Handplane Contest - Triton TPL 180 - Finished
polycounter lvl 8
Well I didn't get as much time as I wanted on this but I worked as hard as I could And I'm pretty proud of the results. I ended up at 8k tris witch I thought was pretty good.
But First, my thoughts on Handplane as a baker. I didn't have any problem with what it produced. I had some pretty rough UV's so I was expecting a whole heap of errors on my first bake but it came out fantastic. It was also very quick. Even when I did my final bakes the only thing that took over 20 secs was the AO, which was pretty slow at 8X SS. But it was on par with Xnormal. I did Have an issue with my cages never getting a green light. They were the exact same mesh with a push modifier so I thought they would be right. I ended up ditching my cages as they kept on showing up errors. Once they were gone I had no problems. I really enjoyed using the material presets and different projection groups. That feature alone will keep me coming back.
The only real problems I had was with the UI. I have a small list of things I hope will help you out, some might just be personnel things but I thought I would put them in anyways.
* When I right clicked in the save directory to make a new folder, the whole program crashed.
* I found myself changing all my material presets when I scrolled down with the scroll wheel on my mouse.
* I was thinking maybe the Material presets could be on the same tab as the projection groups?
* Some sought of preview of the bakes would be nice.
* This wasn't a problem I had but I think people like to create ID maps from the vertex level. So I'm not sure how that could be used in this workflow.
But First, my thoughts on Handplane as a baker. I didn't have any problem with what it produced. I had some pretty rough UV's so I was expecting a whole heap of errors on my first bake but it came out fantastic. It was also very quick. Even when I did my final bakes the only thing that took over 20 secs was the AO, which was pretty slow at 8X SS. But it was on par with Xnormal. I did Have an issue with my cages never getting a green light. They were the exact same mesh with a push modifier so I thought they would be right. I ended up ditching my cages as they kept on showing up errors. Once they were gone I had no problems. I really enjoyed using the material presets and different projection groups. That feature alone will keep me coming back.
The only real problems I had was with the UI. I have a small list of things I hope will help you out, some might just be personnel things but I thought I would put them in anyways.
* When I right clicked in the save directory to make a new folder, the whole program crashed.
* I found myself changing all my material presets when I scrolled down with the scroll wheel on my mouse.
* I was thinking maybe the Material presets could be on the same tab as the projection groups?
* Some sought of preview of the bakes would be nice.
* This wasn't a problem I had but I think people like to create ID maps from the vertex level. So I'm not sure how that could be used in this workflow.
Replies
After that it was time to Build up the basic forms and at some of the detail. I have to finish off a few things like the handle, but I use this pass to make sure all the proportions are pretty accurate. Then it's time to clean up the topology and start the real high poly details
That being said, I think you can achieve a nice silhouette with about 20k tri's. Most current weapons are in the 40-60k tri range.