architecture modeling for games ?

123D

Hello

I have a question for people working in the games industry. I'm thinking of building architectural models for resale, to be used in game levels.
I use 3DS Max for modeling but have no experience of modeling for games. Can anyone give me their idea of how to go about buildng architectural models to be used in multiple game engines ?
I intend to build low polygon objects - however there are some issues that I'm not sure about:

- use of opacity maps for transparency/opacity ?
- creating reflections / use of specular maps for reflections ?
- lighting for night scenes ?
- level of detail

Any tips would be welcome

Eric Chadwick

Some of these have been covered lately around here. Do some poking around.

Emil Mujanovic

I'm an environment artist at the games studio I work at. I'm still new there but I can share with you some of the tips and tricks I've learned.
Firstly, everything is going to come down to the engine and platform these models will be used for. PC specs are going to be higher than PS2 and PSP/NDS specs are going to be heaps lower.
Most (if not all) current-gen game engines should support alpha and spec maps. As for reflections, that's a different story. Most of the time it can be done using a reflection map rather than actually reflecting surrounding geometry. But this would vary from engine to engine.
Lighting... Vertex lighting is the way to go! Allows you to use tileable textures without having to paint in the shadows on the diffuse map. The same model can be re-lit to suit a day/night/afternoon/morning scene. Though to get more accurate lighting you need a higher vertex count. But it's still possible to get a great lighting solution with a relatively low model.
Level of detail, well... This would have to depend on your game engine/platform and also on the model. If its a backdrop/scenery model, try and keep them as low as possible. Feature models can be given slightly higher poly counts, but also within reason.
Hope any of this has helped (and not confused). If you need more clarification on stuff, feel free to ask and I can try to go more in depth.

-caseyjones

Rick Stirling

For reflections in the ground (for a shiny tiled floor for example), an old trick that still works is to duplicate the room (or its LOD), turn it upside down and put it under the floor. Then you set the floor texture to be SLIGHTLY transparent.

It looks like the floor reflects the entire room.