human teeth: best technique for form vs. polycount?

wailingmonkey

Aloha,

Working on some human teeth and trying to balance shape/form with shading, polycount,
and texturing. Here's where I'm at:


(XSI phong with diff, normal, and spec maps...1 spot light with specular and 3 low-power fills without specular)

Anyone have some nice techniques or tips they'd care to share?
(not going for supreme poly reduction, but a nice balance)

Should I just chunk this down to 6 main planes (2 for front area - split at origin- and 2 for each side) and
cut the polys down to more like 72 tris?

e-freak

qustion is what you're aiming for. imagine half-life 2's intro with the g-man close up it would make sense to use such detailed teeths but for any kind of character that you don't get that close I'd go for putting at least 2 or 3 teeths on each segment. More on an optical note - the front teeths seem to be much to thick (in tong-direction) in comparsion to the backteeths.

Mark Dygert

One segment per tooth isn't necessary, especially when you start to move back into the the molars. No one is going to notice what your molars look like from the side, they will be covered up with face.

If your goal was the maintain the same visual quality you have now you could reduce the number of segments and come out with something that looked the same. But you can stick to the polycount you have, that's pretty much ok for a character that will have facial animations. But if you're going to use that many segments you can use them to represent some better forms like for the canines, some breaks between the bottoms of the teeth. The height difference between the 2 front teeth their neighbors.



Also molars get flatter/fatter the farther back they go, teeth aren't the same thickness. You have them getting slightly thicker but not enough. And again you could be using those loops to provide some pretty nice definition in key areas.

dejawolf

darken the teeth. it really looks off if the teeth are snow-white.
the same goes for eyes.

wailingmonkey

much appreciated on the feedback, fellers.

I'll work up a smaller poly version and see how they compare.

e-freak...yer right, I'll adjust the thickness on front teeth, thanks.

perna...grazie, I'll do a version like that to see the difference also.

Vig...I'll try and get a little more variety in there. Just didn't want them to be too mangly so
they ended up a bit straight I reckon. I'll fatten the molars up when I'm fixin the fronts.

dejawolf...they're actually not as white as they may appear, but with no lip shadows and
fairly bright spot (and 3 fills) maybe they're coming out too white. I'll have a looksee tho,
onna character.


I'd be curious to see anybody else's versions which they may cookie-cut for their characters too.

BradMyers82

I don't actually have an answer for you, but personally; I often checkout characters from games I play and see what they did.

For example, I just started working on a PSP version of Marcu Fenix from Gear of War, so I opened up the editor that came with the game and checked out what the people over at epic did first.

Since there all pros, you can count on them using the best techniques.

Good luck!

Quasar

Here's a set of chompers I made in the past



As previously mentioned, you only need to detail what's visible, like the front teeth, and make the molars dead simple. Unless your character's face gets right up to the camera, I wouldn't make the geo any more detailed then mine.

Hope this helps!

cheers

Eric Chadwick

Nice layout.