What is the secret to low poly models looking good?

Pootel

I've been snuffling about the web lately looking for good examples of low poly models and wondering just what makes a good low poly model beyond just that it's low poly? Texture style seems really important for example. Crappy blurred out textures won't do. Should the textures be low color count for example, or not? Heavily emphasized shadow lines?

I'm curious what thoughts are on this question.

bugo

for me it´s silhouette, topology, and if its a character, have some good thinking on the edgeloops for places that will deform.

Edit: for very low poly, better using a different palette on colors and use 1 point pixel brush. Will trully give you sharpen details instead of blurred ones. Try to always contrast lines and details.

Pootel

I thought the example at the link below was pretty nice....

http://www.angelfire.com/wa3/emilyogle/warhammerdesk.html

A slight exaggeration of features, very clear and distinct artwork. Also the render of it is actually lit very well. I suppose one take away there is that a good low poly model still looks good in a high res engine render.

The Arabic Pottery Shop by m.roanhaus at http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=55173 also is like that. Sharp textures but a well lit example I think.

fritz

bobo

Pootel

As in bobo?

demoncage

i assume you are talking within the context of a low spec hand painted model? give the best impression of form/sillhouette possible within the poly limitations. i usually add more polys than i need to get the structure looking good, then optimize to the target count.

for the texture, good fake diffuse lighting. for me, painting in greyscale before adding color overlays is always helpful.

agree on the bobo ref.

Emil Mujanovic

A solid texture can make a crappy low-poly mesh look awesome, where as a model with solid mesh can look turds with a shitty texture. What I'm getting at is the texture is the real main secret to low-poly models looking good.
From a mesh point of view, its a combination of giving the low-poly mesh a strong silhouette and making sure that you have distributed your polygons in the right areas (be it for deformation or form).

If you're painting to a lo-res texture, using a 1px brush (pencil tool in Photoshop) to either paint or tighten the texture can really help avoid the blurred look that most texture have. Also running a sharpen filter can help, but will require some clean up.

-caseyjones

Pootel

demoncage, yea a low spec model. I'm currently working with a startup on a lightweight MMO-like project that is going to need to run well on low end systems. My thought is to go for a low poly, hand painted model look to keep things tight and working well on lonw end systems. It can't look overly cartoony but I've seen some nice stuff (like the Arabic Pottery example) that doesn't have that look at all.

hawken

there is a thread instructing you how to render out low poly stuff out here somewhere, however I can't find it right now (even though I started that thread!)