Ford AA Truck

zPhaseD

Hey guys,

Im approaching the end of my final year of my games course and have created this truck as part of a larger scene. It would be really useful for me to get some opinions from awesomely talented guys like you so help me make it the best I can. Its currently only HP and i'm in the process of making it low poly and then obviously the unwrapping and texturing. I know its not going to win any awards for best model 2015, but I would appreciate it if any criticism was constructive. Thanks guys and I look forward to hearing what you think.

nickcomeau

It feels like the drivers wheel and the gear shift are very thin/small. Right now it looks pretty clean to me, not much to say I guess. Did the old cars have any kind of exhaust?

zPhaseD

Hey man, thanks for the feedback. The wheel and gear shift can easily be increased in size so I will look into that. As for the exhaust, I can't see anything obvious on the references, but then again there aren't many good references for the car in its original state (all the pictures are from restoration projects). Happy to be proved wrong though! Thanks again

zPhaseD

Hey guys, just a quick update.

Low poly completed, would be good to get some thoughts!

Thanks again

Dan Powell

High poly looks clean - good work.

A lot of geometry on your low poly could be triangulated to lower the vertices count, unless you're keeping it in quads for some other reason?

There's an edge loop running through the middle of the tyres for example that doesn't look like it's affecting the silhouette of the tyre so it can be deleted.

Any geometry which doesn't effect the silhouette can be deleted. So if you can delete a vertices and the shape of the model is the same then it can stay deleted :P

JustGarry

Why would he not keep it as quads? Triangulating would make this an absolute nightmare to work with

zPhaseD

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback!

I have found that with this mesh quads are easier to work with, i've triangled out a few loops but wanted to keep the majority quads. The loop on the tyre is a stray symmetry loop that has sneaked in to the final mesh so I will go back and relieve it of its duties

Schwarts

Don't worry about exhaust, early auto's didn't have any kind of exhaust system back in the day, just straight headers. If you're going for complete historical accuracy, these models had a horn beneath the left headlight but I'm not sure if it's necessary for the project you're working in.

As far as the model itself, the high looks fantastic and the low poly looks clean but can you do a close up screenshot of the grille on the low poly model? Can't wait to see this textured, nice work!

zPhaseD

Thanks for the comments Schwarts, I'm glad you have mentioned the exhaust, I was a little worried I had just neglected it in references but you have put my mind to rest. Here is the grille close up you asked for, hope its ok. I'm pretty much done with the texture so ill update this soon, although texturing has been the weakest part of my work for a while so I hope it doesn't disappoint!

Dan Powell

JustGarry wrote: »

Why would he not keep it as quads? Triangulating would make this an absolute nightmare to work with

The high poly mesh would be a nightmare to work with if you triangulated it, but the low poly mesh can triangulated for optimisation once you're done editing the silhouette.

Curved parts of the vehicle will need to be in quads to retain the curvature, but any flat parts can typically be triangulated on order to save vertices. Whilst this isn't as necessary in modern times, as triangles aren't going to bottleneck a Graphics processor as often as fancy lighting/shaders, you won't score any marks for optimisation if everything is left in quads (unless you have a solid reason for it.)

On this front panel for example these quads aren't needed and could be triangulated. It wouldn't matter as it's a flat surface anyway and at a glance it wouldn't break your shading or make any difference to texturing - other than saving some vertices. Aforementioned, it's not vital as modern hardware is tough, but it's always good to try and optimise stuff reasonably where you can.

zPhaseD

Yeah I agree with you there are places where I could have triangled the mesh, I hit my tri target and got lazy

zPhaseD

So here it is in engine. The texturing/engine part is usually the weakest part of work so any feedback or suggestions would be appreciated. This has actually come out reasonably well for me but I can always improve. The tyre detail was a little disappointing but I ran out of time to keep changing it. Again, thank you so much for the feedback you have already given me, it has been very helpful!