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
stands at 1584 tris using a 256X256 pixel texture
duncan: really nice!
I love the gorillaz/Jamie Hewlett feeling in your model !
I done a Reco.
I'm not sure what to do right now to make a proper in-game render of this in UDK from here, and I'm an absolute noob to the editor. The whole intention for the model was to be placed in a cartoon-ish render, so I don't know how to go about that so I can get this into a comp. board for a portfolio thing. If anyone can help, thank you!
EDIT: THE NOSE STILL LOOKS FUNKY!!!
That's basically an in game render. There really isn't a 'cartoony renderer', You just have to set up lighting/materials to give the effect you want.
You could make Doom3 look like Ponies if you wanted.
I can't give you specifics for UDK but I'm sure there are tuts at their forums. Depends what you want, cel shading, flat lighting, no shadows, etc... Those are all things that look more cartoony than what you have atm, and easy to do (at least the shadows bits).
The nose cone is probably a smoothing groups thing. But if you turn off shadows you won't see that at all. So don't bother with smoothing if you go no shadows anyway.
working on this
Cloud that's looking awesome...feel like the handle could use more color
Anyway, this is a sword I've made. My painting skills are very bad so I rely on photos with manipulation and paintover.
Texture is currently 4x4
Obviously it is not finished. It will be hard to keep it under 1k triangles but I will do what I can with it.
I feel like I could be doing something more with the concrete texture. What do you guys think?
Any critiques or thoughts?
@Wo262 TEACH ME YOUR WAYS! THAT LOOKS FREAKING SICK!
What platform did you have in mind with making this? If it's mobile, then the extra geometry doesn't make sense, and the texture is far too large to be useful, but if it's for pc or console then why the low-poly?
JadeEyePanda: why all the unneeded edges on the nose?
So, I can understand the extra geo for the wavy silhouette, but why cut out the spongy holes? The way they indent, they don't effect the silhouette at all and if you rig this for animation I could see those making deformations quite difficult.
The game is still an open beta but it is already fully playable, you can see the first screenshots here and visit the game page on the link below
Tower Defense Wars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QuNxaeeHSCQ
Right now i think the concrete just reads as a squished up ball of clay. I think the flat surfaces need to be more flat, and the edges a bit chipped.
The metal panels need some bevels painted on, and get rid of the dark grey lines.
Right now the highlights look like the start of some good bevel work, but it doesn't carry through the whole piece. (highlights, shadows, mids).
The dings on the edges look good, but then they have the dark line across them which kills them.
-
@Jade,
I still think the shadows are killing the 'cartoonyness' of the piece. And the platform doesn't really do much personally. It doesn't fit with a jet... maybe add some tiny hangers so it looks like it's a mile below, not 2 feet below it.
-
With Spongebob, I think he is probably heavier than need be in polycount in some spots. But if the plan is to have him shaded then the geo for the nose, holes, tongue makes sense. But with such a flat palette he could probably just be full lit.
The holes modeled actually makes sense for deformation. You could float holes above the sponge, but if he bends it would be harder to not have clipping.
-
@cloud,
the model looks good, needs texture. Hard to say what it would fit, of course it could always be deformed/scaled a bit to fit any character really.
Thank you for the feedback. I was concerned if I had gotten carried away with the detail on the concrete.
I'm not sure I agree with your comment about the dark outlines on the metal. I wanted to make the metal panels look like they had been bolted together rather than just one big chunk of metal. I made the outlines thick because it's going to be a player sized object and the perspective is going to be top down (Think Diablo/League of Legends) so I wanted it to be more noticeable to the player when zoomed out. Do you think that if I lightened the color it would look better?
This is a topic that is often brought up on reatime art boards. As far as I know 100 extra triangles is a lot better than introducing transparency on a texture. On all projects and engines I've worked with, overdraw from transparent materials has been one of the worst performance drains. Would be interesting to hear some more thoughs on this subject.
'overdraw from transparent materials has been one of the worst performance drains'
This is highly dependent on the amount of layers and the bit-depth. Yes if you have a dozen foliage layers on top of each other it will be very expensive. Less if you only use 1-bit alpha (transparent or opaque). Less if you only have one layer. Least if you only have one layer and use 1-bit transparency.
I imagine this to be for a topdown-ish game like this
[ame="
or like Starcraft / Command&Conquer
where you have a very short draw distance compared to first-person games in which you see the horizon. This means that you can pretty accurately guess how many polygons and layers will be on screen at all times. Generally units will not be floating over eachother so you'd have 1 or 2 layers which isn't a huge performance hit.
I agree that sometimes it's better to spend the polygons, but given that this thing is only about 500 in total, it seems more like an RTS unit of which you have tonnes on screen and then those triangles add up. Also, I imagined that a unit like this could benefit from animated/swapping textures (you would have one texture that's sharp, when it's on the ground; and one that's blurry, when flying) which is something you can't really do with the geometry.
In the end, it comes down to the individual project, engine, specs and so forth. The ever-lasting "it depends".
With this method though I don't believe I will be able to get him below 1k triangles. With holes on 2 sides and the legs he currently sits 1,457 triangles.
[ame="
You can read more about the project here, http://evolutionanimation.wordpress.com
I've made a thread about it here http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=96507 and got a few interested people but not many models yet. If anyone's willing to help, I'd appreciate it, thanks!
On iOS and other OpenGLES devices you're going to get wayyyyyy better performance if you put in a few extra triangles than if you need to do any alpha testing or alpha blending. These handheld devices use a type of deferred rendering and you don't get any saving at all from alpha test - in fact it's generally *slower* than alpha blend, because the shader needs to do the alpha blend and then call a shader discard.
The Galowmeere unbeatable hero has become! The GREAT knight Sir Daniel Fortesque !
Tris 3052!
BY THE POWER BLENDER!
Is that much more could have cleaned the Polycount ... for example, using cylinders 4, 5 or 6 faces to the extremities ... and and do the hand like a mitten ... but I liked how it turned out the modeling
Im just doing the art.
I tried doing a method that someone earlier mentioned on the nose (definitely reduced triangle count) but it just looked too funny in the light. Taking a look at the released wireframes from the AirMech game, I did their version of the plane nose and it's causing less distress with lighting both in Maya AND UDK, and since I'm not trying to run this on an iPhone necessarily, I felt like I could push it. Unless I'm wrong ><
On that note, the assets intention is to be used in a high paced, frenetic shooter either in UDK or CryEngine with a fixed view. In another sense, it's also like a psuedo art-test for a game a friend of mine wants me to be an Art Director on (something I need advice for) so this was kind of like "I wonder if I could pump out a low-polyish game asset for this game and see if I can even make a good 3D asset.". It's not ridiculously high poly and only diffuse, etc, to constrain myself to the idea such assets would need to be mass produced by student game developers, etc.
Thanks for the suggestions, I tried 64x128, it wasn't bad, as for the higher polycount, I'll try something next time :-).
MadCarrot - I would say that a 64x32 might even be enough for something like this. Two unique sides and the other 2 instanced. What's your UVW map?
carlestenorio - did you read the title of the thread? Sub ~1000 triangles. Not to mention that you're just copy-pasting your post (it's the exact same as the WAYWO thread) just to get some extra praise or something.
JonConley - I'm torn. On one hand, refusing to use a decent texture is costing you massively, and it only looks worse in the end. Even right now at 1500 triangles you're missing his cheeks and lines around his mouth (p.s. mouth color shouldn't be black) and some other subtleties. On the other hand, not having the tie textured makes it so it scales nicely. You're going to need to add even more polies to get the outline effect on the nose and pants though. And you might be better off having the shoes as a very glossy material than having modeled-in highlights.
(oh by the way, you shouldn't use a texture for this at all, but just vertex painting)
This is still a WIP:
Well the uv's are mirrored, only 1 side is unique, I tried 64x32 but the render looks blurry and just ugly, unless I go to the unity3d and then it is just pixelated as hell with some random colour changes.