focus on damage (like NFS) don't have everything fall off, while the really violent ones (Burnout) allow full deconstruction. The latter type requires A LOT more work (trust me), i wouldn't recommend doing that if this is one of your first cars (you need to understand car mechanics to do this convincingly).
For the textursets they obviously won't do 16 sets of textures with one for each part, drawcalls are always a concern no matter what the subject is. That being said, car drawcalls can go to the higher side since there's usually not that many on screen.
From my experience, this is how it's usually broken up:
-Car body texture. If you want to change color it could be easier to have all the carpaint stuff on one texture (that way you can colorize the entire sheet at once). If not you can fit extra stuff like underside and so on there as well, but you'll need a mask texture to do color changing in the shader.
Keep in mind that baked normalmaps greatly complicate the damage texture, since the tangent basis will be incorrect. That's the reason most devs go for higher polycounts with cars; it's easier AND looks better.
-Detail stuff. this can be anything from underside, suspension, interior to engine. doesn't need a damage texture unless you want to completely blow the car up and have it burn out.
-Wheels. You could add these to the other texture sheets, but breaking these off means you can share rims and tires with other cars without having to load a big-ass texture for an entire car.
-Glass. obviously this needs to be seperate so you don't need to do alpha stuff for the other textures. Can be easily replaced with a shattered glass texture. You actually don't even need a texture for this: a generic translucent shader with reflections can look great already.
-Lights. Sometimes this is seperate so illumination effects can be done on them.
Anyway, just an estimate from me, I've done quite a few with varying specs but I don't think I ever put everything on one sheet, I'd go for at least 3 textures/materials nowadays.
You could try and study the files from a PC game. I'd recommend FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage. they have some great art, and every vehicle can get ripped to bits. Pretty sure they should have an exporter for the meshes, if not you can extract the textures and look at those, they can teach you a whole lot already. They do some pretty smart texture sharing to decrease memory footprint for example.
There's other games that might look better or are more recent, but their files are generally very hidden (not many racing devs support modding).
ask if you have any more questions.
Awesome links Renderhjs and excellent info xouliul!
I guess I just need to get my but moving now!
no more excuses:D
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=70700
Xoliul, is there anywhere that you know of that provides some details/help on getting custom content into Flatout? Crashday even? I know there's a small mod community for both games but after some research, there seems very little in the way of info on how to actually get your cars etc into the game and considerations when creating for them.
I'm planning to do a vehicle of some sort for an upcoming portfolio project, and if I could get my head around actually getting it into a game, that'd be awesome.
I know you're probably the most qualified on this board to answer so I'm directing the question at you, but if anyone else knows, that'd be much appreciated also.
This is what you need:
http://games.softpedia.com/get/Tools/Crashday-SDK.shtml
If you want, I can try and dig up a maxfile from back in those days, but you should start off by reading the docs, they're pretty good actually. The game too; so underrated, I just loved nitro-drifting and shooting rockets at other cars in that game
I'll give the documentation a good read and see how I get on, I will give you a shout if I get stuck or need any specific help. I'm just desperately trying to finish an environment piece I've been working on for far too long but then I will get onto a vehicle of some sort.
And I agree, Crashday is a fun game, and even though it is aged a little, still enjoyable.