[QUESTION] Is there a better way to do this?
polycounter lvl 3
Happy New Years everyone!
I am hoping to avail myself of all the brilliant minds here and hopefully make some headway on my first game project. With that being said I am hoping for some input on my first hurdle, making a decent looking low poly hedge maze!
This is a test I worked on today after looking for various in game examples and other failed experiments.
As you can tell, what I have here is a plane with a seamless texture and normals, added to that some polys to break up the repetitive tiling and silhouette (though it is not really apparent in the playblast I took.)
This test looks decent to me but it is near 3500 polys. I know I don't have to worry as much as before when it comes to polycount and its not as high as some of the objs you can purchase but still.
So what does everyone think? How could I do this better?
My thanks in advance!
I am hoping to avail myself of all the brilliant minds here and hopefully make some headway on my first game project. With that being said I am hoping for some input on my first hurdle, making a decent looking low poly hedge maze!
This is a test I worked on today after looking for various in game examples and other failed experiments.
As you can tell, what I have here is a plane with a seamless texture and normals, added to that some polys to break up the repetitive tiling and silhouette (though it is not really apparent in the playblast I took.)
This test looks decent to me but it is near 3500 polys. I know I don't have to worry as much as before when it comes to polycount and its not as high as some of the objs you can purchase but still.
So what does everyone think? How could I do this better?
My thanks in advance!
Replies
Appreciate the video! I have been trying to analyze the video on and off while at work. Along with any other leads from this point. I haven't had much success but it something to dig into. I'll let you know what results I come up with.
You can even see patterns where the cards repeat because they assambled a low hedge and cloned it two times on top so it is 3 meters tall now.
Scale affects resolution and vice versa.
Overdraw madness by the way
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So let us take a deeper look at what I am attempting to achieve. I am interested in creating a 1st person walking simulator of sorts and I am striving for a high level of realism, within reason of course.
This was an early test, in making modular pieces and using a seamless texture. I had the texture repeat several times in order to get the leaves to the proper size. This leads into the main issue, because the leaves and twigs are fairly small they create a fairly jagged silhouette, but also a plush feel that comes from all the tiny in between space. This "in between space", to give it a sense of volume and allow for some peek through, I feel can be easily dealt with an nice alpha map and an alpha card of branches on the inside, but even with that the silhouette even with normals and the rest still are just flat and don't hold up to close inspection.
I did try using the alpha card like the ones above but it was not visually satisfying, but I will try again because I could just have done them poorly. I also tried the Alan Wake technique of trying a make a shell with a larger alpha area...
...but that was just as dissatisfying.
Honestly, so far my most recent experiment has come the closest to what I am looking for but still
So, opinions? Would I be asking too much to try and move ahead with what is sure to be an massive polycount, making little leaves all over the place?
I once tried it for grass and only ended up with a huge polycount because the texture literally contained just 4 blades of grass. Add 8-16 and you can get away with less geometry while having significantly more detail.
Also, it's important to bake down your leaves into a normal map. A normal map contains X,Y,Z coordiantes which is the exact same as having a 3D object. So leaves will look 3D at nearly any angle.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage
Also if you would kindly elaborate on "bake down" It has been years since I seriously touched maya and I am wondering if this is something different from generating normals from the high poly mesh. I tried quixel to get normals from the texture and was pleased with the first round.
@Eric Chadwick I did, I was eager to try the paint effect option until I discovered it isn't offered in Maya LT, at least not that I've seen. So far that majority of things that I think would look good end be really poly heavy, but if you have any other ideas I will gratefully look at it.
And finally closer up
Opinions? As you can see there are close to 7000 polys on this cube, and this is only two sides. Reducing the bevel and getting rid of the inner layer won't make any real difference but I am at a loss of how I can keep the numbers low while maintain a good level of realism for a game asset.
appreciate it.
Take a look the image from the Airborn example. the texture applied to the alpha cards has a few leaves on it
The more leaves you have on each card, the less cards you'll need to fill out the area. More cards with less leaves will probably look more realistic but you need to find a happy medium between poly count and visual fidelity.
You'll also want to pay attention to the section in the Airborn example where it talks about edited vertex normals. There's a section on the polycount wiki devoted to it as well, it'll help your leaves light more convincingly.
When you're trying to solve your 3D problem at work, #yellowPolygons. I am seriously not happy with my current solutions. Right now i'm thinking two polys for the twig, one poly with two leave per, rotated around and scaled down/ the higher they go. 5 polys total.
It is killing me not to be able to rotate the leaves, but in general I just don't think they will hold up under close examination.
What is the term, process, technique where assets are created only when they need to appear on the screen? Like in the old school PS days? I think that would be a happy compromise....