Environment Modelling Help

fitzy2541

I am currently doing an environment model of a ww2 church hideout that has to be slightly ruined and have snow in the scene, but i have a limit of 30,000 Tris and texture size limit of 2048x2048. I have modeled the scene but wondered if there are some tricks or tips anyone could give to help me if I'm missing anything. textures haven't been started but my idea was making the snow using opacity maps and creating tiled textures with displacement maps for the church. the trees im not too happy with but it does say to make trees shrubs etc and i didn't want to use the ones in max. I did make all the tiles separately so i think there would be an easier way that would save on poly count but the issue i had was making the roof look collapsed and not tiled.
Thanks to anyone who can give me advice in advance i will be trying myself to fix this in the meantime

TheRealFroman

Hey man,

So from reading your comment, it seems that your total poly limit is 30,000? Seems like quite a very low limit, but anyways, I would say do your best at creating a good 3d silhouette in that case, in order to make it an overall pleasing object to looks at. If the project is going to be that restricting, it would seem like the best thing to do. You can always take away from areas of very high detail, and provide the freed up space to other areas that are lacking. For instance, decrease the level of detail in that large side-window piece, and then help make the outline of the building look less simple and sharp. That tower piece needs extra detail, and those boxes out front as well probably. Its always a good thing to ease the level of linearity when dealing with 3D models such as this. Hope that helps

David Wakelin

Hi andy

Things i'd recommend;

Windows don't float out from walls, look at this example of how they're incorporated:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=5989&d=1349372075

The damaged tower would be better if you took off the top and zbrushed it to make it look less rigid and more "collapsed"

The tiles would be better if you literally made a group of them, zbrushed them and then just baked it onto a higher res plane, - its more common with floor tiles but a great example can be shown from here onwards on that thread:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113765&page=8

Hope this helps

BTW, i choose the sculpting challenge Will Ferrell is hard to sculpt! My progress is here, http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=115735 - ill keep a watch on your development!

fitzy2541

Hey yea i tried the window with displacement mapping first then modelled the whole thing, and tbh still not happy with them atm. i dont wanna start texturing till the model is finished but the tiles do need normal mapping i defiantly agree there and the church tower i did want to do some zbrush destruction but im just strapped for time atm so may give a day to see how it goes in zbrush. good examples as well cheers dave
will ferral head looks good hair looks like its gonna be fun aswell lol i would have picked mila kunis but housemate said if i made her ugly he'd kill me haha

thank youfroman i think i may take some trees out since they aren't really the main focus. do you have any recommendations with snow ?? i thought about opacity mapping it at the end or is it more efficient to make it now whilst modelling??

also i have a texture size of 2048x2048 so i may zbrush and normal map if that works out.This is the first time making an actual building so just trying loads of different techniques to make it work

Thanks for the fast replies greatly appreciated

Trage

Hey, Can I ask what Refrence images your using? and your mood sheets? As that will help us a lot with determining what direction to point you...