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

Psibat

Tiny Ninja model I made, it's just something silly, nothing serious

Front:


Side:


I welcome advice and such, and thanks Mal for the tip

Chaosv49

Heres a WIP - My first low poly - Well its not that low poly.

http://i41.tinypic.com/5xvj89.jpg

EDIT: please try to keep under the 500 tris limit, thanks

aniceto

thanks for that vofff. really

Chaosv49

If anyone has any crits on my characters body texture please let me know.
Also, is this ok for my first low poly game model?

SHEPEIRO

chaosv49- have a closer look at some good low poly texture work, yours is basically a patterm on some geometry, try just painting the forms first, just the lighting on the muscles in a flat colour then overlay any detail later.

as your starting go as simple as you can get, you will finish quicker and learn faster, so look at some DS spec stuff , say 500 tris and a 256* texture and no rendered lighting(just texture) and see where you can go

SHEPEIRO

nkoste wrote: »

My very first character model so a couple of years old. He's an RTS unit. Ultra low specs of course. 320 tri and 128.

[img]http:///www.nilskoster.dk/images/image_bucket/troopertex.jpg[/img][img]http:///www.nilskoster.dk/images/image_bucket/trooper.gif[/img]

for example

Daaark

Mauricio Cunha wrote: »

By mcunha98

Why no shading on the red stripe? You have all the shading on the rest of the pants, then the stripe is just a flat line? The head looks narrow and tall, like he's not human.

konstruct

I was going to address voffs model, but after staring at it for a few minutes I got nuthin...

hawken

not sure what to think of voff's model - frankly it scares me.

Squiggly_P

I think it's a brilliant commentary on the decline of western civilization. The character is obviously a metaphor for your average westerner - overweight and greedy, too lazy to walk he has converted his chair into a mobility device. With tank treads. He's fixated by the video he's watching, which represents our own fixation with modern media. And the choice of image for the 'video' is meant to convey how shallow we are. The man represents our own fixation on the superficiality of mass media and our blind acceptance of everything that is shot out over the airwaves.

Surely vofff's true genius can never be fully understood.

Psibat

Hey what about my guy?

wasker

DeusExMatteo

Yo dudes, The Game Acedemy is indeed represented... in the house yo!

Mauricio Cunha

Daaark

I didn't none shadow in pants detail really.
And the head is to "tell" he is a kind of monster, not necessary a man

nkoste

haha shepeiro thanks for reminding me!
Wasker that is kickass work!

Japhir

squiggly_p: i think you are a brilliant man.

wasker: that looks great! very stylish.

Psibat

I'm still bad at modelling but this is the first thing that's ever turned out they way I wanted.

Tris: 518
Polys: 256
Please crit me

EDIT: Ok how is this?

Crits now?

okno

@DeusExMatteo: Is that a mushroom growing out of the building or a space-ship shooting a laser? I's hard to tell. If you're going to use that many polys on the ground, better make it bumpy otherwise they seem like a waste. Also, the background looks too blocky. Those texture look like they had 3 minutes spent on them in Paint; you should focus on that.

@Psibat: post your wireframe and it will be easier to crit.

Arhurt

Hey guys, first try at a low poly female. I'm sure there is a lot that can be done to improve it.

Matreiro

My go at a Rock Lee character 650 polys....i suck at texturing....

Richard Kain

Arhurt wrote: »

I'm sure there is a lot that can be done to improve it.

There's a first time for everything. In your case, you are probably going to want to convert your model into triangles sooner as opposed to later. Unless you are planning on doing a normal map later, there is no reason to keep your model as quads for very long. They are fine for fleshing out shapes. But as soon as the optimization begins, you will be deleting individual verticies and edge-turning like mad. You need it in triangles in order to see where those kinds of changes need to be made.

It looks like a promising start. Don't worry too much about the poly budget when roughing the model out. And once you do start to optimize, keep your eye on the silhouette and the joints. That's where the polygons are really going to matter. The silhouette will show you where you can safely remove polygons, and the joints will show you where you need to add more.

Mauricio Cunha

I'm still adjusting the union of sequences (around 51 frame), soon I'll finish and have a soft animation...

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4231/birdguardfrontmn2.gif

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/1808/birdguardsidesx2.gif

EDIT: please try to keep under the 500 tris limit, thanks

Richard Kain

I've been working on a little programming project for a while. But it very much involves low-poly modeling, so I thought I'd post it here as opposed to starting a new thread.

http://www.willhawthorne.com/animTrial/index.html


It's a little Flash lip-syncing program that I've integrated with PaperVision3D's graphics rendering. I wrote the data parser and all of the graphic element Classes. I used the Tweener class to do most of the timed animations, and PaperVision3D for the 3D rendering. I'm hoping to use this to create short scripted Flash 3D animated cartoons.

Arhurt

Thanks Richard Kain, I was really unsure about how to keep going, and was just trying my best to mimic other people's meshes. I got this far:

Now it's time to start axing polys right? She's going to be a fairy so don't mkind the odd shape of her head.

MachineMinded

Arhurt: Your proportions are a bit odd and her forehead seems to be quite low. Eyes are roughly at the middle in terms of height in a face.

A bit of googling gave me this:
http://figure-drawings.com/how-to-draw-proportion-18.jpg

Arhurt

Thanks MachineMinded, I have (hopefully) fixed her proportions to a more bearable state, but as she is supposed to be a pixie/fairy I want her to have slightly longer and thinner arms than usual, and her head will have a more alongated skull like a 3.5D&D halfling.

Here is my progress so far:





I wonder what's the best way to make her face? I want her to have some cool facial animations like this guy

Arhurt

Ok I think I got her body shape as best as I could, perhaps you can spot a few places where I could optmize even further?

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Portia05.jpg

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Portia06.jpg

I think that the added lip geometry will look better for close-up shots. I'm imagining her in a game where there would be constant realtime face close-ups and dialogue, hence the extra detail at her face.

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Portia07.jpg

Now I'm struggling with her hands as you can see:

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Portia08.jpg

She's going to have a semi-transparent robe over her body, long hair and a staff, I'm aiming at no more than 900 triangles.

Also, a question: Is there any easy way to turn all my polys in triangles instead of doing it by hand? I know it's a dumb thing to ask but I'm having a hard time making google understand what I want.

Arhurt

Here's some more detailing. Reached the 900 budget just in time to add some nice hair and her "staff":

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Portia09.jpg



http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Portia11.jpg

She's really small so her staff is actually a human sized wand, and she uses a gecko as a mount (I'll model him later).

I never rigged a character like this for animation before, anyone got a nice tutorial link for me? I'll let it rest for a bit before unwrapping so that you guys can help me a bit if possible.

I'm really liking the result so far, just need a kick-ass skin to make her perfect!

EDIT: please try to keep under the 500 tris limit, thanks

Walruz

You may want to start a new thread about your model, and once you have it all done post it here?

nkoste

Yes you post way too many images in this thread. Make a new thread for it. This is more of a showroom rather than a place for critique.

hawken

I agree, no more please. as your final get-up is over 500 tris it would be better served by a thread of it's own, cheers.

Psibat

This low poly enough?



Edit: Forgot the tris here...
Tri Count: 372

Richard Kain

Actually, Psi Bat, there are several areas on your robot model that would benefit from optimization and segmentation. With the way you've built those joints, you are going to have some real problems when it comes time to animate him. It would probably be a better idea to segment out his major joints. This will save you some polys, and segmented joints are usually considered to be fine on mechanical characters. (whereas on an organic character they would stand out more)

Psibat

Richard Kain wrote: »

Actually, Psi Bat, there are several areas on your robot model that would benefit from optimization and segmentation. With the way you've built those joints, you are going to have some real problems when it comes time to animate him. It would probably be a better idea to segment out his major joints. This will save you some polys, and segmented joints are usually considered to be fine on mechanical characters. (whereas on an organic character they would stand out more)

Problem is I'm a complete noob when it comes to modelling so I dont understand what you said :poly141: When I mean noob I mean I'm only just understanding model making and I've only just figured out how to uv unwrap very basic things like squares and even then they're not connected.

okno

Basically, those knees, elbows etc. will become really pinched and small when they bend, since there's only one edge loop. Since this a robot, a good way to fix this would be to split the shin from the thigh so they are separate pieces, like a real robot.
By the way, you don't need an edge down the middle of your model just for texture mirroring; if you put the centre of a face exactly at 1 in the UV space, there's a setting which lets you make the texture mirror back on itself. Here's an example.

Squiggly_P

huh. I've never seen that technique. Is that just a DS thing, or is that something that most of the engines out there support? I've never seen anyone mirror textures that way. Most of the engines I've played around with just tile the texture. Pretty neat.

hawken

Psibat wrote: »

Problem is I'm a complete noob when it comes to modelling so I dont understand what you said :poly141: When I mean noob I mean I'm only just understanding model making and I've only just figured out how to uv unwrap very basic things like squares and even then they're not connected.

rejoice!

http://wiki.polycount.net/Limb_Topology

waldo

Here's a lowpoly I did for an assignment at The Game Academy.

1969 Charger, deathproof paint job with fast and the furious supercharger.


www.thegameacademy.com

DeusExMatteo

@okno: Tanks for the feedback- I heard the thing about the mushroom from another person, so I defenitly should have thought about that before i rendered this. Maybe if the laser wasn't totaly conected to the church and the UFO? Your coment about making the ground bumpier is also a good hint, I used the segments to tile the ground texture but some bumpy ground would have made the scene more alive.

Gooze

Hi, I'm new here, I'm new to 3D and this is my first attempt at creating a model under 500 tris.

I've been doing 3D for little under a year as a part of my education, but because it focuses a gut load on rigging and technicalities, I am slowly starting to hate the trade to the bones. So I decided to spend this Saturday on doing something fun an visual in 3D, to sort of reconcile with it.





I'm looking forward to becoming a part of the community.

MoP

Gooze: that's cool. nice style
and don't knock rigging and the technicalities, you'll be needing those later!

Andreas

SyaPed wrote: »

Silly little anim

Uber bump I know, but anyone got this in an inspirations folder or summat? I'd love to see it.

renderhjs

wasnt there a animated version of it too?,- I know that I saved that one on my HD,- will search for it later- and yes great piece

edit
here is a comressed version of the animation:
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v138/Syama/?action=view&current=sh.flv
more

Gooze

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v138/Syama/?action=view&current=sh.flv

Is that the animation you're looking for?

Firu.Liviu

hello everyone

im new to forum and im also new to 3d modeling. im curently learning 3ds max, and i started with low poly stuff. this is my first atempt to model a character. im open to any comments/advices u might have and im willing to improve my modeling skills.

here we go: johnny bravo first atempt :

sama.van

Hi I'd like know how to make better my 3D model!
Do you have some idea about color or else?

more info on : http://sama.van.free.fr/community/viewtopic.php?t=8

Thanks by advance! ^_^

Master_v12

Sama.van! Where have you been? I miss your low poly work, awesome like always. Any reason why you went with 477 tris, and not the 1K limit?

renderhjs

lovely, the face is very french-stylish

some crits on the model:
- the legs are a bit to parallel from the ront
- the skirt is a bit to straight at the bottom on the front

depending on your background (many backgrounds share brown as well) a colour variation in the hair might be an idea to make her more stand out.

Neox

lovely

Rapante

gorgeous Sama. If you want to keep the red hair, I'd go with green clothings, that normally fits quite well