LOW-POLY ART
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:
Here's a handy list of ways to make your art look right in mainstream 3D software: Low-Poly Art Style Guide
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.
Here's a handy list of ways to make your art look right in mainstream 3D software: Low-Poly Art Style Guide
Replies
Looks nice man, specially for 2 hours.
The texturing videos are always an interesting watch.
Some C&C if you want it,
The extra loop on his arms isn't helping the silhouette and won't be much help to deformation either. Neither will the leg ones.
The shield could be cut down to 16 tris (saving you 14 tris) whilst keeping the outside shape. Did a little image below to show some tests. Personally I think 20 is the best as it allows for symmetrical unwrapping.
Hope it helps man.
Edit: Updated it.
sorry for the spam...
Hey man, thanks.
That 20 tri's variation is new to me, i'll have to check it out, does it have a reasonably good sideways silhouette also?
Only really spent around 30mins on the model itself including the unwrap, so i really just slapped this thing together
Another personal crit which im not sure sticks out to other people or not is the flatness of the muscles, especially on his back. I'd like to have fixed that if i gave myself more time
why use 3d coat, isn't blender enough with it's texture painting mode?
Strictly speaking, this is a bit better. I understand it's something about thin strips taking more rendering time for the pixels they cover, and they of course also affect your shading. So it's better to have more relaxed triangles taking up most the space.
Loving the robots though
Ah! Also, I should add, I found this very lovely face in another thread, from Quake 3 I believe?
I think it's very elegantly done.
so I tried to use that topology myself. I also slapped a texture on for fun earlier but people thought it was serious so I don't even want to risk that again. I am kind of torn between low poly styles myself when figuring out what I want to make - the cartoony flat faces vs focusing on facial planes :B
Quake definately provides lots of inspiration, even if the target devices are 100 times smaller these days.
I too am torn between flat and modelled faces for lowpoly stuff, while its fun to have complete freedom to change faces in your texture with a flat face, the added depth and silhouette from facial planes is also great fun to play around with... I guess it just depends on the style of game your working on, which is why its hard to decide which to use when your making characters with no predefined style.
I can also emphasis what you mean about people taking stuff too seriously, sometimes its fun just to chuck a load of random colours and shapes onto something and see what comes out, and then some guy on polycount will say that its anatomically incorrect.. Thats fine if its something u've spent ages on which actually could be improved apon, but alot of stuff is just done for fun/experiments which people need to start to understand more.
I wouldn't be too worried about people thinking less of you due to posting something experimental, or getting the wrong end of the stick.
Essay over, faces like this look fun to do, maybe i'll try one sometime... give it some texture lovin'.
Here's the rendering cost data, ok, it's extreme, but bear with me and see the Max Area has a good FPS for increased poly counts: http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=News&ID=228
There are a great many threads about this by now :B It makes sense in a drawing logic sort of idea too, blocking the major shapes out... and sometimes it makes you realize you can optimize some of those thin triangles away.
Fan method: a poly with tons of edges meeting = bad shading.
Strip: with a smoother cylinder, the polygons get very long and thin, I understand this is generally bad business for the rendering.
Max area: the thin triangles aren't long, and they are fewer in number. Most area covered by nice relaxed triangles.
http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf2.html
But I guess it's a bit dated.
But those feedbacks about anatomy and little things about polys arangement are the reason why I love polycount!
I think in this case you are taking stuff too serious...:\
I hope everyone still very tough with my work and tell me where I am wrong and what could be improved. Sometimes I get that information and use in my next project...:poly121:
But I agree that sometimes people get worried in post something here because that. :poly142:
I tested, honestly none of them shade that prettily :P but the long thin strips definitely appear to create more artefacts for me.
Getting pretty techy with those triangle strips... was certainly an educating read though and the graphs were interesting. Next time i use a 49,000 sided circle it'll come in handy
Worth a read about cylindrical topology (It gets trolled at the end but you can see the general flow of other users). Imo it all depends on what you are doing with the circle/cylinder. If there is going to be 1 Smoothing group then use Giles way. If there is 2 smoothing groups it doesn't really matter. It also depends on the shading/unwrapping/texturing that will be applied, not all models are shaded Kris. A lot of people model for self illumination.
@Kris
It's looking good. For some reason it reminds me of Alyx from Half Life 2. You need to apply a smoothing group to it.
@Giles
Did a little knock up for you. I used your shield part of the texture. (Screen grabbed from Youtube) I hope you don't mind, I thought it was the best way to show it. You have been credited of course. If you wanted to extrude out a middle vert I think it only adds 2 triangles.
Yer 30 mins is pretty awesome for him. As for the personal crit I dunno I guess it depends on the environment and the pixel resolution he will be at. If he has 3 edges on the side you could pull em in or remove a side out of his legs and put it in his back/chest.
I have been looking into some MMOs at how they do their legs and it seems either 4 sided diamonds or a 5 sided pentagon are used. Gonna start doing that I think. And try some 3d painting (videos have given me some motivation).
Good stuff!
No I didn't slow it down. Actually, I tried to speed it up, but I used Good Ol' Gif Construction Kit to make it. I'm a bit out-of-date with technology ^_^ How do people make animated gifs nowadays anyway?
Thanks. You should see how angry she looks in the cartoons.
You know what, your right! I'm ashamed to admit it, but I really never noticed... I'll see what I can do about those armpits.
What's T pose... {googles T pose} Oh so that's T pose!... Sadly no... (I'm a bit out-of-date with technology)
I'm furious that your spending your own time to help me!! I kid i kid, thanks alot. I did wonder how you got the texture when i first saw the picture!
@VKP, for gif turntables i make a 75 frame spin animation, then export a 74 frame .MOV file. Then i open up photoshop (CS5, not sure if CS4 can do this) and go to File>Import>Video frames to layers. This then makes a frame animation (go to windows>animation to see this animation panel in PS) you can control the timing of each frame, i set it to 0 secs to play at the same speed as the .MOV, then finally Files>Save for Web/Devices and save as a gif
How Dat?
-WOW! Those Scream 4 characters look almost too real to be low poly! (O_O)
modern gpus (even mobile) can crunch so much geo that most of this doesn't matter to us... for mobile work just pick whatever shades the best!
You can see more pictures and wires on my website
I hope you like it, as always crits and comments are welcome
If you have no idea what to use, fanning is usually the best/safe option.
If it needs to be shaded, use some variation of fanning.
If it lends itself well to repeating textures, for instance car rims, use fanning.
If it's a dome shape, use fanning.
If it needs to be flexible or someone else has to use it, use fanning because this is far easier to modify afterwards.
In most circumstances this'll be rare, but for mobile devices it might occur enough to make a mental note: if you're bound by hard polygon/vertice budgets (for instance on the DS) AND it will be flatshaded/fullbright textures and needs no or little texture repeating, use a strip.
If it's a cylinder with an odd shaped end like this, use stripping, ofcourse.
The humus article pertains to high polygon counts. Therefore it doesn't ever (or hardly ever) apply to videogames.
The first bar on the graph is 181 pixels for Max area, 180 and 176 for stripping. That's a negligible difference of about half a percent between fanning and max area, and a still-not-shocking 2~3 percent for stripping. That first bar is about a 48 sided circle - which is alot, as you can see in this image. Games don't use many 48-or-more sided circles, especially mobile games.
If you have no idea what to use, fanning is usually the best/safe option.
Here you can see a video of models ingame
[ame]
Another random quickie from me, i've been oddly productive these last few days;
*waits for somebody to say it remotely looks like a cock*
gilesruscoe: nice sperm monster btw
its 530 tris (equip incl) - and a 512x tex but still looks effective with a 256x -
depends on how display it, but for the moment I'll keep it the higher res...
Gorman - it's because your just weird :P kidding - not actually sure, I think my decision at the time was - since I'm mirroring the legs and not the torso - I'd give the legs a bit more real estate...
When i look at the wireframe (in pshop) it's actually not too much out of ratio..eh
scenery for a track
680 tris
128 by 128 texture
[ame]
*fixed it.
how many years have you been working this now?
in the immortal words of Mortal Combat
Tucho - the models are rock solid, too bad the gameplay doesn't seem quite as good.
Achmed - the feet look a bit squished/ducky/flat and could do with a bit of extra height.
His shoes?! I'm mean COME-ON! The model looks AMAZING! What next? His ID cards too flat? ^_^
specs:
618 tris
128 by 128 pixels
294 triangles, 256 x 256 image texture...
Nice stuff laperen, could we see some wires?
a short version away from the current one, was just cleaning some polys that couldnt be seen anyway
nextup, kazu, from air gear as well
Made a worm thing ,