Low Poly Elephant project (infant stage) looking for help

ThinkKlinck

So I am working on doing a Low poly elephant with mobile in mind. I would like to keep it under 1k tris similar to these. The style I wanna go for with the piece is hand painted but not too outlandish. I want the proportions accurate etc. but to accent the areas that dip with purple and even a bit of black, highlight some with white. I am only going to use a color map on it, no spec or normal mapping. I am seeking advice on doing this kind of very low-poly work. Just some basic tips, should I try and build pieces separately, just how do I start to model an organic like this at a very low poly. Should I do a quick sculpt and model over? Thanks in advance!

Snader

Well, right off the bat, the proportions of the drawing are quite off. The reference is a much more stocky, chunky animal. Yours has a rather elongated body.

As for basic tips on lowpoly:
-silhouette above everything. I usually assign a flat color material, Like this, and then check for visible angles.
-a blockout would be handy. Just put down some cylinders for the legs, torso, head and mess with the sides/segments until you have a nice polycount and distribution.
-use 'symmetry' modifier right until the very last 5% or so of modeling. This will make modeling twice as fast - for obvious reasons.
-those last 5% are where you introduce unique details like a broken tusk, and remove the center symmetry line a bit. So you don't get butterfly mirroring, and can have a teensy bit of unique texture in the middle. (example, the tshirt of the linked guy could have a non-symmetrical logo on it)

ThinkKlinck

Snader wrote: »

-use 'symmetry' modifier right until the very last 5% or so of modeling. This will make modeling twice as fast - for obvious reasons.
-those last 5% are where you introduce unique details like a broken tusk, and remove the center symmetry line a bit. So you don't get butterfly mirroring, and can have a teensy bit of unique texture in the middle. (example, the tshirt of the linked guy could have a non-symmetrical logo on it)

Is the Mirror tool the equivalent in Maya?

Thanks for the speedy reply

Snader

Kind of.

I've not used Maya for a long time, and even then only very briefly, but from what I recall the Mirror tool is something you just put on an object and then it mirrors it, and then you continue modeling from there.

The cool thing about the 3DS Max symmetry modifier is that you can just put it on an object, and you can just keep editing the original model and it automatically updates. It's non-destructive, so to speak.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBPkXClvgbo"]How to use the symmetry modifier in 3ds max - YouTube[/ame]

ThinkKlinck

Gotya, I think mirror will be the closest I get to that, gracias for the tip

ThinkKlinck

Worked on modeling the body for a few hours today. I am up to 358 tris.
Some things i noticed about elephants stances, their legs front and back come in at the bottom making them look very top heavy, and the back legs look more powerful than the front.

Steve Schulze

I think you're going to have troubles because you're working off a reference that isn't entirely straight which is throwing off the proportions of your body. If you do a search for "African elephant anatomy", you'll pull up a few photos and drawings that'll be much better to work from

ThinkKlinck

Yea I agree. I showed it to a friend and he said to put in a real elephant for reference to help tweak proportions etc. make sure everything is down right.