Help with very low poly characters/models

pixel poison

Hey all, Im fairly new too this (very low poly modeling) but could someone go threw a few things about the following subjects:

• UV placement for small textures
• Pixel art vs. painting – for textures sizes 32x / 64x
• Any hints or tips
• Examples of work, UV placement etc.

any help would be very much appreciated.

Cheers

Slash

check the low poly thread in the pimping and previews subforum, should be lots of examples there.

Steve Schulze

Thats a lot to go through. If you posed some specific questions it might be simpler.

Mark Dygert

1) Characters or environments?
2) Pixel art, or be prepared to do a lot of clean up.
3) Too many to cover.
4) yup low poly thread.

More specific questions would be easier to answer. What you're asking is pretty general/generic and either easy to give a 2 word answer or 18 pages trying to explain it all. Most people won't write up 18 pages... I'm one that would, and I'm not.

Eric Chadwick

heheh, always appreciated when you do though Vig.

pixel poison

hey all, first off thanks for replyin
im pretty much wanting 2 know more bout characters atm.
ill check out the low poly thread.

cheers

Sage

What do you mean by low polygon? 100 tris? 300? You can always do a search for quake 3 character tutorials and that should give you a good idea on how to proceed. That's how I got my bearings on the low poly modeling, get reference and keep things as simple as possible and then see what you can cut out without losing to much of the shape of the model.

This might help.

http://lounge.ego-farms.com/

go to the completed series section.

Poop has some good tutorials as well.

www.poopinmymouth.com

Cholden tutorial, simple and to the point.

http://chrisholden.net/tutor/chmodel.htm



Alex

Steve Schulze

Alright, based on the mail you sent me, I'm thinking you're interested in DS development.
When working out the specs for a character for a DS game you'll need to consider the same factors as any other game - how big it'll be on screen, how many other objects are likely to be on screen etc. This is coevered in the "How many polygons in a piece of string" essay which someone will no doubt have the link for.
Now, DS has rather limited hardware. You've got a hard limit of 2048 tris for everything. The amount of texture memory you have to work will will vary considerably depending on your UI and all sorts of other things that chew it up. Generally the Poly limit is a bigger concern though.
So if you're just doing this for practice how many polys and how big a texture? I'd say a safe limit would be 250-300 polys and a texture size of either 64*128 or 128*128. If you can get away with less then do it. Be as efficient as possible. Always remember how small the DS screen is when you're modelling details. If it'll be less than a pixel width on screen its a waste of geometry.
You can also get away with some dubious things that you could never do on a regular console game. Segmented limbs (ie limbs that just sit on the surface of the model rather than being attached) will save you a few polys.
Its also really worth triangulating your mesh. With so few polys, you can get a lot of extra form for free just by folding quads in the right direction.
That about covers what I can think of at the moment. If you've got any specific questions, don't hesitiate to ask.

pixel poison

hey man, cheerz for the info.
questions...

250- 300 polys? or tris?
hard limit 2048 tris for everything - as in for a stage/level? or as in a whole game?

cheerz

Steve Schulze

250-300 tris.

DS allows 2048 on screen at one time. You'd be in a bit of trouble if you were limited to 2048 for the entire gameworld.

fade1

maybe you should mention, that just rendered tris count for the 2048 limit. if a normal is pointing away, it's not rendered and therefore doesn't count.
example: if you have a sphere with 100 tris, actually just around 50 to 60 a rendered.

Steve Schulze

Ah yeah, good point. Its something I often forget when I'm working on level stuff.

pixel poison

kool skool, ill keep that info in mind when modeling. tho
i should show you wat im working on atm.

cheers