Making an Enviornment DS reel: M1 abrams

Sage

This is a follow up to the thread I started in the 2D and 3D discussion thread. Thanks for all the good information everyone has provided, it's been very helpful and motivating.

Hi I'm currently targeting a company that is developing Nintendo DS games and this is what I'm making to show them. It's an M1 abrams, and it's made up of 159 tris. The texture is going to be at 64 x 64, although I am currently placing details on it at 256 x 256 since I found it to hard to understand the wireframe at 64x64. I hope to have this done by Friday with an environment to go with it. I'm thinking I'm going to place it in the middle of city in the desert. I'm wondering if my UV layout is good enough. This is very WIP. I'm painting this so it only has 16 colors as well. Let me know what you think. Any information you have on developing for the DS would be great. Thanks.

Alex

Photoshop file setup:

danr

you probably want to tone down any harshly contrasting pixel lines for this res. There's no filtering on the DS, and you may well find that your details scintillate badly as the camera moves, turning your tank into a flickering mess. A non-filtered render may suggest some of this, but emulating the lit DS screen would be really hard.

maybe try concentrating on using colours and shade to define your overall shapes, rather than diving straight into the little details ... so you're contrasting areas like where the turret meets the body, also things like painting the track area to be a deeper shade of brown (ie, dirtier). When you've got these down, zoom out to DS screen res, rotate and rotate again, see how it defines itself against a few different backgrounds. If it looks solid, detailed and tank-like, that could well be enough. Noodling further could screw it

SHEPEIRO

good words from danr,

ontop of that id suggest working at true res befor detailing, as most of the detail done will disapear when down-resing. to compensate for an un-undestandable mesh, block and fade paint in the main shapes at 256* then bring down to true res.

id actually suggest a 128* or 128x64.

also id simplify your mesh. the thing on the turret could just be a cuboid, without losing any silohete, rendering out various views with a plain black material at 256x192 (ds res) will help you iron out the mesh.

as for the UVs, working at real low res with mechanical stuff it is really esential to lay your uvs out corectly. here are two tips for max use.

1- lay everything out so that the pixels are perpendicular with any detail you might want (ie mechanical detailing is generally horizontal and vertical paneling, lay all uvs so that you can draw lines with a single pixel thick line)
i noticed that a few of yours have promintent diagonal lines, try to avoid these, but also be aware of texture stretching
2- ds has no filteringso uvs can be snapped right next to each other along the edge between two pixels, that way you can get the most out of your pixels.

i usually quickly lay out my ds stuff then as im painting the map i edit them to get the most out of them.

remember the most powerfull tool in PS is the pencil

look forward to seeing more

Sage

Thanks for the feedback. I added more to the texture and rendered out the tank in what I thought it would be in the DS. I started to work in 128 x128 to see how much detail I would lose. I started to notice places where my uv map doesn't work well so I started to tweek it. Thanks for all the feedback. I'll post some more tonight.

Shepeiro and Danr, started to notice a lot of what are telling me to watch out for. Shepeiro are you saying to texture the tank at 128 x 128? I was thinking of texturing it with two 64 x 64, but decided to finish it with one 64 x64 to see if I can do it. Thanks for all the feedback.



Alex

Texture at 128x128



DS size preview attempt.



Rendered a gif to test for flickering. Antialiasing and all filters are turned off.

JordanW

In addition to simplifying the mesh like shepeiro mentioned I would also simplify the texture as well. The circular shapes on top of the tank will be hard to read and will easily turn into noise. I suggest maybe having just one and making it larger. I addition to the dark lines for the seams on the model try adding a highlight along them as well to give it a better sense of depth.

Just remember when assets are this small and especially on this small of a screen everything has to be bold and simplified so that it holds up well and is readable.

Sage

A little more progress. I'm painting at 64 x 64, I love that pencil tool. I messed up my texture with my actions since it was saving it at 88x88 instead of 64 x64 so I fixed that. I think the practice is paying off. Let me know what you think.

Alex

Japhir

good! looks much better at 64! love the shading under the gun and the side of the tank! keep it up!

Vitor

Looking alot much better now. If i'd critic it would be to simplify a bit the mesh, there are some details that are almost unseen. And also, provided that you got a few tris on the top of the body, perhaps re-use some of the UVW space, it is just plain color most of it and it is hided by the turret.

Sage

Another update. I decided to model a quick desert like environment to see what I could get away with and I put some vertex colors on this. Does the the DS support fall off shaders and blending modes likes additive,overlay etc? The sky is a basic box with a gradient 100% self illuminated. The terrain is 216 tris. I have done nothing to the tank but stick it in there to show me some scale. Let me know what you think.

Alex

Japhir

pretty cool terrain design! like it! maybe add some more tanks to show how that would look. now it looks a bit lonely :P

Sage

I played some more with the vertex colors and managed to make it look more natural. Let me know what you think.



Alex

SHEPEIRO

keep vertex colouring as multiply only in render, it all you need anyway with 100%illumination. "blend" the terrain with different maps, ie cliff side top and bottom, then match them up in uvs.

tanks looking alot lot better, i only suggested 128 because it is possible for main character style objects, my porco stuff used 1 x 128*, 1 x 128x64 and 1 x 64* for each plane, but then they fill most of the screen, if your planning on this sort of scale then 64* is fine

keep up teh good work, its nice to see DS stuff

dur23

http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=198553&page=0&vc=#Post198553

Sage

I started this M1 yet again after reading Dur23's tutorial. Why practice. plus it's fun, my idea of fun anyway. I started painting at 64x64. Let me know what you think. Thanks for all the feedback.

Alex

EricElwell

Sage, I think you might find a lot of help w/ the vertex paint process if you use a little script called pits'n'peaks. I looked for it on script spot and was unable to find it. I know I have it on my work machine if you want me to dig it up. Basically, it calculates angles and sets the vertex colors. From there, I generally grab faces and do a paint bucket dump on 20-30% w/ my lights and darks. I find that to be an extremely quick way to get a great base. If you want me to try to explain that a little better feel free to ask.

Sage

Eric, I found it on script spot using the search feature. Thanks for the tip.

Alex

Sage

I'm almost done with the m1. Let me know what you think.

Peris

thats really cool! maybe you can add a little shadow under the turrent

Japhir

yep thats cool! i agree that it looks a bit too bright. Maybe you could add veeeery subtle dirt? or is it too small for that?

Sage

I feel the brighter sections are too bright. I'll try and darken the piece once I finish the details with an adjustment layer. As far as adding shadows under the turret the problem is the tank animates so having a shadow there would look wrong when the turret moves. I was thinking of adding a shadow with polys but I'm not sure if that's cool or not. Any thoughts are welcome. Let me know what you think.


Alex

Sage

I finished the texture on this for now. Let me know what you think.

Alex

Japhir

looks hot! like the tracks and lights!

Sage

I started to work on this mosque. I thought it would be a nice challenge. It has 216 tris and is being textured with 2 64x64 textures at 16 colors. Let me know what you think. Currently working on the textures. Thanks.

Alex

Sage

I modeled a human base. I think the polycount is too high it's at 188 tris. I'm going to rig it to see how it deforms. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Alex

LoTekK

Nice ds stuff! Love the tank, it really came a long way from where you started off. The mosque texture looks like it's coming along nicely, too (render without AA and filtering! )

The human base looks ok, but i think you can shave a number of tris in a few places. Unless you need wide feet, you can collapse the front edge of the feet. You might also want to get rid of the neck; either have the head continue straight into the torso, or just have the head as an intersecting mesh. You might also be able to collapse the bottom middle edge of the ass.

Silhouette-wise it's looking good, though I would scale down the edge defining the back of the knee, as well as the back of the feet, which would give the legs a nicer silhouette from the front. Very much liking the side profile silhouette, though.