Home› Technical Talk

How to approach modeling a tank track with wide spaces in it

Creepezel
node
Offline / Send Message
Creepezel node

That's the tank track I'm deling with. It's part of a model I intend serve the purpose of a world decoration (not going to be animated, it would just stay still somewhere) but I got stuck in this part. Low poly version of this track have 28K tris, together with main body it have 120K tris what is quite too big. I did read the tutorial from Gaijin Entertainment but, can't understand much from what they said, can't even find a video tutorials that would show such process.

So, could it even be possible to turn this, into straight continous band ? But I'm not even sure how to bake it. Guess I would have to make a normal map, then in color map I would have to remove some pixels to create an ilussion of these empty spaces ? Any other ideas ?
· Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Tagged:

Replies

  • Klunk
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    Klunk ngon master
    why a band ? you would only be looking to do that sort of thing for an in game model.
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Creepezel
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    Creepezel node
    Klunk said:
    why a band ? you would only be looking to do that sort of thing for an in game model.
    This is intended to be game ready model. That's why I care to make these tracks as low on triangles as possible.
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • poopipe
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    poopipe grand marshal polycounter
    Totally possible, it won't stand up when the camera is close by but for a lod it's exactly what you'd want to do.

    Simply make a low poly that is a continuous band and bake to it. Assuming you're baking in painter or designer you can bake opacity and then use a shader that supports it
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Creepezel
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    Creepezel node
    That seems to work. But, to cover empty spaces between layers of band, I should just add flat face in between them ? Then I guess, ID map will be needed to, so material won't be placed on the entire band.
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
  • Shrike
    Options
    Offline / Send Message
    Shrike interpolator
    Sometimes you just need to change the design to fit the polycount. 
    Either you use alpha and bake it to a big rectangle strip or you dont use alpha and cut down the holes

    You could also do 3 strips, center with alpha, 2 opaque on the sides, and a bunch of cubes for the middle piece but that would cost a good bunch more, but this track is just not very good. It dosnt look great and I doubt its very practical. The reason to have tracks is to have a wide surface contact area.


    Here are some tracks I baked (these are not for first / third person but similar principles)

    Left side is the LOD1
    · Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Sign In or Register to comment.