RTS models

fredriklars

These are the first models for a RTS game called galactic vice.
I am looking for critiques on concept and execution. I am fairly new to 3d graphics and this is my first ever low poly work so i appreciate tips on basic stuff. Don't hold back on critiques, I intend to get better at this.

ITT, interstellar transmission tower, 1953 triangles. This is the second most important building for terran forces, it is used to order troops and such.


Special forces marine, 532 triangles:


I have some questions too, if someone has the time to explain it to a noob.
I'm kinda wondering what the normal workflow would be after making a sketch/concept. Is it best to start with low or high poly?
Making these i kinda jumped back and forth from blender to Photoshop hand painting tons of details so textures are very improvised and unclean, they have become quite horrible to work with. I have a feeling this should be simpler, i mean cracks and such in concrete, are they supposed to be modeled in the high poly version? for these models i have kinda pasted together various normal maps in photoshop to get the fine detail. How does one usually do this?

I get weird distortions when i am baking normal maps, even though i tried baking from an object that has the exact same geometry only different smooth groups i get jagged edges and sometimes inverted z-normal even though i have checked normals for consistency. Is this blender being beta software on me or am I falling into some noob trap?

WillMac

This slipped to page 5 so am doing my bit and attempting a crit...

Concept usually goes either high then low, low then high or middle base to lo and hi. It depends on the artist and situation with machine specs, it seems.

- I think the radar holder (base) needs some work.
- How many triangles in the "metal bars" and could this be alpha to optimise?
- Textures, i would attempt to add more hint of brown dirt and nature, moss, cracks, rust? Surely stains...
- The guys are cool for 532, I think there shoulders are the same size as the face thus biceps bigger than the lower legs.
- 1932 seems high tri coung when a lot of the detail should be normal mapped on that asset?

Is easier for people to comment with wire-frames...

Your Questions...

- cracks usually are to be modelled then normal mapped then Ambient Occlusion will help. Multiply an AO into the diffuse? Otherwise you can add cracks via Texture or other.
- IF your texure size is small (512's) then cracks may end up not translating to the texture size well as the model appears small in game. So make them "arty" cracks that read well at game sizes.

Search Polycount wiki for all your normal mapping woes... I think use 1 smoothing group for all model, UV island them "hard edges > 90 degrees" ... your errors are common problems, most likely to do with the UV layout and baking cage (and how the lo-poly matches the high poly for baking).

Hope this helps... Is this Power Rangers the RTS? Hilarious pose on the trooper on his knees, thanks for that! :P

DDuckworth

For my critique I think that if it's the 2nd most important building then it should be more intricate. Sure the satellite dish is huge but the rest of the building is an ultra basic square, maybe add on some smaller buildings to the sides of it with some connecting hallways with some smaller satellites on top, just make them look more important, these look about as simple as supply depos to me. I am assuming because you said Terran that you are doing a mod on Starcraft 2?

As for your normal map baking problems it often depends on your program, I have had TONS of problems using zBrush to bake out my normal maps and found the godsend xNormal, it's free and creates a perfect bake everytime.

Also for the textures of the buildings they need more dirt and grime, these look pretty much untextured, you mentioned concrete but I can barely see any concrete in the building, give it some large dry dirt clods around the base and some rust around where the metal bars meet the satellite dish and then have those rust stains running towards the center of the dish, since these will be so tiny make it large and fairly obvious.

Hope that helps! Good luck actually finishing this mod!

fredriklars

Wow, xnormal seems incredible, but i am not familiar with normal cages, seems good, almost necessary in some cases, what format should they be?
Thank you for critics, it hit me that this is not a proper concept for the second most important building. It will be re-concepted and remade but this model will hold for alpha release.
I tried making the concrete more defined and dirtier but the building is supposed to look brand new so i kept the subtle dirt texture, it is only 1024 texture and lots of faces so the normal map cant hold enough information to have detailed concrete so i made a antialiased normalmap from the concrete diffuse texture with xnormals photoshop filters.
Metal bars could be more optimized but not through alpha, the alpha is used for the "player color".
No, this is not a mod for starcraft, but there are similarities. The game is written from scratch by our programmer, so development takes some time.
I will go on and make the next model, the SEM, Super Engineering Man(working name):