My Work (Characters, Props, Environment stuff)
Hi, I am not entirely new to the 3D scene, well I guess I am in a way; since I only recently really got interested in modeling. Before when I tried, I just couldn't grasp it and it seemed boring. Then I revisited modeling again, and I was able to grasp it easily this time around... odd. I've modded for Cryengine 2 for the last couple of years... here is some of my work in Sandbox 2. </br> </br> http://rexmcnish.carbonmade.com </br> </br> Now, onto my latest 3D ventures.:) I just got Mudbox 2010... and I am loving it. First off, I sculpted a tree trunk based off Mudbox's default mesh. I could've modeled my own base mesh for it, but it was mostly for practice anyways.</br> </br> The diffuse is of a trunk texture I took. I love Mudbox's painting features. I just got Mudbox around two days ago or so. Complete newbie to sculpting. Trunk done from start to finish in about 20 minutes. 
My very first attempt at making a detailed face, using Mudbox's base mesh for a head. Hopefully you can forgive me since I am a beginner. xD 
</br> </br> I've invested about 45 minutes in the face so far. Stuck using a mouse for the time being, but I will be getting a tablet soon; for sure. All comments and critique welcome, and thank you for checking my stuff out.
My very first attempt at making a detailed face, using Mudbox's base mesh for a head. Hopefully you can forgive me since I am a beginner. xD </br> </br> I've invested about 45 minutes in the face so far. Stuck using a mouse for the time being, but I will be getting a tablet soon; for sure. All comments and critique welcome, and thank you for checking my stuff out.
Replies
The trunk in the first post seems a little too beveled where the cut was made. The bark on it is great.
damn man, trees are extremely well done!
Only thing I have to say is that your forest seems to be a conifer forest. But there seem to be maple trees growing on the ground. The soil would not be suitable for broadleaves.
Those shots are amazing.
Any hope on a breakdown/wire post for the forest plants?
Edit: lol Adam, I load up this post, microwave some food, post a reply, and see yours.
After looking closely at those tree polycounts. It seems odd that they average out at around 500 tri's. Did you use 4-5 long planes for those long branch twigs along the length of the trunk? If so, that calls for a TON of overdraw. It would probably be lighter if those twigs were individually modelled. It's not the tri count that would kill things here, it's the weight of the overdraw. In crysis, their leaf planes were modeled to fit the shape of the leaf as close as possible to avoid as much overdraw possible.
But then again, maybe you used an entirely different method and I'm just ranting for nothing.
They're fir trees, and here in the pacific northwest, maple trees grow wildly all around, along with the fir trees. All of the vegetation I made is based off real vegetation in the forest behind my house. Took tons of reference pictures, and even used the put-a-leaf-on-a-white-piece-of-paper approach for my textures and to extract the alpha maps.
Since there are no really established methods or tutorials regarding vegetation creation, it was a huge learning curve. Regardless, each time I was able to improve on a model, I was hooked - determined to bring these to a level of quality that would allow them to look normal next to Crysis assets.
Also, each couple of dead branches are on a single plane, and each green branch is a 4 tri plane.
All those tree generator programs just seemed too complicated... when doing it all yourself, you're getting exactly what you want - complete control over how everything looks.
The tree variants actually didn't take that long to make, once I had the basic layout for how the planes were to be arranged for one of the trees. I'd say that finding out the best arrangement for the planes took far longer than making the variants.
Looking at them now however, I want to increase the resolution of the dead branch textures, and increase the geometric detail on the tree trunks; making them more round-ish, and adding roots perhaps.
Really looking forward to seeing those wires! I think I know how you got those dead trees there without actually modelling them! But it's like I said above, wouldn't that lead to alot of alpha overdraw?
How did you go about making those leaf textures? They're so sharp and smooth!
Notice how my leaf diffuse texture isn't taking up the entire surface of the plane? I want to waste the least surface space possible.
About your tree modeling in XSI..did you place the leaves with some kind of scatter method on the branches or is it 'handmade'?
Prophecies - please don't tell me you have each leave on their own quad?
I *did* have each leaf on it's own quad. That was before I did any kind of optimizing whatsoever. Now, I do not have each leaf on it's own quad.
Sorry for totally hijacking your thread Rex, I am done.
Anyways...
Anyways, my next endeavor is to re-do most of the ground plants in my scenes. Thankfully, with what I've learned doing all this, I'll be able to reach higher levels of quality while using less resources as I've learned what to look for when going out to take texture reference pictures.
Here is the first revision - compare it to the leafy green plants in my previous shots and you'll see it's much more detailed looking, while having the same or less triangles; but substantially less vertex points this time around.
All the plants I will be redoing will be much closer to their real-life counter parts. I'm lucky that I have a forest right behind my house with unlimited reference material - I like to utilize photo sourcing for textures. Not only for the detail that is achieved, but the time that is saved as well. It does depend on the model I am making though, since I hand-painted most of the fir tree branch texture based on references.
Low-poly vegetation is all about creating the illusion of three dimensions. The most important thing with the geometry is that it must look good from any angle, and this goes with any vegetation model. Variation in the texture sheet is what will help you achieve this. I'll show you how I constructed the texture sheet for the model below.
Textures are WIP. There might be too much light affecting the leaves, so I may go out today and re-take some texture reference images... although, the texture still looks fine in the 3D view port of XSI. I guess getting this model in-game will be the real test.
Overdraw can be a nightmare. Basically, the GPU has to look at every pixel that a poly occupies and decide what to draw there. In your case it will frequently decide to draw nothing because it is transparent in that spot. Then it will get to the next poly and start over again. When there are too many overlapping transparent planes, the GPU will burn a lot of time looking at the same screen pixel over and over again. This would also be true if there were overlapping semi-transparent planes or particles. Some engines handle this better than others but it is still something to avoid if possible.
Most games deal with this by having an LOD set up that dramatically reduces the number of polygons for distant foliage. The original Far Cry would render out giant impostors to a single plane to represent large groups of distant trees. Maybe Crysis uses the same technique. I would be curious to see if it works for user created meshes, or if it only works for the foliage that shipped with the game.
Having said all that
Crytek's models have just as much empty space on polygons as my models do; so they must've dealt with overdraw somehow.
The biggest issue for good performance in CE2 is draw calls. Even with tons of overdraw, my scenes run at an average of 40 FPS or more. I've setup small gameplay scenarios and things are still smooth even then.
In-game: (Models are not final, still got some experimenting to do on this Salal bush... <-- real life name)