Fire Hydrant - help with low poly of chains

ToffeeApple

Hi everyone

I have been making a Fire Hydrant game asset but have become a little unsure how I should approach the low poly version for the chains. These are really high right now at 8792 polys (for the chains alone). The model without the chains is 3520 polys. I'm aiming for around 4000 - is this a little high?

As to the chains, I was thinking maybe I should be approaching this by making an alpha or masking. Is this a good idea? Or will this not be good in optimisation terms for a game?

Thank you all for your help.

Please see below the high and low poly versions.

[IMG][/img]

Sean VanGorder

What you have now is definitely a little high for low poly chains. You should take a look at these two threads dealing with the same issue, maybe it will give you some ideas.

Chains. When to plane and when to model

Alpha Map Chains in video games?

ToffeeApple

Thank you so much! Those links look exactly what I'm looking for.

mikhga

It all depends on how expensive the use of alpha is in your game-engine. but I would have done it with an alpha in this case, picked one of the links in the chain and baked it to a plane, and used that with a chain-maker script (which you can find easily on creative crash for example), to create the low-poly chains.

jeremiah_bigley

hey man Nice Hydrant! I just wanted to address your question about the tri count. 4000 is really high for a fire hydrant. I actually did a vehicle recently for production that was around 6500 just to give some perspective. Fire hydrant is probably a prop that is just going to be decorative for the environment. With 4000 tris I think you could get around 4 to 5 decent props for the cost of that one.

As you are building this for personal work/portfolio work it is probably better to make it look really good rather than just optimized but at the same time you want to be efficient. If done right it could look amazing at 1200.

Keep up the good work!

ToffeeApple

Mikhga - Thanks for your suggestion. I'll take a look into that method.

Jeremiah_bigley - Yes that does put tri count into perspective for me. I took a look at your website and can see exactly what you mean by having a low count but the work looking great. I'm going to try go all out and get the hydrant down to the 1200 level and see if I can maintain the quality.

DWalker

After the chains. the nuts and bolts are probably consuming the most vertices for the least visual benefit. Depending upon the in-game size and perspective, you can probably eliminate the ones on the base, allowing the normal map to show them. The bolts under edge can probably be eliminated entirely without many people noticing the difference. These two changes should save between 500-1000 polygons.

Next, I'd look at cylinders with identical radii but varying number of sides in your game engine to decide how many sides each really needs to appear round. You also seem to use the same number regardless of the size of the cylinder.

ToffeeApple

Hi all

So I've knocked my low poly down to 1426 - that's without the chains which I've still to do. This is it so far with my normal map on:

[IMG][/img]


DWalker - I didn't want to get rid of the nuts on the base and underside just for portfolio purposes but I agree that if the player was only seeing this from top down they would be unnecessary. I decided to get rid of some of the mesh on the underside bolts though so thanks for pointing this out because it made me take another look at them. As to cylinder sizes - I think this is a case where I really should have thought ahead a bit more. I feel like I built my high for these cylinder sizes but I will keep it in mind for the future.

jeremiah_bigley

Nice work man! Much much better! Just a couple of small tweaks though.

red - remove
green - collapse
orange - new topology/target weld and connect

ToffeeApple

Thanks Jeremiah_bigley! That was really helpful. I get why to make the changes for red and green - but why the change for yellow? I also wasn't sure if I've edited it correctly, here is what I've done...

[IMG][/img]

I've also added the chains now - decided to go with the two overlapping boxes to keep the polycount down - although I fear I've now knocked it up in other areas! I'm on 1784 polys.Please pretend the alphas are on - Maya's viewport doesn't like them.

AtticusMars

Could you post up the normal map? You've got smoothing artifacts all over your hard edged shapes, probably because of baking as a single UV island.

ToffeeApple

AtticusMars: This is the normal map. I'm still working on the piece the chains attach to so I'm aware this piece has artifacts. Could you show me the artifacts?

[IMG][/img]

AtticusMars

You have these because your tangent basis is different in your viewing application than the one you baked it in. If you're going to end up with synched tangents, in the end this wont matter. If you aren't then you need to break your UVs islands and smoothing splits at the 90 degree angles. Or add support edges.

ToffeeApple

Thanks AtticusMars - I was going to use Marmoset for the final viewing. I guess what you are saying is I need to test this out (and adapt it) for the application it is meant for and check how it looks in that.

AtticusMars

Unless it's been changed recently, marmoset uses its own tangents and isn't synced with anything so you'll have to take your pick between smoothing/UV splits or support edges.

Personally for this model I'd go with smoothing/UV splits

ToffeeApple

AtticusMars - if I opt for UV splits - what would be the best way to create chipped paint around the edges in the diffuse map without seams?

AtticusMars

3d painting it with viewport canvas/mudbox/blender/3dcoat is usually the easiest way to deal with seams. Keep in mind that it is wear and tear, a seam is not likely to be very obvious even if it isn't perfect.

You could also model the damage into it in zbrush so that you can tell where to paint when you're in Photoshop.

If it bothers you that much though just add edge loops.

ToffeeApple

Thanks - I think I'll model the damage into Zbrush as I'm trying to avoid adding more polys. Best get splitting some uv edges...

ToffeeApple

Just wanted to say thanks for your advice AtticusMars - it's looking much better!

[IMG][/img]

ToffeeApple

Hi all

I wasn't sure whether to make a new thread for this but I'd like a bit of critique on my textures. They are 1024x1024 - diff, spec, gloss and opacity. Thanks in advance!

[IMG][/img]

[IMG][/img]