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LOW-POLY ART

polycounter lvl 19
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hawken polycounter lvl 19
This is the sweet spot for your low-poly models. Post 'em if you've got 'em!

Low-poly hasn't really been a requirement in the games industry for a long while now. This thread is for low-poly art style appreciation, so please take note of these rough guidelines:
  • Keep models under 1,000 triangles.
  • Scenes are fine, if all models are low poly.
Some dedicated low-poly modelling tools now exist that make this art style a lot easier to produce; Crocotile3D & Blockbench

Here's a handy list of ways to make your art look right in mainstream 3D software: Low-Poly Art Style Guide

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  • Der Hollander
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    Maximus, I agree with Freidenker, But I also feel that overall, the proportions feel a bit off, especially on the helmet details. I would also consider capping off the pauldrons unless you won't see the inside, but that's just my personal taste. I'm definetely feeling the original DoW from these models, but not the sequel. It's mostly that the textures aren't gritty enough, there's a distinct style difference between the two games. But take that for what it is, which is me picking nits like bugs off a chimp.

    I'm really impressed with the low triangle count and the textures look really good for their size. I'd really like to see these guys posed with their weapons in a mini environment. Keep up the good work, it's shaping up to be a good project.
  • shaka
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    shaka polycounter lvl 7
    Hi, guys. I'm sorta new. I've been a lurker for a long time, and finally i have something to post in this section. :)

    This one is for an iPhone game, and i'm still working on the texture so it's 1024 now, but will be 256max. Around 500 tris.

    I'll post the texture as soon as i have it final. I hope there is a resemblance to the original character :P ....but of course it's all "coincidental"

    edvard_print_screen_03.jpg

    edvard_print_screen_04.jpg
  • Maximus!
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    Thanks you guys! I used the DoW 2 body proportions they look very brutal!! and there is a difference between textures because I used an old Spacemarine model from DoW1 ( Reused the helmet and the backpack) that I modeled,So I just need to adjust the saturation
    This is my old model
    wip2j.jpg
  • siggi-gross
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    done this last night :poly121:

    medieval tent for a tournament scene
    speichenrad_render.jpg
    speichenrad_wire.jpg
  • V3ryFl1gh
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    9skulls wrote: »
    V3ryFl1gh wrote: »
    Here is an experiment I tried after learning to successfully unwrap UV's.
    hwiwjm.jpg

    Whoa. Is he really supposed to look like a sad, tired little drug addict?


    Im sorry I've been playin too much Fallout 2 lately.
    Yeah, thats basically how i felt while I was making it. Minus the addicted part lol
  • Acumen
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    Acumen polycounter lvl 18
    Gonna post in here as well :)
    Textured the scene I posted the page before:
    http://www.acumen-design.de/projects/show/splish_splash_wip1.jpg

    I really wish I knew more about lighting such a scene for a handheld :/

    splish_splash_wip2.jpg
  • V3ryFl1gh
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    Acumen, it looks really cool, i like it thus far! It could honestly fair well if you gave it a little more color and vibrants. Everything looks great, it just needs something to make each individual nook and cranny pop out a little more. For instance the red barrels, those things are very noticeable compared to the color pallet of the rest of the scene. possibly adding highlights may help also (contrast is always important). As far as lighting is concerned are you familiar with the Unity3D engine? Not quite sure what ramifications come into play when it comes to handheld systems but I don't think it really matters as far as lighting is concerned.
  • Racer445
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    Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
    Acumen, as far as I know, many DS games use vertex lighting, which you can bake into the scene using most 3d programs. If you search for how to do it, there should be guides for most software packages.
  • Acumen
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    Acumen polycounter lvl 18
    Yeh, I kind wanted the barrels to have this eyecatching color but now I guess it's a tad much, cause actually I wanted to get the dirty/lowcontrast/generic mood for this piece ^^
    As soon as I get the chance to work on my own computer and not my girlfriend I'm gonna give Unity a closer look ! Thanks for the headsup on that.

    Vertex Lighting, brrr, I kinda read about that sooo many times and just never understood the concept and use of it all ;)
    I guess it's actually time to give it a go nonetheless.

    Thanks to both of you guys !
  • Baddcog
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    Baddcog polycounter lvl 9
    vert lighting is easy, just painting shades of black/white on a per vertex basis (much like weighting verts for rigging). You can use colors of course, but with diffuse textures greyscale is all you really need to shade it.
  • syklonis
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    Acumen wrote: »
    Gonna post in here as well :)
    Textured the scene I posted the page before:
    http://www.acumen-design.de/projects/show/splish_splash_wip1.jpg

    I really wish I knew more about lighting such a scene for a handheld :/

    For lighting look up ambient occlusion (AO). It would really help you in your scene here :) I know there are a lot of pages in this thread, but if you go through them you will find some help about AO. Helped me at least! :)
  • rumblesushi
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    Nice looking scene Acumen. Again, impressive considering it's all on a 256 map.

    Obviously with AO you'll probably need a bigger map.

    I didn't know the DS supported vertex lighting by the way.
  • mcunha98
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    mcunha98 polycounter lvl 7
  • sketch81
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    Hey PC ,
    Super thread with some Awesome work!
    In regards to Vertex lighting, I have a fair idea on how to vertex paint the models, but don't know what do with it all once I'm finished.
    I've heard of baking the information into a map, but can't seem to find any tutorials which point me in that direction... Any help will be much appreciated..
    Rock on ! :)
  • FreshDumbledore
    working on a iPhonegame or at least a graphicsdemo.

    I hope you guys can give me some critics! Thanks :)
    46668502.jpg
  • Acumen
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    Acumen polycounter lvl 18
    That ship looks great :D
    My first thoughts were though, is it really that much triangles and textures ? Cause it doesn't really look like that from looking on the wireframe pictures ?

    Baddcog, rumblesushi, I'll pick it up on the next project, definitely. Got an assassins creed scene on my list, next :)
    What I try to do is to use AO on every objects that doesn't get/could be tiled in the environment.

    yeah, sketch81, that's exactly what my problem is also :D I don't know what to do with it, then.
    Here's a tutorial that might clear things up for us ?
    http://wiki.polycount.com/ModularMountAndBlade?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=Modular_MountBladeMod_04.jpg

    Still I don't know or understand whether that counts as a separate map or not.

    edit: Hey, sketch81, I'd highly suggest using this tutorial. Made me understand a few things :D
    I don't know if it makes my scene that much better, but I got the concept of vertexpainting.
  • Baddcog
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    Baddcog polycounter lvl 9
    vert shading most likely counts as an extra pass (or draw call), the benefit is it doesn't require any uv mapping, so it's great for pieces that use a tiling texture without having the AO baked into the texture. (the tex could tile 3 times vertically, but only have shading along the bottom edge).
    The draw back is it requires more vert for good shading.

    As far as I know if an engine uses it it should export in the model. Ogre would render the colors with no additional info required (as a blend with the textures). Doom 3 requires a special shader to be written to use it. I think Unity just reads the model info.

    You shouldn't have to 'bake' it at all. That's probably just for painting a model in Max, baking it to make a texture. Nothing to do with actual in game vert colors afaik.
  • Harry
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    Harry polycounter lvl 13
    more environment polishing on this shitheap we call a game
    966f0c97bb588b3df6030c139ff3a901.png
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    My first post here at polycount, so first things first... Hello!
    Thought i'd have a crack at trying out some low poly stuff, this is my concept and base mesh so far (yes i am terrible at drawing, please forgive me!)

    spiderconcept-1.png

    Some kind of robot spider controlled by a lovely floating brain.

    Heres my base mesh!
    spiderbasemesh.png

    I do however have a question, how will i go about adding transparency to the glass around the abdomain? i've modelled a brain inside with a plane for the wires you see :/ So if anyone has a tip (maybe some kind of transparency map or something :s?) it would be greatly appreciated!
  • ScubaSteve
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    ScubaSteve polycounter lvl 17
    Acumen-here is a tutorial I made for you and others.On how I used vertex lighting for the DS games i worked on. Hope this helps.

    instructions.jpg
  • Acumen
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    Acumen polycounter lvl 18
    Ow, man, that's awesome :)
    You should get a ds blog thing going or something.
    So to give a resume, I place omni lights (can it be other lights also ?) in there to get a general lighting going on, and if there should be areas I want to light differently, I can do this by hand also.

    And in the end the file gets exported and has the lighting information stored in it. No extramap I have to manually assign or export ?


    Anyways, thanks again for this wondeful resource. This hasn't been the first time your insight gave me many hints on how to do things.

    Skybox realization comes next, so I think I'll bother Harry about this ;)
  • Mr_Drayton
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    Mr_Drayton polycounter lvl 14
    Harry wrote: »
    more environment polishing on this shitheap we call a game
    966f0c97bb588b3df6030c139ff3a901.png
    That sky is really awesome. If I remember, you said you made clouds like they were in Shadow Of The Colossus...
    If it isn't too much, can I ask you to explain briefly this method? Many thanks!

    @ScubaSteve: great tutorial indeed. This will be useful in many situations!
  • Slaught
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    Slaught polycounter lvl 18
    Damn, looks so nice Harry!
  • ScubaSteve
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    ScubaSteve polycounter lvl 17
    You guys are welcome any lights will do. Just don't make them to strong or you will end up with a solid white or whatever color you have selected for your lights. In DS game i was taught never have any black faces either. That is where the doing it by hand stuff works. As for exporting n-space has there in house engine. I know .FBX does supports it. I believe .ASE does.
  • Harry
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    Harry polycounter lvl 13
    Mr_Drayton wrote: »
    That sky is really awesome. If I remember, you said you made clouds like they were in Shadow Of The Colossus...
    If it isn't too much, can I ask you to explain briefly this method? Many thanks!

    It's inspired by SoC method, but not quite the same. Each quad is actually 2x2 quads, and the outer verts have their normals turned to face "outward," when under standard lighting this approximates a properly lit particle. Does that make sense?
  • bbob
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    Damn, that is deliciously simple..
  • Harry
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    Harry polycounter lvl 13
    some stuff in progress
    all on 256x256
    7dde7e4821fe7d0dcd1c3912e2a3e355.png

    Scuba steve, seeing as you seem to know a bit about vert colours in max, do you know any little script snippet which can quickly convert vert colours by their VC indices to their geometric vert indices? Very hard to write an exporter for these colours for use in dicta without that, and i'm not autistic enough to do the data handling without getting distracted by modeling and texturing
  • Matroskin
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    Matroskin polycounter lvl 11
    Mercury wrote: »
    Here's mine little birdy, it's inspired by angry birds :)

    blockbird.png

    I will work on texture a little more, I wanted bird to look like a box .

    Hope you like it :poly142:

    U could have few cuts on the wings since bird`s wing acually bends when in motion unlike insect`s wing which stays straight ;)
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Finished off my robot spider, could have been alot better if i had spent a good deal of time on the UV's :P oh well.. was only a practise anyway xD

    Turn table vid:
    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0PYosNCgFE[/ame]

    Tri count:
    spiderwires.png

    Beauty shot (AO and OS on)
    spidergoodshot.png
    Working on a new low poly soon, trying to get my hand painting skills up :P crits welcome!
  • Tennis
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    Tennis polycounter lvl 16
    quick and dirty biplane model, i've been working on this weekend
    biplane.png

    biplane_animation.gif


    Harry: looks awesome, love the texture.
  • Skibur
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    Skibur polycounter lvl 5
    I love your stuff, Tennis. You have a unique and appealing style.
  • Acumen
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    Acumen polycounter lvl 18
    Woa Tennis, that plane is awesome. I love this style so much :D

    Did a ghost in a toxic waste can kind of thing today. 399 triangles and a 256² texture. Basically it will jump around on the can's lid and attack some ghostbusterstyled-people. Characters are not my thing normally but I can't start with the environment yet, so I just mumbled along to not waste the rest of the holidays with sitting around :)

    ghost1_turnaround.jpg
  • equil
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    Speaking of vertex colors, a lot of the time people just multiply them over the texture. Since you're only using the 0-1 range things tends to look pretty dull. It's not exactly hard to get a 0-2 range either, just multiply x2 in the shader. Here's a unity implementation.

    Anyway, here's a picture of something.
    Qrm1N.png
  • Ged
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    Ged interpolator
    damn tennis that is neat
  • jimmypopali
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    @gilesruscoe

    Looking good, for the pose, I would space his legs out a bit more, it looks like he will topple over backwards since his abdomen looks kinda heavy and he has little legs, put him in a battle stance or a running stance or something that looks a bit more interesting!
  • rumblesushi
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    Tennis returns. Very nice plane, love the colours.
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    @Jimmy

    Thanks ;) he actually isnt rigged yet! :( so he's just in the pose i modelled him in at the mo, and i agree it doesn look very off balance! xD I've gotta do some rigging on a contract piece later so maybe i can throw one on my spider while im still in the rigging mood ;) il do a few poses for people to decide which is a best!:D
  • Acumen
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    Acumen polycounter lvl 18
    @equil: that looks awesome as it is :) Though I'd kinda love to have a tidbit more shadow to the thing.

    Man I just found out Tennis is Kenneth Fejer - bookmarked portfolio. I knew I had seen that style before ^^

    Another "ghost". Now that this is done, the first one is not liked by me anymore :D
    Will this ever end ^^

    ghost2_turnaround.jpg
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Modelling the fat guy with the bone sword arms from "300" base mesh done, WIP texture

    220 tris
    256x256 difuse:
    300guyfrontandback.png
    Any suggestions for making those blades look a little better? all other crits are of course also welcome xD
  • Harmalarm
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    Harmalarm polycounter lvl 12
    I agree with the lot above, I really digg Tennis' model and texturing style!

    anyway, I have made some changes on my mustang model. I've decided a 256x256 texture would be better to get a nice pixel density for both car and girl.

    Polycount;

    Car: 452 triangles
    Girls: 474 triangles each

    mustangdi.jpg

    car texture
    sportscar256.jpg
    girl texture
    sportscardriverkopie.jpg

    the image below shows the difference between the 128 and the 256 texture. You can see they are quite similar, but especially the wheels and the dashboard have improved. It's still missing something I think... Any suggestions?

    difference.jpg
  • rumblesushi
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    Good job, I like it. What's the polycount?
  • BrightBit
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    BrightBit polycounter lvl 11
    Hello Polycount community,
    This once was my first post but due to ImageShack not storing images forever the images I've shown here are gone now. :( I will now start using directupload.net.
  • Harmalarm
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    Harmalarm polycounter lvl 12
    Good job, I like it. What's the polycount?

    Uh, yeah forgot to add the polycount.

    The car is 452 triangles
    The girls are 474 triangles each.
  • lonelyspark
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    I've been watchin this forum for I don't know how long anymore. And I can't find where this may have been said before, but, what kind of lighting are you guys using to light the models> I want to be a part of this kind of thing, and will be putting up some stuff when I can get around to making some models.
  • krisCrash
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    krisCrash polycounter lvl 9
    I have been working on a Samus model, it kept getting over 900 tris, so I set myself a challenge and bombed it down to 540.
    powerflat.png
  • krisCrash
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    krisCrash polycounter lvl 9
    Decided I might as well do a zero suit then :)
    516 tris, needs weapon
    the power suit got down to 524 as well
    zeroflat.png
  • green
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    Nice models KrisCash, I can't wait to see them finished.
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    You'll want to smooth out those feet quite a bit, and the bum and shoulders too. The face, however, could do with a lot less polygons. It also looks like you could optimize the hand a bunch more, it looks like it's about 75-80 triangles? At that count, you can almost have individual fingers.

    Lastly, your proportions look weird, with the head being very small and the rest being long/thin/emaciated. Especially in the middle/bottom image where the right knee looks like it's gonna snap.
  • DeathByChris
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    DeathByChris polycounter lvl 17
    @kriscash, nice silhouette can't wait for texture
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    nice job KrisCash
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