My first low poly model

Komalrajsingh

Here's a low poly character I made. This is my first attempt at making low poly character. I'd be much grateful if someone could help me regrading this model or what to remember while making low-poly and texturing it. What program do modeler use when making texture? Do they paint directly or on photoshop?

Heartless

I use Photoshop for creating a texture. For low poly you're going to have a really small texture so being able to edit individual pixels is a must.

Your model looks a bit flat. See if you can tweak a few verts or just add some polys to get it looking a little nicer.

BorisK

i know this is 3DS Max but try using the same techniques as these guys.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NFSK_MODnM[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh3sLtUFH1A[/ame]

they're my fav tutorials online. you'll be character modelling in no time

you needs to make him more rounded. dont worry about texturing yet. practice modelling, sculpting and uv unwrapping. texturing will be the cherry on top at the end

most people use mudbox and zbrush to sculpt and texture. i recommend you start in Mudbox and learn about brushes

Komalrajsingh

So made some changes in the model. How's it? I've been looking too much into the official low poly thread.. >.< Anyway, mudbox or zbrush? which one should I learn first? & How do modeler unwarp uv? mine looks like sucky.

Here's the pic



and i'm using maya 2010..

Heartless

Whoa, how did your model jump up to 1600 tris?

I don't recommend learning Mudbox or zBrush at this point. Learn to be fairly good at low poly modeling with just Maya and Photoshop for textures.

Unwrapping UVW's is a total pain and is pretty much everyone's least favorite part. I use 3DS Max so can't help ya there. But for characters, you usually draw seams and pelt map. Youtube should have plenty of tutorials for that. If not, Lynda.com has a lot of Maya tutorials at a decent price.

Komalrajsingh

No I have 4 models so they jumped to 1600. >.< my mistake sorry.. so they are actually 402. Which is still high according to me and I cant seem to delete any more of the faces. I'll stop worrying about the texture for now and concentrate on my modelling. Trying to learn zbrush 3(I had zbrush 3 installed). So texturing stress will be later on the future.

Anyway, can you tell me what do you actually do when you think about unwrapping a 3d model as in the steps/precautions you take?

@ BorisK: Thnanks for the youtube video. They are really helpful.

Heartless

402 isn't that high. I'd say give yourself a little more slack and limit it to 500.

Your unwraps on the right of your last image look fine, those are all using one texture image right?. Mirroring the UV coordinates to save space is always good. On the chest piece, what I'd do is straighted the left and right edges vertically without stretching too much. It'll make for better packing in your texture and it will be a bit easier to texture if the map is flat and not skewed. Same with the legs.

keres

Maya unwrapping tools are a nightmare, in my opinion. Go and bind some keyboard shortcuts to the menu items "Selection->Convert Selection to UVs" in the UV Texture Editor, because you'll be doing that quite a bit. I just can't seem to get used to the whole "mouse gestures" thing. You'll also be using "Polygons->Split UV" quite a bit. I'm by no means a master at Maya's seemingly horrid UV tools, but that should point you in the right direction.

Also, if you aren't away of this shortcut yet, shift+RMB (hold) brings up a context menu where you can quickly flick the mouse down and extrude a surface. After a while of using Maya I finally found that out it's much faster than using the shelf.

Alex3d

Unless you are targeting strategy games, I think your model is too low in geometry. If you wish to use it in games, you would need to rig it and you need at least 3 loops around the joints for them to bend properly. Try avoiding hard edges, because if you plan to use normal maps extensively, even they won`t help you in masking sharp geometry on the outline.

Komalrajsingh

Damn texturing is a bitch if you dont know what you are doing. I think i'll stick to modelling for now. Have to improve on my modelling part.

I tried to make the leg rounder. So how is it now? And is this how the face is supposed to be made? Is there any way I can reduce the poly count?


And I made this Ace Ac low poly model. Happy with the poly count. Though should be smaller than this. Was stuck with texturing it. Is there any tutorials available in the net that might be useful regarding how to make a texture?


Unwrapping is always gonna be a bitch.. Is just takes getting used to. Which i sadly am not.

Heartless

The legs are lookin' a lot better. If you really must reduce the poly count, remove the nose and ears. They are very small details that won't even really be seen.

Sorry, unfortunately I've never come across any good basic texturing tutorials.

I mainly learn from checking out the Low Poly thread which has a lot of good work and tips. Also, I look at sites like this: http://www.textures-resource.com/

It's got a lot of texture rips from video games.

The texture itself is all just art. The only way to get good at it is to get good at drawing and coloring in Photoshop, which their are plenty of tutorials on DeviantArt.

Also, don't be so obsessed with poly counts. I think you're forcing yourself too much. Just keep your low poly around 500 and keep pumpin' out models. Being able to do more with less polys mainly comes naturally with experience.

d2king10

I wrote a tutorial not too long ago that has a section about UV unwrapping in Maya. Once you get the hang of it, you can unwrap pretty fast.

Check it out here: http://jasongordy.com/pages/tutorial/page1.html

Robbyh

you can realy do 2 things.

first one is do a highpoly sculpt and paint it in zbrush. but that wont look 100% well..

or secondly do the normal thing everyone else here suggested !

id go for the second ! just sayng there are other options, but results.. wont be as good !

Komalrajsingh

Removed the those nose and ears happy with poly count for now. Anyway, here's a uv unwrap of my model I made with the checkered texture and the UV. How's it?



And thanks for the tutorials. Those were a loads of help.. and does anyone know how to get that 8bit feel in maya or i'd have to use a diff program?

Don Karnage

There's quite a bit of unused UV space there.

Psyk0

Komalrajsingh wrote: »

Is there any way I can reduce the poly count?

I think you're already at a micro poly stage...the only benefit you would have is to redistribute your optimized polys to the silhouette to make it smoother. Also, joints need support loops to bend properly.

Assign a 100% black material on the mesh and check the silhouette from all angles. If you have edges within the silhouette that contribute nothing to its shape, you can remove them or move them around to modify the silhouette / make it smoother.

Some examples:

-You could get rid of the edge on the top of the skull that serves no purpose or make the profile of the skull rounder.

-You could get rid of the center edge in the back, doing so means UV shell can't be mirrored, that'll make the profile blocky too.

-Edges on the tibia are running close together, could possibly be removed or placed more efficiently.

-You have edges on the feet that aren't doing anything for the silhouette, move them around so you don't have box feet.

Komalrajsingh

Do we have to use every space available? Anyway re-did the male. Its tris-244. So happy with the poly count.


And here's a new character I made. It's a cowboy. I'm good with the way I have cut his UV. Was making his texture but it looked crappy so left it.

Heartless

You normally want to keep all your pieces in one UV map, especially for low poly. Also, make sure to always look at your pieces to find parts that are repeated. Like his hat. If you cut the brim into 4th's, all the pieces are the same, so no need to include them all separately, they can be overlapped.

Komalrajsingh

Been busy with my college assignments had to make a mini cooper and a horse. Anyway, here's the updated UV for the cowboy. And how do you draw in photoshop? Do you use paint on 3d model for that? And are there any basic tuts for that so that i can get the hang of it?

Bruno Afonseca

I don't get the point of making stuff SO low poly as this. It seems to me that you're limiting yourself too much and making stuff look bad on purpose.
Only a nintendo DS would use such low poly stuff and they'd probably be heavily stylized to get around the hardware limitations. The anatomy on the man looks bad and it would be a huge pain to animate.

this is GREAT lowpoly reference, and you can download them: http://tomtallian.com/pages/tf2.html

Robbyh

Fonfa ^ Ive worked on a DS game before. its fun, and it helps you alot to see how much you can accomplish with so litle pollys.. you should give it a try !

Phil101

fonfa wrote: »

I don't get the point of making stuff SO low poly as this. It seems to me that you're limiting yourself too much and making stuff look bad on purpose.
Only a nintendo DS would use such low poly stuff and they'd probably be heavily stylized to get around the hardware limitations. The anatomy on the man looks bad and it would be a huge pain to animate.

this is GREAT lowpoly reference, and you can download them: http://tomtallian.com/pages/tf2.html

Its not really constructive to say he's trying to make it look bad on purpose is it? Low poly modelling is an important skill and for someone who is new its a good place to start.

What I would recommend Komalrajsingh is looking at the smoothing groups, there are so many limitations with low poly that your smoothing groups could help you avoid stuff that might be unessential.

Is low poly modelling something you are looking for a career in? You would be surprised how many small companies are setting up out there to take advantage of the hand held market. For many its a lost art but there's no better way to get disciplined with optimisation.

Steve Schulze

He's going to need some articulation at the hips and elbows. For a character that low poly, I'd consider making him at least partly segmented - make the legs seperate objects, for instance, so you don't need to spend a bunch of polys making the area there deform nicely.

There are a few places, notably hands and feet where you could save yourself a few tris. Think about what you'll actually be able to see at the resolution that a character this low is going to be displayed. lose the index finger and thumb from the hands and the poly down the middle of foot.

Consider whether you want to save polys versus texture space. If you're going for DS then polys are more valuable as you've got a very small hard limit on how many you can display on screen at a time. With this in mind, you can get rid of some polys around that centre line. You won't be able to mirror the mesh on the texture there any more, but you'll have a lower poly mesh.

Snader

You're sacrificing some really important shapes while leaving hardly-noticable detail intact. For instance the guy's upper legs are extremely thin and he's lacking any hips, but you did leave in the slight indent on the inside of the feet. The wrists also need some thickness, and I'm not sure of having a separate fingerplane is a good idea - seems blockhands would be more efficient.

Use a silhouette mode (flat textures, no wireframes, no shading) to check if you're spending triangles on the most important areas.


Here's a model in the same polygon range (267 tris) which might be of help:



I think what fonfa meant to say was 'you are using so few polygons there's not much wiggling room' and that you should use a bit higher polycount. I sort of agree. I've been screwing around with lowpoly for quite a bit and I've notices that if you go below 300 triangles, stuff gets very similar very fast. Using about 400-500 triangles you can have quite some different shapes though.

But what's most important is that you learn how to use triangles effectively and efficiently. Not the final polycount, but how much detail you get per triangle. And that involves a lot of learning how and where to prioritize.

edit: i'd go back to this version and build from there. The polycount is properly lowpoly (402 is okay for PSP, PS1, flash {and even for DS games if there's only 2-3 chars on screen} and iPhone games) but you could add a bit more detail.
-head can be much rounder if you shape it more like a geosphere.
-adjust cylinder sides to the thickness. ankles don't need 6 sides, but the shoulder could use more than 4)
-if it's an (almost) straight line that's in the middle, you could get rid of the symmetry line (see the prince's chest and crotch)

Good luck.

Steve Schulze

Ah yeah, that was the other thing I mean to mention. The double sided polys you've got on the hands are rendered twice, so each one counts as two polys.