Big chunky bastard (now with more lowpoly fun)
polycounter lvl 17
I'm in a bit of a dilemma at the moment, and figured this tends to be the best place to ask questions. This is probably my only "good start" in a while, with the last 2 weeks of doodles being rather disastrous. I'm getting kind of happy with the overall silhouette and proportions, and the polyflow seems decent enough for now.
Currently, it's looking to hit around 1k tris after dropping in the feet, so the dilemma is, doesn't that tricount fall somewhere in no-man's land? Current-gen tends towards the 2k and up number, right? while ds/psp/mobile tends towards a much lower number (500ish and below?). I guess at this point, I'm trying to figure out if I should continue with this level of detail, or to start cutting in more edges for better definition (face, maybe proper hands/more detail on the gloves), or alternately, to start cutting out edges for a more handheld set of specs (maybe even both).
And of course, general crits for the model so far.
In case you're wondering, the hands are going to be boxing gloves (currently intersecting, hence the extraneous edges), and the head was originally meant to be the neck, but after pushing the proportions to their current state, I felt like that extrusion would work better as a head. Proportions are heavily stylized at the moment, but let me know if they work, need tweaking, etc etc.
Fire away!
Replies
Current "Next-gen" platform consoles can easily support 5-10k triangle animated characters - But the budget is dependant on what the character is used for, where the character is at in the game, and how close the player is going to get to it, how many copies of the character are there...etc...etc.
I wouldn't even worry about a lot of that stuff before you get real serious about the "goods" first. Character artists are few and far between - and until you can master texturing, unwrapping, normal mapping, etc, people aren't going to be nearly as turned off by whether or not you have 5k triangles or 10.
That will take a backseat to a pisspoor model. Focus on making a good creature or character that works, give yourself a 10kish budget and just make something that LOOKS good.
Attention to edges and tris is important - but you gotta crawl before you can walk.
I guess my initial concern was wondering if not venturing far past this current tri count of about 1k would leave the model in the no-man's land of a little too low for "next(current?)gen", and way too high for "pastgen" (handheld).
I'll go ahead and take your advice of leaving myself a healthy budget for this, and just allow myself to go to town. I may do a handheld version as well, since lowpoly is a fun challenge in and of itself.
polyputty, normally I try to work towards a target polycount, but this has been pretty much doodling up til this point, working towards something pleasing. I'll figure something to shoot for soon.
jackablade, thanks, I hadn't realised the psp could comfortably push that many tris.
At this point I'm still more or less riffing. Didn't spend a whole lot of time at home today, so I decided to work downwards, ending up with a (currently) 175-tri model that reads decently even at tiny sizes. I might add accessories, etc, and hit an even 200, before unwrapping and texturing.
(the right wire is back and front, just in case)
keep it up!
As for the poly reduction, I had long ago decided I wanted to do a DS-spec model, and this just happened to have recognisable-enough proportions to possibly pull it off. That and the fact that I really only had about an hour or two at home today before heading out.
Don't worry, I've still got the 1k-tri version lying around waiting for me to upres.
oh, tit. Did another count after adding some bits and bobs, and realised I had forgotten that silo doesn't count your instance mirror's polies. Previous pic should've been about 350 tris, and currently about 380. Doh.
Gonna give the texture a shot at 128x64.
btw, any tips on unwrapping for handheld-spec stuff (ie, tiny texture sizes)? I know some of the basics, like trying to keep edges as straight as possible, as few diagonals as possible, packing the uv islands together (instead of keeping them apart to take filtering account). What about the actual unwrapping to make sure borders sit inbetween (and not "on") the pixels? Do you simple do the unwrap, and then adjust after putting solid colors on (that's what I ended up doing)?
and the flats so far (blown up x4):
Main question for now is, for stuff this small, how much is typically left to vertex color/light, and how much to texture?
i like the head texture so far!
keep it up!
The previous pics didn't have vertex color; these are the ones with vert color (and rendered out at a size somewhere around what it might be on a DS screen, assuming a tight camera zoom).
And pimpage with flats:
Made some minor changes to the boxer (changed the heart tat since I was getting comments that it wasn't reading well at the small size, and that it looked like a weird nipple), and minor tweaks to the texture.
Hmm. I'll get screengrabs when windows stops being pissy about the clipboard. o_O
Also started another lowpoly model, this time attempting to stick to 4-bit color. Still very wip, and I'll be toning down the harsh black lines.
Don't mind the square wheels, Silo doesn't do alpha transparency (that I'm aware of, anyway). 160 tris at the mo, 128x64 texture. I'm considering alphaing out the glassy bits and adding a simple interior since I have both tris and a bit of texture space to spare (that would likely kill any realistic hope of 4-bit color though).
Also worked a little more on the Fiat. I think I maybe got a little carried away
edit: Better shot with alpha:
Love the boxer...the new tattoo looks good.
cool work
edit: I lied. I added another 4 tris for the exhaust pipe, bringing the total to 192 tris
Here's another shot with monochrome vert lighting:
Something a little more poly heavy this time, less stylised, somewhat of a self-portrait, psp-ish spec. 1010 tris including the accessories, 256x256 for the main texture, 128x128 for the bag, 128x64 for the hair, and 64x16 for the shades (the texture sizes may change as I get to work on each of them).
psp-ish sized render, 100% self-illum, just getting started on the main texture:
edit: forgot this
Ortho wires
Slooooowly getting there:
I can't for the life of me figure out what I wanna put on the tshirt. Did a bunch of tweaking of the mesh (arms, lots for the head/face), and did a bunch more painting. Almost done, I think. Any crits up til this point? I've gotten to the point where I'm likely to miss obvious mistakes or things to fix.
Oh, don't mind the Matrix neck-nipple. I added that as a joke and forgot to remove it for the render. :X
i like the sandals :P makes him very very nerdy
i like him, but the hands really bother me being so flat like that
Eric: Thanks! Yeah, I guess the hands were a bit of a gamble, but the way I figure, it shouldn't be too obvious on a PSP in the majority of situations.
I've gone and tweaked the hell out of the head geom, uvs, and texture, played with the shirt texture a bit, did some vert painting, and boned up the model. I need to move on to some other stuff, so I think I'm calling this one done.
Flats for interested parties:
Main texture
Bag
Glasses: Flat and Alpha
Hair: Flat and Alpha
Been making notes for some ds stuff I've got planned, so nothing tangible from me right now, but my buddy's been using the big chunky bastard for animation practise, so I figured I'd throw some links up.
Pissing about
Sparring
Khet Yee Sang animation demoreel
Got bored and did another pose for the self portrait. Sometime (probably this weekend) I'll try and knock together some environments for the three models to date, so they don't simply exist in limbo.
Started pissing about with getting some base models done for that aforementioned personal DS project. Planning on all having swappable parts, hence the segmentation. The ridiculous polycount stems from wanting to be able to throw 8 characters onscreen at a time if necessary, including weapon (small silhouettes to the right are roughly the same pixel size I want them to be on the DS, ie 1/5 screen height).
The big-headed dude might possibly be a close relative of a...... sectoid?
Doing the unwrap now; I'm thinking each character will have the equivalent of a 64^2 allocated (32^2 each for head and torso, 16x32 for each arm, 32x32 for legs, non-mirrored). 4-bit, naturally.
Wires
Wires, if anyone's interested
The original tri-ceiling has been upped a bit, since I realised I had completely forgotten about backface culling when I originally laid out my anticipated specs. Note that most of the additional tris went to optional stuff like pouches, etc. Added a pistol, changed the sniper rifle (far left) to a conventional rifle grip instead of the pistol grip in the previous shot. Added "armored" versions of both male and female. General tweakage all around.
Started on some environmental building blocks, but I'm not nearly far enough along to show anything on that front
Still wip. I've unwrapped all human models from the previous shot, and the UVs are setup so that they can all share the same textures if need be (the above male and female models are using the same texture). As stated before, the textures come to a total of 64x64 pixels:
(Magenta border separating the various flats). I've still got a few slots remaining in my 4-bit pallete, so I'll be refining further. There's currently no asymmetry, but that's primarily because the source I'm drawing from had no asymmetry.
Got slightly sidetracked, lol (wip):
(yeah, based off the older shots where he was still in the mostly-blue outfit)
It's funny, when I first started texturing him, I was thinking about how small a 128 is. Now after working on a bunch of 32s, 128 seems positively humungous.
ps. Anyone interested in an sdk?
Kiss the ring, bitch.
Started putting together a test environment, just to get a better idea of the sort of per-frame polycount I can expect to be dealing with. The terrain is a hopeful at the moment, and whether the final product will be triangulated depends on whether the DS hardware will consider a non-planar quad as a quad, or a pair of tris (if the former, it'll help just that little bit with the DS' 2048 poly limit).
Did up a 2-storey (plus rooftop deck) house that's currently not very practical. I'll be adding rooms and whatnot soon enough. Currently the [vastly incomplete] scene stands at about 1250 tris (though mostly in quads, which will give me more leeway with the DS poly limit), and with occlusion and backface culling, between 500-700 tris (mind you, only a portion of the scene will be visible in gameplay, or so the plan goes).
A silly anigif showing the floors:
The cheeks are reading a little too dark to me, but maybe you need to exaggerate them so they read small.
slight wrinkles around armpits?
Logo on chest?
I _adore_ that car, whats the wire look like for it?
edit: oops, forgot wires for the fiat
Haven't touched the building model, but started work on some tiles. These are still going to be worked on, and I expect to do 2-4 variants per tile, depending on expected repetition. The parquet needs to be reworked, since the imperfections I've added currently serve to make it look raised and rounded.
Larger shot (double resolution)
Also, added folds to the Billionaire Tycoon Bastard and called him done
This is as of just before my mandatory week of fun in the Army Reserves.
Had a bit of time after that to have a serious think about the DS hardware specs again, and decided that, happy as I was with the stupidly low polycount of the character models, they were still too heavy, realistically speaking, and I'd much rather use those polies for the environment. So, I'm dropping the character models and going with 8-way sprites, a la FFTactics, FF12 Revenant Wings, etc.
After about 50 bloody variants, I've finally settled on proportions, etc, that I'm fairly happy with. Temp colors (just there for color separation) and rifle (needed that to check the pose). Threw in a quick and unfinished idle animation as well. South-facing for now:
I'm also pulling the camera further back since I can now afford the poly budget on the enviro, so I'll more than likely have to redo the enviro textures (reducing from 32x32 to 16x16, 32x64 to 16x32). Doh.