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
no,we greeks just laugh cause they don't know what they're writing :poly136:
Here's a mock up with just some cut and paste work in MS-Paint. I'm sure you can do better with access to the original 3D files:
I can recommend having one large render and then a few smaller ones from other perspectives. And I would definitely keep all text in the same space. Be it as a single line of text at the bottom of the image, or as a more squarish block of info near the texture - keeping it in one spot makes the whole image a lot cleaner. Text also doesn't have to be bold or large.
Organizationally, I would put my main image slash beauty-render at the top or left side. Then put the alternate renders, texture and textual info to the right and below that. This is because of the (western) habit of reading left-to-right, and top-to-bottom. You want your image to tell a bit of a story: this is my awesome work, these are some other sides, and these are the technical details if you really care.
Of course, these are all just rules of thumb to live by, and can all be broken. For example, if you have concept art you're following, you might put that before the actual model, to show chronology. Or you could always have a standard name/website/email at the bottom of each image, in addition to a textblock. Or you could put text near details - such as having the main image as a character, and then smaller renders+text for weaponty. Anyway, yeah, guidelines, not laws.
Personally, I also tend to use a lighter background (such as 128,128,128 grey) which makes it possible to just stick on the texture without having to put a border around it without blending too much, and to use black wireframes, which feel less intrusive than white wireframes. Similar to how an always on pixel is more bothersome than a dead one - to me at least.
And of course traditional compositional aspects still matter. Things such as balancing visual weight, having the object 'look in to' the image instead of at a border, and having a good focal point.
In the end the image is there to tell a clear and concise story about your asset.
The font was a custom one the programmer put together, switching out Latin letters for aesthetically similar Cyrillic ones to 'flavour' the text with a Soviet feel and give an exotic, cosmonauty, CCCP-era look but still be completely legible for a native Latin-script reader.
It was really just an artistic decision aimed squarely at a Latin-script (and predominantly English) reading audience. Sadly it just highlights my ignorance of your written language - but at the same time I never imagined a non-English speaking audience would have to read it!
The problem with completely transliterating the text is that it would then have been illegible to the largest market (the US) on the app store. The programmer had actually switched out a lot more of the letters for Cyrillic ones in the font, but in testing most players struggled to read it, so a process of re-Latinisation had to be undertaken to get it easily legible again.
I'm not sure it's a completely unusual practice with typography but I can understand how it could be annoying to read... I hope you can understand the reasoning behind it at least.
Your letters just look cooler, is all!
Amsterdam Hilton Hotel - Thanks a lot! I flipping love your portfolio, by the way. Awesome stuff!
Ged - Cheers! It's all just hand-painted, the assets in the final game look a bit different as the programmer added dynamic lighting and some funky shaders over the top. Lovely job with Traffic Panic too!
JimJupiter - Thanks! Hehe, yeah Vinon is one of the many weird suggestions from the programmer's 'random alien name' generating program.
waf - Looks eerily translucent! Love it
Chillydog12345 - Haha, cheers! Took me a few goes to hit the right level of d'aww!
achillesian- Hah! I tried to come up with a list of appalling Russian/dog based puns for the achievement names and that actually was one of the only respectable entries! Don't know if any of them even ended up in game... Thanks!
Slave_zero - Cheers - glad you like!
tucho - Thanks so much. Impeccable work on that ship too - so crisp and clean... Beautifully done!
Nina: nice close borders for the most part, though I suggest you cut this red line in and delete the empty triangle:
For that free extra bit of performance.
Stabbington: I think you should keep in soviet-styled fonts, but not this particular one. Like said before, it's hard to read, but also - it's just an ugly font. Not a stylized one, but simply a regular one with added Cyrillic symbols.
Your logo on the other hand works well. It's nice and chunky without having too many
mangled symbols. I'd suggest looking for something similar but lighter weighted. Something like these maybe:
http://www.fontspace.com/total-fontgeek/akron-nbp
http://www.fontspace.com/neogrey-creative/red-october
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/teknik/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/hihretrofonts/rodchenko-constructed-ml/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/volcano/mountain/
edit: I'm suprised you saw just a pineapple. I saw shaft and tip doing the pasta.
Yeah I 100% agree with Snader, you can definitely keep a nice legible soviet themed font but the one at the moment has to go, it really sticks out and doesn't read well at all. Any of the ones Snader linked would be a large improvement. Once that's done, the game looks pretty perfect
I haven't posted anything to this thread for a year or so, and I've never been what you could consider an 'active' member of the community, but I drop by the forums almost every day to check stuff out, and this thread is the first place I look. I avoided the debate previously, and I don't want to drive the thread into another four-page argument over what constitutes 'lowpoly', but I'm worried about the future. This thread has become more of a 'mobile' asset thread, which is fine for now I guess, given that most mobile tech requires models to be properly "low" lowpoly. What happens in five years, tho, when mobile devices can push 5000+ tri characters around without breaking a sweat? At that point you don't really need a lowpoly thread. That's what the rest of the forum is for, yeah?
I mean, sure, there will always be people posting their really low res work in this thread, but the more powerful mobile devices get, the more budget variation ends up in this thread. It used to be a design challenge of a sort to see if you could get that character or prop design to fit within this miniscule budget by cheating and being as efficient as possible, forcing you to make every triangle work for you. Now there's still some really great stuff getting posted in here that are excellent examples of that, but there's more noise lately and it makes me kinda sad.
Just my thoughts on the matter, tho. I shall now resubmerge into the lurking depths.
mobile stuff is pretty nuts now, it'd be silly to keep this thread really old spec since the tech has changed.
I don't think platform should come in to it, this thread (to me at least), is about pure sub 1000 triangle models. I like to see people take up the challenge of doing lowpoly models, more than seeing people getting around the triangle limit by using normal maps.
To me lowpoly should be seen more as an art style or choice rather than a forced limitation (by platform), and normals maps ruin that for me.
Perhaps start a new thread with a larger limit while being able to use normal maps and the sort.. LOWPOLY (Sub 6000~ Triangle Models w/ Normal Maps) anyone?
Anyway, that was just my incoherent thoughts on the matter, I look forward to seeing more lowpoly models!
Original texture 512 but 256 holds up pretty good, i'll throw on some Q3 tech shaders for nice reflective chrome.
so?
@Harry
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
I started to work on the first environment, it is still really W.I.P. but here you can see a couple of ingame screenshots and a wire. I'm using just a 2048x2048 texture atlas for the whole map (and another 2k map for the ligthmap) I just used about 1/3 of the texture space, but I still have to add a lot of textures to this atlas: gardens, highways, bridges, alien objects, etc... so I'll need at least another week of work to complete it.
You can see the full thread of this project here.
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full thread of this project here.
should I go with the gradient on his legs, or just plain color?
RLPudding - Nice, reminds me of Journey! Do you have any wires? I feel it's maybe a bit of a shame not to do a bit more with the silhouette, especially on the body and legs, even if it meant a few more tris...
Free_Fall - Those are well good! The first low-poly model I ever tried to make was a sub 1k Karmann Ghia - I was hoping to dig it out and finish it off one day but I doubt I could ever get it looking as nice as that! Ace.
The world ends on december the 21st. Go nuts!
Nope it's a 69' Volkswagen Kafer 1300
And thanks for all those reply's guys! Never thought I would get so many
We're makind different tests with the point of view, the isometric point of view is the best looking one but gameplay is a bit harder than the typical top down point of view... we're currently discussing about If we must bet for a bit more risky and original game or just make the typical one and bet on a sure thing.
You're right about the ship is a bit lost on this environment, I'll have to tweak the colors of the environment or the ship once I added all the elements.
Just an update of the environment, I added a lot of small elements to the scene, I'll keep adding elements the next days.
full thread of this project here.
I'm quite busy too with a pixelart style metropolis scenery, but I'm struggling with textures and modular placement of things...
[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=3poccokj4HE[/ame]
Just an update of the city, I added some more props and decals
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full thread of this project here.
and for anyone who has watched bleach,
everything is under 1500 tris with one 512x512 texture.
I'm still a rookie though.
As far as I know, any game engine will count a quad as two tris, so basically, nothing changes.
Personally I prefer to split everything in tris, so my 3D tool will tell me the exact number of polygons in the model.
Normally I just use edges across a quad when I really care in which direction will be this edge, because it could affect to the shape or the smoothing (I can count tris in 3ds max even using quads for modelling, my polygon budget is always in tris, of course).
In the case of the buildings I used edges in the models that their facades are more complex than a simple quad, you can see it clearly on the picture below.
Very good job man.
148 Tris and 64x128
https://twitter.com/Pixelgent/status/277062408676208640
Retweeted to my meagre amount of followers, lots of people who like lowpoly 3D though!
Love it by the way, love it! Ace palette