Bonsai Tree sculpt

travisdreams

Im making a bonsai tree for a class project. It'd be nice to get some feedback Also what would be a decent amount of polys for this? im aiming for below 1500 tris?

Ravanna

how did you make it, did you twist the bark with cylinders in 3dsmax/maya 1st or did you just sculpt it? its pretty

DWalker

The number of polygons really depends on the piece's size & importance. If it's an unimportant piece of background clutter, then 1500 might be high; if the camera is going to zoom in on it for some reason, then you might need 10 times that many polygons.

Determine how large it is going to be in the scene and set up the camera accordingly. Render at the highest resolution you can expect, then look at the result - check for obvious sharp bends where edges meet to see if you need additional polygons to define the profile. Next, render the wireframe image - if it's solid, then you probably should remove polygons.

Even in games, the scene's total polygon count is the limiting factor, and the count for individual props is really a guideline which needs to be adjusted on a piece-by-piece basis.

And of course, don't forget to include the leaves before you start pruning.

travisdreams

Ravanna: i just sculpted the twist, it started as zspheres in zbrush then i cleaned the topology in maya, re-imported it into zbrush and sculpted away

DWalker: Well this isn't for a scene, it's pretty much just one prop to be created for class but i do want this to be as lowpoly as possible. maybe below 1k should be fine?

X-One

Hey, nice job thus far.

Because you're creating a single asset, and it is not a part of a larger scene, we can assume that it will be the focus of your critique.

In my opinion, if you don't have a budget or guideline at all, do not sacrifice the silhouette for the sake of saving some polygons. (THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD WASTE THEM).

Make it look as good as possible, as efficiently as you can manage.

travisdreams

@X-One yeah it'll DEFINITELY be the focus of the critique x] you do make a good point though, i'll try to make it as low poly yet impressive and presentational as possible then. Thanks!