Advice on textures requirements and shaders
polycounter lvl 18
I have a few mapping and texturing questions concerning a 3D model I recently completed based up Spinefinger's concept.
My questions are based upon what is currently practiced in the gaming industry concerning texture size and shaders.
1. For this model, how many textures maps and what size would be appropriate if this was being built for a current game engine? (Model is currently 5632 polys)
2. What shaders does one now add into renders considering that most games now have bump and specular maps in game if the 3d card can support it? Should I make a bump and specular map at the end and then render it out as the last step?
Also, any tutorials on the above would be very helpful.
Thanks for your help!
My questions are based upon what is currently practiced in the gaming industry concerning texture size and shaders.
1. For this model, how many textures maps and what size would be appropriate if this was being built for a current game engine? (Model is currently 5632 polys)
2. What shaders does one now add into renders considering that most games now have bump and specular maps in game if the 3d card can support it? Should I make a bump and specular map at the end and then render it out as the last step?
Also, any tutorials on the above would be very helpful.
Thanks for your help!
Replies
How big is it? How close would a player be able to get to it?
That would determine how much pixel density you'll want to pack into that model.
The fans look cool, overall shape is a bit shakey, could use a lot cleaner edge lines and defined shapes.
The model is heavily wasting polygons. To start, polygon density: top/main body of the cockpit is a box, yet, the front/middle white trim has 6 sides. Inner dome of fans, and all those tiny round connector details (seen on tail, backs of winds) are much more dense than the model around them. Looking at your model, I figured it for +2000 polygons at most, maybe you're hiding a lot of detail between the fans and the cockpit.
#1 depends, current game engines have a high and low end.
For example, Half-Life2 and Doom3 for pc as your high end, these can easily be as high as 1x1024x1024 with diffuse, bump and spec mapping. Though I think 2x512x512 could work great for this.
The low end being Ps2, this could be as low as one or two 256x256 textures, possibly a handful of 128x128s, but I doubt you're seeking anything that challenging.
#2 Normal maps are the most popular type of bump mapping. Common work flow for this is building a high detail mesh to render normals from, and model a low poly mesh (similar to what you have) based on the high detail model to accept the normal map. Bumps tend to make things stick out, where as normals can also enhance the roundness and shape.
Cholden: Appreciate the polygon review. The reason the main body is more box like with less polygon density is because this was an exercise for me to follow the concept art in modeling. (Concept link from 1st post) As such, in Spine's design, the body piece is more boxy compared to the rest of the more curvy/smooth design he is got going on in the rest of the model. Also, it's hard to tell from that angle, but the real eye focus is the propellers themselves and the housing since it's a good deal higher then the body itself. With that in mind, I decided to dedicated more polys where the user's eye would be focused on. (Fans are 1k all together)
That being said, I'm not entirely happy with that front section and am looking into it.
Thanks for the answers to my two questions, that part was really helpful.