Random low-poly question!

Torch

Hey all,

Have been working on a model of this cartoony character in Maya for a short while but am kinda stumped on the 'blobby' head area, since I'm trying to keep it pretty low poly.



I figured I'd try to model a bunch of spheres around a spherical object to get that lumpiness but its not looking as good as I'd hoped. Another idea I had was to just create a spherical mesh in ZBrush and either sculpt or insert circular meshes to get the blobby look, then decimating the mesh but since it has to be a pretty low poly mesh the end results could look pretty gash

If anyone has any suggestions on how to go about low poly modeling the head, that'd be great. Thanks!

Angry Beaver

I'd follow the gel round the outside to have a very mushroom shape then I'd probably run some shader + sprite shennanigans on the inside of that for the blob part. i.e. having a whole bunch of circular sprites that sort of meld into each other.

The semi transparent gooey outside should help hide any issues you have with it being obvious what you're doing for the inner part. The wireframe might look wonky but you can probably getting it good looking in engine.

throttlekitty

Random low-poly answer! Turn the move tool upside down. har har so funny

For that head, you could also lump some spheres, then shrinkwrap a larger sphere or cube to that cluster.

Lamont

I second the shader route for the blobby green thing inside. Then have the eyes an actual mesh floating inside...

It would look awesome. Trust The Force.

Torch

Hey guys, cheers for the feedback, all good ideas! Have got a better idea of how to approach it

Justin Meisse

depending on tech - either use a camera facing sprite for the blobby part or model a spheroid shape and sell the lumps in the texture. Modeling it out would waste too many tris. I'd use alpha planes for the eyes and mouth, you can do a convincing blink by quickly squashing the planes down, possibly with a closed eye texture behind it. That's how most of the eyes in Pirate 101 are done.

Overlord

I was just about to suggest something similar to what Justin did. Use some sprites that track the camera. I've seen a technique for changing facial expressions on anime characters though. Just put another eye in a unused portion of your UV space and then offset the UV coordinates on demand.

Torch

Guys all that info has helped tons, thanks so much! I figured while we're on the subject of Low poly stuff I could ask about AO baking as well. I use Maya to bake AO on low poly meshes, e.g. Lighting/Shading > Batch Bake (Mental Ray). This is great but I always seem to get 'jagged' looking lines on the AO map or pretty noticeable seams which I have to paint out, ends up being a major time hog. Is there anyway to increase the quality of the bakes? My friend recommended using Turtle as a way to bake info but I thought Mental Ray should be fine.

My bake on low poly mesh:



AO Options:



Cheers

Justin Meisse

I'd say blur it in photoshop - you might have to add edge padding first. I typically use 3Dcoat's ao bake with a high post blur value.

Torch

Cheers Justin, I've experimented a bit using 3D Coat and a few other methods - so far I have been finding that the Turtle plugin ("I like turtles!") for Maya gives a pretty solid result for baking low poly AO, would definitely recommend it