LOW-POLY ART

hawken

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

Joopson

hey, hjs.
just wondering why the area around the girls eyes is so much brighter.... i personally think it would look better without that.
-Andy

DeathByChris

the detail on mario's overalls is great.

leilei

The girl at the left has a disturbingly long face

Joopson

leilei wrote: »

The girl at the left has a disturbingly long face

sorry, I'm pretty sure that is John Kerry

renderhjs

will pimp her face next time

edit:
uploaded today another online demo with some test animations:
http://www.renderhjs.net/bbs/flashkit/color_dune/demo_13/

rollin

cool stuff renderhjs

d1ver

just trying to squeeze something digestable out of myself...
Any comments and crits are more than welcome=)

btw, this kid has been pulled into the world of his dreams AND nightmares, so I suppoese he is going to have to face them,or just keep sitting under his bed.

hawken

madPXL wrote: »

It's been a long time that I wanted to make Mario in low poly. (it spend a long time to did it too...)






tris : 494
texture : 128*128


Enjoy

this is better than the real deal, get him rigged!

DLoud

Here's my first attempt at a low poly char. Crits are welcome

Xaltar

Forgive me if I sound harsh but this is certainly NOT low poly. For the amount of detail you have in the model you shouldn't have much over a 200 tri poly count and that is being rather generous. The idea behind low poly work like this is to teach you to get the most bang per poly you can. In other words you want every tri on your model to be defining something. I think part of your problem is that you are not painting your lighting into your texture and are instead letting your modeling app's viewport lighting take care of it. What you want to do is set the material to 100% self illumination and then paint your shadows and highlights onto the texture itself. Adding polys to make the model look clean in the viewport with viewport lighting is a common mistake with people new to low poly work. These models are built to be put into game engines that do not support the same lighting standards current gen engines do, instead they rely on the lighting information painted into the texture and are rendered "fully lit". This hides the ugly black shading you get in low poly models when looking at them in your viewport. Try out self illumination and you will see what I mean

Work on getting this guy down to about 200 or so tris and paint in your shadows. Don't be shy with colors either, use different shades and even some completely different colors on your diffuse texture to make your shadows and highlights pop. Generaly for a tubular type character like this you don't need more than 4 - 6 sides, here I can see you used at least 8. Bare in mind that when these little guys are rendered out they are rendered at low resolution so you really won't be able to see that your nose is only 4 sided for example. Keep at it, low poly work has a lot it can teach you that is usefull in almost every aspect of 3d.

DLoud

I appreciate the input on the low poly stuff. Like I said, my first attempt. I can see what you mean about full brightness. I previewed the model with full brightness on to take a look and it was very bright. However, the concept i took it from was very simple and close to what it looked like. I think I'll try something with a little more texture work involved.

oidipusss

renderhjs wrote: »

worked on 3 new characters:
<
one of beeing a rebuild of the first little girl approach- this time with a cleaner UV and some fixed areas.
The biggest guy is a guard and the texture was not done by me. Textures are still in progress

Yes! this breathes atmosphere! The 4 caracters share the same feel. Love the detail in the semi "minimal" textures. Already done some envirionments? curious about the atmosphere in the scenes. The "white" parts of the animal-like creature are suposed to be grey right, to cut down the contrast a bit?! keep us updated.

cheerz

-oidipusss

ThatDon

really dig that Mario!

Pencilninja

The Napalm Enthusiast!

Has an Alpha map to break up the even-ness of the brown cloak around his neck and make it look a little tattered, but couldn't get it to show up in texture view in modo.



got it to 500 on the dot.

El Z0rR

I was bored so ... tomato-rabbit-paintbrush-man!

I don't think I'll finish him ;p

akram

I only have one thing to say, AWESOME STUFF ^^.

Here i show a model in unwrapping phase. Im thinking to downgrade the tris to 500 aprox like yours.

Toomas

madPXL wrote: »

It's been a long time that I wanted to make Mario in low poly. (it spend a long time to did it too...)






tris : 494
texture : 128*128


Enjoy

Lovely work!
One thing that buggers me about it is the box shaped arms and specially gloves,
the 4 sides are fine just should be rotated 45degrees so they appear less boxy.
As allready mentioned the texture rocks, specially the overalls.

madPXL

@Toomas : I know for boxed arms and gloves, but as you see, the number of tris are just under 500

@hawken : it will be rigged

@all : thanks for C&C !

renderhjs

madPXL: I thought it was for the style of your characters,- if you want them more rounded taking odd numbers instead of even on the arms could make them more rounded.

cdizzle

Renderhjs, would you mind explaining what you mean by taking odd numbers instead of evens? I'm starting out with my first low poly model, and he's quite blocky looking. Thanks.

Pedro Amorim

he means the number os sides for the cilinders which make up the arm.

Tumerboy

usually, even numbers of sides on a cylinder, 4, 6, 8, are very obvious, while 5, 7 and 9 seem more "round" because your eye can't visualize the symetry as well.

Slaught

@renderhjs
Not necessarily.
I find that if you rotate it so that the edges are defining the silhouette you can make it look a lot more detailed than it really is.

When working with these budgets it´s important to use every triangle to define shape, you can improve the shape by adding two or three triangles to make the silhouette pop a bit more.
When textured, the first thing you will notice is the silhouette and the texture...you probably can´t tell if a arm or leg is four-, five- or sixsided since the shading is usually painted into the texture.

Xaltar

The number of sides isn't the issue, as Slaught pointed out, its how you use the polys to folow the sillouette. Putting a twist in a 4 sided arm for example can make a huge difference to the "roundness" of the limb. Often when working with low poly models things only really start comming together at the texturing stage. Good orthos are essential for making your model as detailed as your budget allows. A simple sillouette orhto like the one slaught used to demonstrate is perfect for this. I also find that when working on this spec model its often best to make the uvs suit the texture, ie paint a good face then make the tiny adjustments you can't on the texture in the uvs to make it fit better. When painting textures at this res you have far more adjustment room in your UVs than you do on the texture itself. Where moving a detail a single pixil in any direction may still be to much the UV map gives you the room you need to get it right.

And always have your texture set to fully lit for this type of diffuse only work, working with lighting really is pointless and will only serve to confuse you. Low poly work is certainly not easier than highpoly work. Quicker if you know what you are doing but definately not easier. I have learned a lot more about texturing and poly usage from low spec work than any other form of modeling and its sad to think that most 3d schools today don't even cover it anymore.

[edited]

Slaught

its sad to think that most 3d schools today don't even cover it anymore.

Really?
Thats a shame...especially considering that PSP and DS are pretty well selling, aren´t they?

@madPXL
Totally forgot to say that I love the model.
I want a Super Mario Land I and II remake for the ds!

@renderhjs
I really like the texturing style on these...very nice.

Japhir

Xaltar: i agree with you on the modeling part, but i disagree on first painting the diffuse. I find that if you keep the pixel density (almost) even everywhere on your model it will look much better than a ten times more detailed head with a very pixellated pants.
If you lay out your uv's with straighten tools etc. they can be very efficiently planned and quick to do.
Oh and i don't think it's necessary to use orthographical images all the time, i think it's more important to know how a good silhouette looks, and obviously you need your anatomical skills.

Xaltar

Sorry Japhir, I wasn't clear. I didn't mean paint the texture before unwrapping, only that you can tweak the UVs slightly for the finer tweaks that a low res texture will not allow. Looking at my post again I really messed it up... Even density is very important and I assumed that I need not mention it, I was wrong. Its sometimes hard to convey an idea in text.

I unwrap and streighten first then paint my texture but I often find I need a little more flexibility than say a 128 can provide when lining things up. Such tiny tweaks do not hurt the pixil density and can make all the difference on your final model. To each their own though I guess.

Japhir

ah ok, i thought it was a weird technique . tweaking afterwards can't hurt i guess.

cdizzle

Thanks for the helpful replies, guys. Definitely learning something every time I check these boards.

A_GAME

okno wrote: »

A_Game, nice coffee maker. The coffee stains stop too abruptly on the front-bottom part though, perhaps continue the stain over the edge slightly. Also the stains should probably have more defined edges like this.

Thanks for the advice, okno! Heres an update. I think ill put this on the shelf for a while.

cdizzle

Quick question. I'm working on my first low poly model, and was hoping for a count of around 500. I just now noticed, however, that my model is about 500 polys but around 1000 tris. Everyone here is counting tris, right? So that means that I am about twice the count of my goal? If that is the case, that sucks, because I'm not sure how I could lower it by that much. Thanks.

flatHead

cdizzle: Mind showing the object in question? Perhaps we can spot some areas that could lose a few polies.

cdizzle

I know that for these low poly models you're supposed to not use any lights and turn up the incandescence (or self-illumination in max) to 100% because you're suppose to paint the lighting into the texture, but now I'm not really sure how to get a viewport render that will show my model - as a regular render shows my model as pure white. Am I just supposed to hit the 'print screen' button and take a screenshot of the whole window, or does maya have a way to capture the viewport?

Also, my main question is about the difference between poly count and tri count. I know that game engines convert everything to triangles, but as I've been looking at people's work in this thread they appear to have models with similar density as mine but their posts say ~500 tris, where my model is ~500 polys but ~1000 tris. My model is almost all quads, and I'm just confused that the tris count is so high compared to other peoples' work here that looks similar in complexity.

Sorry for the long reply. I'm definitely learning a lot from everybody's awesome work here. Thanks for the help.

dale22x

Hey guys, after looking through this threat i felt the urge to try a low poly model. =D

i decided to do a big daddy. i wasn't able to stick to the 500 triangle limit.....=p maybe i'll pick something without so many different parts. it's using a 256x256 diffuse and opacity map.

theres some really fantastic looking work in here..i'mm really enjoying this low poly stuff, but is there a lot of work for it? or are we all just doing it for the fun of it?

edit: btw this is only at 75% self illumination

Wendy de Boer

cdizzle wrote: »

I know that for these low poly models you're supposed to not use any lights and turn up the incandescence (or self-illumination in max) to 100% because you're suppose to paint the lighting into the texture, but now I'm not really sure how to get a viewport render that will show my model - as a regular render shows my model as pure white. Am I just supposed to hit the 'print screen' button and take a screenshot of the whole window, or does maya have a way to capture the viewport?

Also, my main question is about the difference between poly count and tri count. I know that game engines convert everything to triangles, but as I've been looking at people's work in this thread they appear to have models with similar density as mine but their posts say ~500 tris, where my model is ~500 polys but ~1000 tris. My model is almost all quads, and I'm just confused that the tris count is so high compared to other peoples' work here that looks similar in complexity.

Sorry for the long reply. I'm definitely learning a lot from everybody's awesome work here. Thanks for the help.

We won't be able to say anything sensible about it if you don't show us the model. :poly002:

That said, a lot of people here really know how to use their tris in the most optimal ways, and are able to make their model look far more detailed than it really is.

Slaught

A polygon usually has 2 or more faces while a triangle only has one.
A quad has two faces, because it´s split up into two triangles.

So naturally a 500 polygon model has 1000 tris when it´s all quads. :]

@dale22x
Looking cool man!

rooster

..strictly speaking a triangle is a polygon
edit: i know what you're getting at, but just so people don't assume polygons are quads

cdizzle

Demon Princess, I understand that looking at my model would help with suggestions - hence my question about the best way to get a viewport screenshot so that I can post one.

Ok, so from what I'm hearing so far is that I am - in fact - way over the limit for what this thread considers low poly? Thanks for the replies.

MachineMinded

All of this high quality art work has made me feel quite humble. :poly101:

But it also made me do this(still a WIP):poly130::



It's a guard robot of sorts, not based on any concepts just done out of my head and as you probably can very well see I'm new to this whole game modeling business. :poly142: Now back to drooling at other peoples low poly work...

dale22x

i just got a really fun idea that will probably never happen..

we have a whole bunch of characters from games... wouldn't' it be sweet to get them all into some sort of brawler some other other type of fun little game

cholden

something fun for the evening. Metroid meets Wind Waker.

cdizzle

Cholden, would you mind letting me know how you were able to get a picture of just your model and your wireframe like you did? I'm confused about how to do this because of the self-illumination thing. I'm using maya, but any info you could give me would be appreciated. Thanks.

Wendy de Boer

cdizzle wrote: »

Demon Princess, I understand that looking at my model would help with suggestions - hence my question about the best way to get a viewport screenshot so that I can post one.

Ok, so from what I'm hearing so far is that I am - in fact - way over the limit for what this thread considers low poly? Thanks for the replies.

Pressing print screen would work fine for that, LOL. :poly003:

cholden

I'm using max. It's view port print screen, material at 100% self-illum, texture filtering turned off. The wire frame is just viewing the model in wire frame in the view port. It's no special trick. Saved as a .PNG with no background so it's transparent in the forum.

dale22x

what is texture filtering?

cholden

Texture filtering what blurs your textures or not. Bilinear filtering for example

To turn off in max: Customize > Preferences > Viewport (tab) > Configure Driver... > set to Nearest and None at the bottom

Jon Jones

Chris, hah, that's awesome. Nailed the proportions well, imo, and I dig the cute little pose. You should make a boss and a scene for this!

etherwing

cdizzle wrote: »

Cholden, would you mind letting me know how you were able to get a picture of just your model and your wireframe like you did? I'm confused about how to do this because of the self-illumination thing. I'm using maya, but any info you could give me would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hey, if you're working on Maya, you don't want to turn up incandescence. You want to turn up ambient color instead. That'll give your materials self-illumination.

tacit math

alternatively : ' use no lights '

etherwing

A quicky here. A tad over the limit, sadly. I'm not too happy with the tex job. Any suggestions?