My two newest models

KSMO

Hey everyone, I'm a noob to this forum and a noob to 3-d modeling. I'm a student currently attending an art college in southern california. Im working toward my BFA with a major in Video Game Art.
Any wayz...I'm looking for some feed back on these models I made so lets hear it. these were my projects from my first class using 3ds max...

these were modeled using 3ds max 2009

Trailer model:

high poly:


low poly(with normals applied):


unreal engine screenshot:


Steamer Trunk model:

high polygon:


low poly:


Unreal engine screen shots:

TheWinterLord

you need to learn how to distribute your polies, right now there are areas with huge wastes of piles of polies on the chest. areas all over i dont know where to begin but I hope your class will cover lowpoly in the soon future.

anyways if you want crits it would be easier to see if we could have a wire shot of the lowpoly models. also uv map with texture. it is half of what game art is about->optimization.

GL and welcome to Polycount!

MoP

Your high-poly and textured stuff looks pretty good to me (although you got the captions for the first two images the wrong way round - high poly is the 2nd shot ).

I agree that your low-poly meshes look far too detailed considering the size of the props - a trunk/chest like this is going to be a lot shorter than a character yet you've crammed a ton of polys into all the details - that's work which the normal-map should really be doing.

The chest texture looks better (and higher res!) than the trailer, you should really be able to get more resolution onto that trailer, the red light on the side looks really pixelated in that screenshot. You could also stand to get a little more dirt/wear/weathering into the trailer, for example mud thrown up by the wheels, or grime gathering in the cracks if it was left outside for a while.

In general your work seems solid so far, especially the highpoly. You just need to try and optimise your lowpoly meshes better, improve the texture resolution and try to get a bit more natural details into the textures.

Keep it up!

MatthewS

I really like the textures on the chest, although I agree with these two that the poly count is a bit high... Wires and texture sheets would be a good for us to really tell you where you can cut some of them out.

I really like your tire treads on your high poly, but they didn't get baked down into your low poly very well... this is probably due to the angle of the tread in the high poly.

Are you using Ambient Occlusion bakes and specular maps? If not you should get on that as they will help push the detail even more.

OH and your cable went AWOL on your trailer low poly >.>

Firecracker197

if I could see your UVS then i could probably tell you how to arrange your texture space better so those reflectors on the side of your trailer don't look so pixelated. Are you mirroring your UVs? If your not you can mirror at least half of that trailer and save yourself a lot of texture space, and you will want the more detailed areas to have more resolution while also trying not to make the density too noticeably different.

Also it looks like you have too much spec on your chest, and you can normal map a lot more of those details in, when I made a chest like that I think I made it like in like 20 tris or something, just the 4 sides, a bottom, and enough to have a slight curve on top, you could easily make yours like 30-50, all you need is the silhouette, and those ridges don't stick out far enough to justify making them with geometry.

KSMO

thx for the input guys. i think its a bit unanimous around the board. i realize i made a lot of mistakes in my UVs, as far as prioritizing my most dominant elements. also i realize my poly count is way to high. i guess i got a little to focussed on trying to make it look cool than desiging it for a game.

also yes i am using both AO and SPEC maps.

these are the UVs for the trailer:


and here are more images for the steamer trunk:
low poly wire 1

low poly wire 2


UVs


normals:


color:


spec:

d2king10

On the low poly chest, you should get rid of the beveled edges (your normal map will take care of those), and then you could probably get rid of the horizontal and vertical bars and just have a flat chest and let the normals do them.

Firecracker197

Yeah, you don't have as much mirrored as you could on your trailer, or on the chest, usually when anyone makes anything thats symmetrical like these two models, they model it using symmetry then they unwrap only one half of it, and then they just mirror it to the other side, if you unwrap before you mirror then the UVs will be exactly on top of each other. You should look more into the workflow for this process, and you will instantly increase your texture resolution for both of these models by 50%

mLichy

Yeah, mirror the shit outta anything you can. That's all I do at work most of the time, or symmetry/mirror/instance stuff alot. If you are careful with the way you do your texture, you don't be able to tell all that easily that it's been mirrored.