Can't seem to figure out these stairs

Chase

I've fiddled with creating the spaces within each step, but can't seem to get an outcome I like. Any suggestions?



Also, for the actual floor of the fire escape I was thinking of using a texture and an alpha to show the multitude of spacing so I'm not using so much geometry. Would that work?

WarrenM

Suggestions for what? How to model those stairs? You should show what you've done and let people tell you how to fix it.

As for the alpha idea ... yes, that will work. You could still model it but then render out the alpha mask from the baking app of your choice.

Chase

Here's what I have so far.....



It's 208 polys, but as you can see it's a little more angular then I'd like. Far away it looks fine, which for a fire escape works, but for the stairs that are more readily viewable I'd like the gaps to be smoother.

This is with a meshsmooth modifier......



The triangle count is insane. Something like 1200 tris, but if I delete some edges I might be able to reduce the tris. Would this be a reasonable mesh? It was a bit of a pain to get this far so I wonder if anyone has an idea how they would've gone about the model. Please and thank you :thumbup:

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel

Are you familiar with baking and normal maps?

Chase

I've studied it, but putting it into practice not so much....

Mark Dygert

It's all about context.

How important is each rung?
How close are the players going to get?
What hardware is your scene going to be running on?
How does the engine handle more tris vs opacity maps?
Why do the cut outs need to be there?
Why does it need to be smoothed?
If you're going to smooth it you need to reinforce the edges that you want to stay sharp.
Can you do a rung with a single flat plane and turn on 2 sided?

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel

Chaserm2 wrote: »

I've studied it, but putting it into practice not so much....

i ask for this reason -

what you are getting at with the meshsmoothed version is closer to what you would use as a high-poly - although it requires more supporting edges in order to maintain its form,

your lowpoly could be significantly lower poly, and could derive normal and possibly opacity (if desired) data from the high poly via baking to make up for it and achieve the look you describe.

Chase

Wouldn't it be a waste of a normal map if I have a ton of these steps? How would the low poly be able to take on the smoothing information? I didn't think normal maps could do that.

MrOneTwo

No if you overlap steps on the uv. What smoothing information ? You should not use any Turbo or Mesh smooth on low poly. That's whats normal map for.

Chase

so it'd just be one Normal Map being used for like 40 steps, correct? A guy I know told me that using a normal map for smoothing edges like this is a waste. Maybe he was just referring to my example at the time. These garbage cans for instance...I could bake them, and apply the normal map to the low poly giving me the smooth edges of the high poly?



By smoothing information I just meant the turbosmooth.