Hey peeps i need some help =]
Hey guys/gals i need some general help, first day on here 
,
This is probably not the first time you heard what i will say, but here it goes:
I study computer science, and so does 3 of my other friends, we are really serios, and we started making a game, im going to do the part of the 3D moduling for now + work on coding aswell , the game we're making is in C# using XNA graphic libraries, its going to be an isomytric point of view RPG.
I have had around 3-4 months of working with blender, but i have no idea if im up for it or not, i made a few basic things like houses, characters (not rigged or animated).:shifty:
I would like to recieve any general hints that could help me cut my time isntead of going all through google looking things.:poly121:
My current problem is making a character using few polys, or actually, im not sure HOWMANY is concidered few. the game as i said will be from a far isomytric point of view ( like old diablo games, exept in 3D) so the character doesnt have to be too fancy looking sense the cam doesnt zoom in at any time, not that i can make any fancy modules like on this forum (stunned).
The plan is that the game will be an MMO, so the screen will have over 15-20 characters/npcs at a time sometimes, so im guessing poly count will be concidered much in the FPS (frames per second).
Need to learn next (could use help with) : low poly sculpting, rigging, animating. :thumbup:
The community here looks great, i hope ill get the help i need :poly121:
Like i said ANY general tips will be really great, i know im supposed to learn everything the hard way, but im a quick learner, and learning the hardway takes more time that i cannot afford
P.S: im less of an artist, more of an engineer,if it makes any sense.
,This is probably not the first time you heard what i will say, but here it goes:
I study computer science, and so does 3 of my other friends, we are really serios, and we started making a game, im going to do the part of the 3D moduling for now + work on coding aswell , the game we're making is in C# using XNA graphic libraries, its going to be an isomytric point of view RPG.
I have had around 3-4 months of working with blender, but i have no idea if im up for it or not, i made a few basic things like houses, characters (not rigged or animated).:shifty:
I would like to recieve any general hints that could help me cut my time isntead of going all through google looking things.:poly121:
My current problem is making a character using few polys, or actually, im not sure HOWMANY is concidered few. the game as i said will be from a far isomytric point of view ( like old diablo games, exept in 3D) so the character doesnt have to be too fancy looking sense the cam doesnt zoom in at any time, not that i can make any fancy modules like on this forum (stunned).
The plan is that the game will be an MMO, so the screen will have over 15-20 characters/npcs at a time sometimes, so im guessing poly count will be concidered much in the FPS (frames per second).
Need to learn next (could use help with) : low poly sculpting, rigging, animating. :thumbup:
The community here looks great, i hope ill get the help i need :poly121:
Like i said ANY general tips will be really great, i know im supposed to learn everything the hard way, but im a quick learner, and learning the hardway takes more time that i cannot afford
P.S: im less of an artist, more of an engineer,if it makes any sense.
Replies
Sadly I don't think you're going to get much of a helpful response around here with that
For some Blender specific help I suggest taking a look through the links posted in the Blender - What to read up on... thread.
As far as making it easier to actually complete this project, I'd say drop the first M (Massively) from your MMO and perhaps try for MO (Multiplayer Online) instead. Unless of course you think you're going to be one of the less than 0.001% of successful MMO projects out there.
Another thing you might want to consider is pre-rendering your characters as 2D sprites (think Final Fantasy Tactics), that might lessen the technical complexities of what you are up against in terms of what you already know a lot.
Feel free to disregard my suggestions if you don't care about completing your game and are happy to end with a "learning experience".
Good luck!
Greetings and welcome to the POLYCOUNT!
Here you will find the tips and tricks required to beef up your 3d art skills.
You say that you are good with blender but you dont know what the low polygon count for the game art is.
For characters, there are people who make their models around 3000 triangles - 6000 triangles, depending on the project and the certain range of polygon per character and per environment one can go with.
If it is MMO and you are thinking of populating the environment, consider 3k triangles per character.
Also, I assume you guys already started working in XNA / C# but it isnt a good idea. Instead, Most Game studios would go for C++ Win32 API and Directx programming. Just something to consider when you finish the project. Last time I was there, it said that one must have a C# Express compiler in order to run the game (I could be wrong.) =\
Anyways, As for sculpting. You should try looking in to Sculptris by Pixologic which is free. Or you can sculpt a high res model within blender. (High res doesnt require the polycount).
Good luck.
And welcome again.:)
EDIT: Before you google anything, do check out the pimp and preview section of the polycount. Look for Character arts and their final rendered piece. Many of them have tri count stated. This will give you an idea of how many tris would one character requires.
Also, do check:
GameDev.NET
DreamInCode.NET
Also never said that im that good with blender, im new to it , only 3 months in, and i never said that english was my first language =]
Also regarding the C++ suggestion, we looked into it, and C++ is A LOT more work than C# sense i did a small project with it once, and it takes double of the time of the making only for fixing bugs (and so far there are only 4 of us) , so we went C# and XNA, and we can compile it fine with visual studio =]
Oh wait, did you mean the players will need it to run the game? sounds weird, ill look into that! thanks for the heads up!
Thanks for the warm welcome, any (ANY!!) other tips or ideas about things we should think about in programming/ sculpting will be DEEPLY appreciated !!!!
The MMO part might be big i agree, but even if it doesnt go, the code will stay, hence we can always improve, i think we will stick with C# and XNA eitherway because its a good balance between ease and preformance in technicallity, at least from what we saw .
PLEASE feel free to tell any friends that might know about this to give us tips,the given ones where great! we could use all the tips we get, even if we discard them , they are ALL apprecciated!
P.S: the game is a multiplayer RPG, i think i didnot mention that one, and about the progress , we have more code than modules,we're using a basic model and writing code to define the movements, collisions, terrain etc.., like i said, im not that good with blender/sculpting, and im not sure howgood im supposed to be, sense the characters will be shown from a far isyometric angel.
Again, thanks for the welcome!
If your project really starts taking shape as in having a playable demo with temporary programmer art, then you can also try to recruit some artists in the Requests section (for unpaid) or the Freelance Jobs (for pay per model) or Paid Job Postings (if you're a legit company hiring paid employees) sections depending on what your needs and ability to pay/hire are.
I highly recommend that you don't try to do this until you have at least a playable demo that people can try out or a video of gameplay on youtube for people to watch. If you don't have at least one of those things it's highly likely that no one will take your project seriously.
I truly do wish you and your team the best of success
Perhaps take a look at Spiral Knights, it's an isometric MMO. (made in java)
To be honest, it was my lucky guess and past experience with xna since I have worked with that framework. Back than they really pushed it for just XBox live games. For PC games, we used to attach the C# express compiler with it.
I havent looked back at it ever since. And 3-6k was also my guess based on the models for games that were posted in PnP.
my second suggestion was to keep the poly count as low as possible with good enough detail to make the player understand what it is...
If you have a better idea besides referring to other games and all, do share.