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
Because right now it looks pretty lame. I got around 100 extra polys I could use.Many Thanks
Basically what I did here was get the basic shape down and then add some flat planes for each of the swirls and a mirrored one for the face. Most of the texture went into the bottom corner there with the 3 blues with the exception of a quad in the middle which I kept unchanged and rather large on the UV space to get those pixel shadows.
When you are doing this kind of pixel-art style stuff you really only need to use larger pieces of the texture space for defining details. What it looks like to me, Cactus, is that you're doing a default planar unwrap, or something similar, and then calling it a day. Really you could be cramming same-coloured pieces into roughly one pixel of space and using the bulk of remaining space for happy faces and swirls!!!
at texture of 64 x 64 and pretty tight packed this definatly wastes the least but i know it still isnt right yet. also it looks really undetailed hmm
For detailing, don't go too crazy. The simple and cute pixel style goes a long way. If anything perhaps you could experiment with some sparse bunches of leaves, a bit of root suggestion, or perhaps even some kind of series of bubbly rings around the foliage like in Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past...
http://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda03/Walkthrough/164.png
here is my quick attempt to explain how i think you can improve. 8 X 4 is enough to handle the bark and 1 for the green (bands you have are very clean) you can actually shift the bark down a bit maybe only occupy 4X4 and make green 12X4 to have the band be more even. the other 16 X 12 is the face, no need for alpha imo.
laying out the UVs is to supplement the efficient textures.
try this; think less like you are texturing a model, approach it more as if you are modeling a texture
Zoid, that is absolutely right! Couldn't have said it better myself. When I did both remakes I modeled, then made a texture, and THEN laid out the UVs, with a bit of tweaking here and there in between.
Then Cactus Fantastico learned and did a nice tree. Not enough Zoid has done a 16x16 texture for the same tree. That is just amazing... :thumbup:
Cactus Fantastico, this is my advice: Keep going, you are learning fast and helping me as well. :poly121:
I made the sun yesterday to push the optimization a bit further. Knocked off a few polies while adding more sides to round out the sun, but mostly worked on the texture. There are some really nifty ways to use the model to your advantage:
-aligning pixels alongside borders (would normally give warped textures but you don't notice that on straight lines)
-putting the mouth in such a position that the jagged corners get cut off. The only place where you can see pixels now is on the tongue.
And I made the him BRITESHINY and gave him teeth, just because.
And I made these today, inspired by but not a remake of the posted trees.
And there's an animated version too.
I see you guys are using floating planes with polies, be careful with that because it might cause flickering when you use that technique in production work.
Millenia, these things might help improve your compass:
Your metal looks very nice so far btw, but I can't quite tell what the ring is made of, plastic?
there is about ~8 colors, so theoretically you can make a 4 x 2, but you would need to have a great deal of UV data to get the face. Poly data would probably hit 150 but funny to do 4X2 lol!
improved treeeeeeee
OMG you need some
here are ideas
1) seams! fix them
2) some ambient lighting
3) edge quality needs more finesse
4) more subtleties to hide edge
I CANT LOOK AT IT ANYMORE
ITS IN MY NIGHTMARES
i think im getting the hang of this
oh you are just the worst type of person
thank you
Sadly I made this mistake a while back with huge ass renders of DS spec Pikachu
For the moon and crescent model couldn't you resuse the same eye and smile for both models?
Not quite yet. These 2 could've very well used the same texture, and you could move the moon's eye with some clever texture placement. Check out what I did with the sun to achieve a higher pixel density on the mouth:
-topleft are the rays
-left are the sphere's rings
-topright is the.. forehead
You'll notice that the face is bigger then the texture. It was a bit of trial and error to get it as big as possible while not overlapping other parts, but it did get me about 20% more density. And as I've said before, using the borders of polygons to your advantage.
Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to make both models (with different mouths) with just this:
Snader: I just did the dark top to keep the same "style"
Cap Hotkill: That is a good reason... :poly121:
holy shit. i didn't even see the damn thing at first glance!
smilie cuteness is gone haha
You already realized how to fix the texture. Also I'd recommend using a couple planes to make the straps real.
Oh and your shield was missing something so I fixed it.
also done the changes.
hope you don't mind a little paintover, not to turn this into the official Critique Cactus' Work Thread:
though I guess that's sort of harder if you don't have a graphics tablet, but if you can push the depth of the textures a bit more I believe you will become a badass lowpoly artist yet. My paintover might be a bit too vibrant, what can I say, but your texture looks better suited to a current-gen asset, very flat. lowpoly stuff is better with some depth painted in.