Need advice on low poly char: Female Mechanic
Hi there. I'm currently working on this low poly model. Haven't given her any special background story. As for now she's just a female mechanic.
It's for my modeling & texture class. Think the limit is 3000 Tris. (Or was it Quads?) I just wrote 3k in my notes.
So, I'm just asking for pointers and tips when it comes to low poly modeling. Do's and dont's, stuff like that.
I have probably done some dont's already. The model is 2 - 3 hours of quick-ish work. Made a box and just started extruding. My teacher told us that it's easier to add poly's, but harder to take away. So, I've been trying to keep the poly count low.
For her clothes I think I'll try to just cut faces until I have the basic shape of her clothes, just extrude and clean it up afterwards.
And for her general body I'll just cut it up, try and go for roundish-ness where it's needed.
Any helpful advice would be welcome
It's for my modeling & texture class. Think the limit is 3000 Tris. (Or was it Quads?) I just wrote 3k in my notes.
So, I'm just asking for pointers and tips when it comes to low poly modeling. Do's and dont's, stuff like that.
I have probably done some dont's already. The model is 2 - 3 hours of quick-ish work. Made a box and just started extruding. My teacher told us that it's easier to add poly's, but harder to take away. So, I've been trying to keep the poly count low.
For her clothes I think I'll try to just cut faces until I have the basic shape of her clothes, just extrude and clean it up afterwards.
And for her general body I'll just cut it up, try and go for roundish-ness where it's needed.
Any helpful advice would be welcome
Replies
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/low_poly_character/low_poly_01.asp
Its considered by many to be a very good starting point. For low poly models Ben Mathis (aka poopinmymouth) has many tutorials hes made and posted on his site, including a large number of videos so you can see what needs to be done instead of just reading about it. Those can be found here:
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/tutorial.htm
Good luck
Wow, disregard that. thats his/her opinion and should be taken as such.
The polycount number thats mentioned almost always refers to triangles unless stated otherwise.
I'm guessing you spent the 2-3 hours in the ortho viewports and didn't check what it looked like in perspective, hence the cookie cutter shape. Obviously you have to round the whole thing out. You should be constantly moving your viewport around to check all angles. I think I had the same problem starting out so its not uncommon.
I don't know if this is the best advice, but I would start on something simpler. It looks like you're pretty new to this. Try doing the wrench first since its part of the character and could count for the assignment. Definately pay poop's site a visit. He's got a lot of valid stuff on there that will certainly help you out.
Don't get discouraged, and keep at it!
mvelasquez: Equipment like wrenches(or swords for that matter)doesn't need to be a part of our model. I'll just focus on her body. And it's true that I've mainly been working in ortho views, though I DID see the apparent squareness.
Thanks for the advice guys. I'll definitively check out those links.
http://www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/joanmenu.asp
I just kept on extruding. Trying to collapse edges in a sound manner along the way. Though I'm still not so sure on how to collapse around certain areas and still retain a good shape. I trying to figure out something smart to make the pelvis slightly better. Along with the face and also extrude some basic working dress shape on the chest and back.
Thing's due tomorrow, but now I'm at least somewhat reassured that I'll have something to turn in.
Maybe I should flesh out the arms some more... And her shoes kinda point inwards I guess.
Current polycount: 1273(Faces, same as polygons right?) :S
Funny line on her chest, but it's just a hard edge.
So, now I've started unwrapping my her. First time unwrapping. It's going forward, though a bit slow. Keep finding ugly 5 sided polygons. :S
1. Bad poly flow. You don't have any real edge loops which means two things, muscles and clothing do not end up looking real. Just because this is a cartoon doesn't mean you can ignore musculature, and second, it will not animate correctly.
Heres some tutorials to help with this problem
http://www.thehobbitguy.com/tutorials/polymodeling/page08.htm
http://www.deathfall.com/article.php?sid=2650
2. You need some anatomy. She has no shoulders, no clavical, no traps, and this makes that head shot above look really strange. The lips end in a point on your model, but if you look at your own lips you will see that the sides of your lips end in a tear drop shape or even a square, as a result these lips on your model not even look wrong, but will animate super strange. She also has no ears... Muscles are important no matter what style you are going for, be it cartoony or realistic. Cartoons are just exaggerated fine art. Remember that. So unfortunately, you have a lot of work ahead of you if you are to get better. Here are some good books to read if you really want to know more.
http://www.amazon.com/Bridgmans-Complete...0101&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/New-Drawing-Right-...0122&sr=1-1
To be honest, I would try working on someone else's concept, maybe one from a game that's already been made, that way you can get a sense of what it is like to model from real anatomy, and not have to worry about drawing your own concepts for now.
So I guess the moral is, work on one art form at a time, don't try to be a jack of all trades, get some anatomy lessons, and model someone else's concept for practice up front.
EDIT: Another thing, I am assuming those thigs on her head are pony tails, you may want to use alpha planes for that, makes hair look a lot more real then using big chunks of geo.
And just to clarify, anything with more then 2 sides is a polygon, you can have a 15 million sided polygon, when a teacher refers to polycount, it is almost always tris unless stated otherwise, even if you keep the model to quads, the game engine usually breaks the model back down into tris (except in some xbox games I believe). Just wanted to clarify since some teachers tend to forget they stopped teaching geometry in schools.
Heres some diagrams I drew up real quick.
In the real world these all equal 1 poly.
The Umbrella Man: I need to stick with this design because it's for an assignment. So I'll have work on her polyflow. I see some of my fellow students are really nailing that, and I know mine is whack right now.
For the head I think I'll move the ponytails up some, and add ears. Been so busy with stuff, that I almost didn't notice her not having any ears before now. :S
I'll definitively try and redo her arms real quick and see if I can get more defined musculature going on. And yeah, her shoulders are just very cartoony right now.
Still my main concern is to try and repair her polyflow. My teacher wants us to devote 50% of our time to texturing. So I'll want to try and keep things neat and simple, even though she looks very cartoony.
Well... I really need to get better. I actually have to have this model unwrapped and with basic textures applied in about a week. She's the first of three characters and she's just the mid-res low poly version of this particular concept. (We're supposed to do 3 different versions of our main character). Right now it's 3k faces limit. I'll be doing a high-res later on. With a limit on 10k faces or beyond. Maybe then I'll be skilled enough to pull of a proper modeling job her.
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She has no shoulders, no clavical, no traps
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What is traps?
Tnx again guys
What is traps?
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Trapezius muscle, functions to pull the shoulder (and the entire arm) up and toward the back. If you swim butterfly or free style you use this muscle alot. Visually it gives the appearance of a gradual slope from the middle of the neck to the pivot of the shoulders.
unless things have changed.
Pictures of stuff....
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I know this isn't a place for a geometry geek off, but this seems to be a common misnomer. Here's the real deal.
Polyhedra are often named according to the number of faces. The naming system is again based on Classical Greek, for example tetrahedron (4), pentahedron (5), hexahedron (6), heptahedron (7), triacontahedron (30), and so on.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhedron
Poly means many, In geometry a polygon is a plane figure that is bounded by a closed path or circuit, composed of a finite sequence of straight line segments (i.e., by a closed polygonal chain). These segments are called its edges or sides, and the points where two edges meet are the polygon's vertices or corners. The interior of the polygon is called its body. A polygon is a 2-dimensional example of the more general polytope in any number of dimensions.
In the computer graphics (image generation) field, the term polygon has taken on a slightly altered meaning, more related to the way the shape is stored and manipulated within the computer.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygon
It's a very enlightening article. One I suggest everyone reads if they even care about the subject even a little.
the site's name is polycount, so i figured it's worth talking about it. if i have it wrong i'd very much like to know right.
the reason i posted those images as a reply was because i felt your second image (Poly002.jpg) was incorrect, as far as i understand. a tri is not equal to a poly like your image displays.
from your wiki article:
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Polygon Count. Since a polygon can have many sides and need many points to define it, in order to compare one imaging system with another, "polygon count" is generally taken as a triangle. A triangle is processed as three points in the x,y, and z axes, needing nine geometrical descriptors.
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as valuable a resource as wikipedia is, i think it is incorrect to assume polycout as a tricount. generally speaking, it may fly, but tris are tris, polys are polys. looking at your resume, you seem rather technical, so i would love to understand what you mean if you can better explain it to me.
3ds max isn't a game engine, i know, but it does have a poly and tri counter. why even bother if tris = polys?
Dazzle, when I learnt to model characters, I look at other clean models made by the pro
Some good examples are to the right side of this page.
http://thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/mes02.html
I'm not advertising his DVD btw
So... Finished with my very first unwrap.
edit: I'm using a single texture 1024 x 1024 for her.
So here's the character right now. On her chest you see the line which I would have the camo t-shirt go. Just had to stop before I was finished.
I haven't fixed the polyflow to any particular extent. Just isn't time.
For her actual look. I want to grease her up with oil spills. And some wear and tear on her clothes. Use some shadowing to make her chest, "pop" more. Put a tattoo on one of her arms and another one on her back right above the t-shirt. I'll probably trow in some textures for her clothes. Right now everything is painted, but the camo pattern on her t-shirt.
She's definitively in for some tweaking.
My budget is 3000 Quads and she's just above 1300. I just felt I had to make use of the "huge" surplus in the budget I have to flesh her out, but I know now that a lot of those small details are kinda wasted on the model. :S I should have spent some polys improving the overall shape of her body.
Right now it's the texture that needs my attention, not really any time for revising my modeling. Only some small tweaking maybe. I wish I had the time to fix in some edgelooping around her shoulders and face. This model will animate so horrible, but that's not what we're going to do with it. :S *lesson learned*
That's stupid. Character models, whether you want to or not, are definitely not meant for beginners.
If you want someone to feel overwhelmed and give up on modeling then have them do a character model as a rookie
He may want to just pickup paul steeds old q3 modeling book, if you just want to jump into making simple characters. If this is your first model ever, its about par.
And to address the comment about refunding the money I paid for the course. Hehe. It's not that my teacher is totally giving me an unfitting assignment for my level. I'm studying abroad here in the US, coming from a college mainly focused on computer design and just having one half-year course in 3d animation (3dsmax). The point is that I'm only going to be here for two semesters. Who would want to take all the 101 basic stuff and skip out on the good stuff? That's right, I'm paying for this sh**.
... Did I ever learn to model things so that they deform right? Ehm, no. Thanks to some links(further up in this post) posted by some guys in this forum I got to learn about edge loops. I vaguely remember my teacher talking about it back in Norway... I didn't think of edge loops one bit when I modeled this character, but NOW I KNOW. I'll definitively incorporate proper edge loops in my next model.
So on to my progression
Just a basic turntable: Turntable (rar)
I'll have a go at her geometry this weekend and see if I can recut some parts without disturbing the uv's. Right now it looks way too smudgy, using a 1024x1024 map it should off course look way more crisp and sharp. My fellow students pointed it out to me and I totally agree. I went a bit mad with the dodge/burn tool and that made it suffer. A lot of work needs to be done on the texture if I want to make it sharp.
The next steps the teacher are having us do is making a low poly version and a high res version of the model. We're doing a Level of Detail switch thing next week. My current polycount is 2011 faces, budget allows for 3000 faces.
High res upper limit: 10k faces
Low res: 1.5k faces
Wish I could just trow a smooth on my character, but she's clearly not modeled for it... I know I would have to add a lot of detail in her face for the high res, but I know I'm not supposed to just add edges in there at random. How do I add res to this model's face? I'm off course ready to try my best at cleaning up the geometry (preferably without killing my uv borders) before adding the polys.