Character Modeling for the DS

Phil_Fury

Hi all,

I have an interview on Monday for a character modeling job on the DS, Can anyone offer me any advice on the do's and don'ts. I have previous experiance low poly modeling in the games industry but i am unaware of what techniques that are used and what is possible when creating characters on the DS.

I really would like this job and don't want to be looking all confussed at my interview, or back at the job center Tuesday. Any help would be great!!!

Any links to character models, wire frames or texture sheets are very welcome

Many Thanks :poly106:

Snowfly

If you own a DS, check out the models in those games.

I doubt you need to worry about talking techniques in an artist interview, unless you want to come off as a boring 3ds max nerd. If it does come up, draw similarities between the low poly art you've done and the low poly art you observe on the DS, and something comparable on the PSX. You'll show that you at least have the aptitude for it, which could be a lot more valuable to the interviewer imo.

Anywho, shouldn't be long before someone else pipes in with some actual DS art do's/don'ts.

Steve Schulze

There aren't too many really specialist techniques you'll need to know for the DS that differentiate it from other low poly assets. Mostly its just a matter of working out how to make the most of the 200 or so polys you'll usually have to play with for a character - making every polygon and ever pixel count, using alphas where possible, concentrating on silhouette. All stuff you'd consider on any other low poly asset, its just more important on the DS.

CheeseOnToast

There is one nice little feature on the DS which can mirror textures outside of the 0-1 space. This lets you mirror parts of the texture without having to have a centre seam, potentially saving a bunch of polys. Someone posted an example (I think it was a tank model) somewhere, probably in the low-poly art thread that demonstrates it nicely. Don't have time to search for it myself right now though, I'm afraid.

Funky Bunnies

that was dur23 I think

danr

don't get hung up on the "super low poly" stuff that people will insist is what the DS is all about. 2048 rendered triangles is actually a fair amount - everything is backface culled, you won't render anything you cannot see, and it's impossible to slow down rendering with adding more triangles. It'll just hit 2048 and you won't be able to render any more. Yeah, there's plenty of rendering foibles you have to bear in mind (such as only being able to sort a max of 8 polys on a pixel), but this whole "i have an entire environment with 500 triangles in it, that's DS spec" thinking is not quite right ... i mean, obviously it'll depend on what you're trying to cram in on top of that, but still ... try setting up a camera with your 3d models, select "ignore backface" or its non-max equivalent and select all the polys you can see. You might be surprised.

Steve Schulze

Yeah, you can get away with higher poly assets from time to time. One of our previous games had characters that were over the 800 poly mark. Building an environment around 2 characters that use up the majority of the polygon and texture budget is an interesting experience. Being able to use characters that are that high is extremely rare though. It wouldn't hurt to have some higher (relatively) poly stuff in your portfolio, but I would the suggest really low poly stuff, and the techniques you've worked out to develop characters with such a small budget are what your potential employers will be interested in.

danr

jackablade - true enough, but the point is to show that you understand the platform and how to get the best from it

something i haven't seen written on portfolio pieces yet is a total poly count, and a suggested rendering count. That might be an idea (do a few selections from the camera trick, and average them)