Home 3D Art Showcase & Critiques

LOW-POLY ART

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polycounter lvl 19
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hawken polycounter lvl 19
This is the sweet spot for your low-poly models. Post 'em if you've got 'em!

Low-poly hasn't really been a requirement in the games industry for a long while now. This thread is for low-poly art style appreciation, so please take note of these rough guidelines:
  • Keep models under 1,000 triangles.
  • Scenes are fine, if all models are low poly.
Some dedicated low-poly modelling tools now exist that make this art style a lot easier to produce; Crocotile3D & Blockbench

Here's a handy list of ways to make your art look right in mainstream 3D software: Low-Poly Art Style Guide

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  • Cap Hotkill
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    Cap Hotkill polycounter lvl 13
    weird, In Modo, I just select the Edges, and i delete them, same when i want to edit a Trised model and make it into quads, i just select the edges and i delete them.
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    well yeah it does work in those cases just not in this one it seems haha.
  • acc
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    acc polycounter lvl 18
    With a model that simple the easiest way to reduce the count would just be to remake the handle from scratch. It's a cylinder with a couple of extrusions, it should only take a moment to remake. If it doesn't only take a moment then that's a good sign you need the practice anyways.
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    acc wrote: »
    With a model that simple the easiest way to reduce the count would just be to remake the handle from scratch. It's a cylinder with a couple of extrusions, it should only take a moment to remake. If it doesn't only take a moment then that's a good sign you need the practice anyways.

    yeah already redone anyway haha.

    Buster_Sword_02.png
    Texture WIP at the moment, only blade and handle done.
  • Zoid
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    Zoid polycounter lvl 14
    weird, In Modo, I just select the Edges, and i delete them, same when i want to edit a Trised model and make it into quads, i just select the edges and i delete them.

    the marking menu gives you cursor-anywhere popups, it has the tool
    defaulted in the shift + RightMouseButton options.

    your hand stays on the left side of the keyboard, cntrl and shift keys = marking menus, alt for camera. move/rotate/scale (w,e,r) and d,x,c,v are for all the snap and pivot alterations.

    [delete] and [backspace] by default are the function "doDelete;" which removes selected lines or faces, but does not alter geometry (vertices) until a vertex is left with < 2 lines connecting to it.

    "doDelete;" does nothing on vertices on their own.
    4550272044_7d4a773417_o.jpg
    you use this feature to alter loops or line directions without having to alter vertex count.

    the function "polyDelEdge" will remove lines and connected vertices, but not faces. ("performPolyDeleteElements;" does the same thing it seems and probably a redundancy The Autodesk decided to create)

    Maya is a low level, node based, modular tools system; all complex actions are derived from basic, robust, tools

    you can set/alter hot keys, you can add the function to a shelf
    or use the marking menu.
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    Zoid wrote: »
    the marking menu gives you cursor-anywhere popups, it has the tool
    defaulted in the shift + RightMouseButton options.

    your hand stays on the left side of the keyboard, cntrl and shift keys = marking menus, alt for camera. move/rotate/scale (w,e,r) and d,x,c,v are for all the snap and pivot alterations.

    [delete] and [backspace] by default are the function "doDelete;" which removes selected lines or faces, but does not alter geometry (vertices) until a vertex is left with < 2 lines connecting to it.

    "doDelete;" does nothing on vertices on their own.
    4550272044_7d4a773417_o.jpg
    you use this feature to alter loops or line directions without having to alter vertex count.

    the function "polyDelEdge" will remove lines and connected vertices, but not faces. ("performPolyDeleteElements;" does the same thing it seems and probably a redundancy The Autodesk decided to create)

    Maya is a low level, node based, modular tools system; all complex actions are derived from basic, robust, tools

    you can set/alter hot keys, you can add the function to a shelf
    or use the marking menu.

    ah cool ill keep that inh mind in the future.

    Buster_Sword_Final_01.png finshed buster sword! it's nowhere near as good as some of the other stuff posted but oh well just got to keep practicing!
  • Piflik
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    Piflik polycounter lvl 12
    That's not quite what I meant, when I said you should get rid of the NGons...cutting new vertices adds to the tricount, whereas connecting existing vertices doen't...also your texel density is quite inhomogeneous...
  • odium
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    odium polycounter lvl 18
    Its a bit of a mixed bag in many regards, from poly distribution to texture scale.

    First of all, in regards to texture, use a checker pattern as your texture and make sure that every area not only is actually mapped (i.e no stretched UVs), but also that everything is mapped to the correct and same scale. This would mean that each square of your checker texture would be the same size no matter where it is on the mesh. Looking at your texture above you can see this would not be the case. The base of the handle for example, takes up more width in pixels than the blade, even though the blade is 5 times wider. The base of the blade is seriously stretched on your texture, but for no reason. So, you have to keep everything 1:1. Another important tip is that you don't have to use a 1:1 texture size. Keep the texture power of two, but use any combination you like. Your texture is 333x333, which would look horrible, much worse than a 256x256.

    In other words, use any of the following: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096. For this asset, I would imagine you using 256x128.

    In regards to the actual mesh the same can be said about that, too. You have a lot of splits there that will bump the polycount up but add nothing to the mesh itself. Whats more, for the actual resolution and scale of this mesh, you have a hell of a lot of splits in the handle and have it split 3 times. You could actually have the handle be a single 8 sided tube and nobody would ever tell the difference.
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    Piflik wrote: »
    That's not quite what I meant, when I said you should get rid of the NGons...cutting new vertices adds to the tricount, whereas connecting existing vertices doen't...also your texel density is quite inhomogeneous...

    ah yes i did triangulate it but the amount of triangles looked weird and messy. ill go back and just retriangulate it although im not quite sure what you mean by my texel density is inhomogeneous.
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    odium wrote: »
    Its a bit of a mixed bag in many regards, from poly distribution to texture scale.

    First of all, in regards to texture, use a checker pattern as your texture and make sure that every area not only is actually mapped (i.e no stretched UVs), but also that everything is mapped to the correct and same scale. This would mean that each square of your checker texture would be the same size no matter where it is on the mesh. Looking at your texture above you can see this would not be the case. The base of the handle for example, takes up more width in pixels than the blade, even though the blade is 5 times wider. The base of the blade is seriously stretched on your texture, but for no reason. So, you have to keep everything 1:1. Another important tip is that you don't have to use a 1:1 texture size. Keep the texture power of two, but use any combination you like. Your texture is 333x333, which would look horrible, much worse than a 256x256.

    In other words, use any of the following: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096. For this asset, I would imagine you using 256x128.

    In regards to the actual mesh the same can be said about that, too. You have a lot of splits there that will bump the polycount up but add nothing to the mesh itself. Whats more, for the actual resolution and scale of this mesh, you have a hell of a lot of splits in the handle and have it split 3 times. You could actually have the handle be a single 8 sided tube and nobody would ever tell the difference.

    ah excelent thanks, ill completely revise this now. thanks for the help.

    is there a way to delete a post by the way?
  • Wex
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    Wex polycounter lvl 12
    I tried to make a new thread for this, but apparently I need to be approved for posting? In the meantime I figured I'll post it here because it's low poly. It's my first ever character model. Mostly I'm having trouble with the hair and UV mapping in general.... Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! :)

    lowpoly.png
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    busterblade.png

    Inhomogenous texel density = some parts have more detailed textures then other parts. For instance your blade is lots bigger then the handle, but gets the same texture space. In my example all the pixels are roughly the same in the 3d view (though the handle is a bit stretched) which makes the model look more consistent after texturing.

    I use max so can't help you with Maya problems, sorry.

    I think only mods can delete posts.
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    excelent thanks for the help, ill certaintly keep this in mind, i didn't know about trying to keep the UV scaling the same and such. thanks everyone for helping!
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Wex wrote: »
    I tried to make a new thread for this, but apparently I need to be approved for posting? In the meantime I figured I'll post it here because it's low poly. It's my first ever character model. Mostly I'm having trouble with the hair and UV mapping in general.... Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! :)

    face.png
    As you can see, the head has a really pointy silhouette, by getting rid of the red lines, anc implementing the green lines, you could save a bunch of polies, which could then be used to round out the head. It looks like you're just mirroring the model, with very little effort you can usually collapse some verts there to free up tens of polies.

    What's the problem specifically you're having with the hair?

    You would still have plenty of animation freedom in the eyes, as shown by ScoobyDoofus's avatar:
    avatar13805_3.gif
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    didnt feel it worth making a whole new thread about. tryed to keep everything in scale texture wise with this one. before shinking to fit the squares seemed to be of the same size and well spaced. is all looking reasonably good so far? its a man eating plant :)

    itbeshit.png
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Yeah that looks quite ok. Though you could change a few things, for instance the stem could be only 4-5 sided at the bottom, and then you could reuse those polies to shape the leaf a bit better, or add an extra (half) loop in the stem to make it deform better.

    And the head could use quite some optimization. The sphere type you're using there isn't a great one. In this case i would probably go with a subdivided cube to make texturing easier(it unwraps just like a cube), or if you want to save some extra polies you could manually optimize this and you could keep the current unwrap.
    spheres_and_polycounts.png

    I would also make the middle 3 rows of polygons a single row, and put the teeth in as planes, because right now you have a loop in the back of the head that doesn't do anything for the silhouette.

    You could also remove a few polies in the back of the mouth, as that's not seen often/up close (I assume)

    But these things are more about saving polies then they are about texturing.

    Oh, i would scale up the texture islands, it looks like you have sometimes 20 pixels in between, which is overkill, even with filtering. And without filtering you canput the pixels literally adjacent to eachother:
    lasertrooper.giflasertroopermap.gif
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    thanks for the really good advice, i tryed to do everything you said and it saved loads of tris, thanks!
    i tryed upscaling the islands but i was concerned about keeping everything in scale, one of the things i went about so badly before.
    better.png

    Edit:

    Scrap that, i was too eager to start texturing i already did it haha. what do you guys think?

    Plant_final_03.png

    Also how do you make those cool little spinning GIF's?
  • Cap Hotkill
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    Cap Hotkill polycounter lvl 13
    Very nice Cactus!
  • acc
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    acc polycounter lvl 18
    Looks great, Cactus.

    Since it's low poly you may want to use the texture to describe the form more, like darkening the inside of the head and putting a shadow under the ridge of the pot. Right now it blends together too much.

    Meanwhile, the seam between the stem and head isn't blended enough.
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    acc wrote: »
    Looks great, Cactus.

    Since it's low poly you may want to use the texture to describe the form more, like darkening the inside of the head and putting a shadow under the ridge of the pot. Right now it blends together too much.

    Meanwhile, the seam between the stem and head isn't blended enough.

    yeah i wish i could darken the inside of the mouth but the outside texture is reflected on the inside because its just a planes thick, but yeah ill make sure to go through and add more shading in places. that seam between the head and stem has been a nightmare haha ive almost got it down though.
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    Since every tooth is 1 quad wide, how about making the quads tris? Would fit the 'teeth' quite perfectly. And yeah, darkening the mouth is definitely something to do, as well as some other shading. Sacrifice some of the polies you just recaptured, and spend them on a rudimentary mouth. You can then also weld the back of the head and the stem together, should make it easier to get rid of the seam.

    Creative solution for the throat though, and the textures materials look great.
  • d2king10
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    d2king10 polycounter lvl 12
    The base for the TD game I am working on:

    base.png
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    Snader wrote: »
    Since every tooth is 1 quad wide, how about making the quads tris? Would fit the 'teeth' quite perfectly. And yeah, darkening the mouth is definitely something to do, as well as some other shading. Sacrifice some of the polies you just recaptured, and spend them on a rudimentary mouth. You can then also weld the back of the head and the stem together, should make it easier to get rid of the seam.

    Creative solution for the throat though, and the textures materials look great.

    Yeah your right Ill reconstruct the mouth, got to use polys as much as save them haha. Also the head is weilded to the stem, I just need to make adjustment to the texture and it will look fine I hope haha.

    Also dam nice looking base d2king10
  • mrmmaclean
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    mrmmaclean polycounter lvl 8
    downarmy wrote: »
    edit: oups wrong thread sorry its around 5k

    More like 15000 triangles. You should edit out the picture too...
  • krisCrash
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    krisCrash polycounter lvl 9
    Ah I love everything in this thread, it's made me join the forum

    I wanted to give low-poly a try as well, here I am trying to make a face that isn't so flat, to make it work from more angles
    face2.png
    I've been working on some stuff the past couple of days too, will post soon :D but I am not much good at textures I am afraid, working on it.
  • Cap Hotkill
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    Cap Hotkill polycounter lvl 13
    Very nice krisCrash and Welcome to PC! :D
  • Rang3r1
    My third attempt at organic ever, I realized that I am too much of a hard surface guy and I need lots and lots and lots of practice, and I suck at texturing as well. Any suggestions, tips, tricks?

    ~750 tris, 1 512 diff and one 256 alpha

    quilava1.jpg
  • odium
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    odium polycounter lvl 18
    GOTTA GET DEM CLAY AND CARDBOARD POKEMANS!!
  • krisCrash
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    krisCrash polycounter lvl 9
    @Cap Hotkill: Thank you!
    boy there's a lot of people with KILL in their usernames here :P

    @Rang3r1
    What a coincidence, I have been making pokemans too
    froslassrotation.gif
    They are pretty fun to model, actually
    700 tris
    Working on this guy as well, I am really proud though it has a long way to go before it's finished
    mis2.png
    thinking of redoing the UVs on a more rectangular map, then maybe I can have the whole body and neck in one piece with no seams, just a seam for the head and the arms. Maybe he should have a fancy battle outfit
  • Rang3r1
    I know, right? I have no idea what I am doing with the skin, if only it was a weapon, lol.
  • Otixa
    medkit.jpg

    After a lot of lurking... FIRST POST! :O

    Anyway, just a quickie done in an hour or so.
    Am I allowed to use normals or is that considered a cheat? :D
    I do love my smooth edges
  • Cap Hotkill
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    Cap Hotkill polycounter lvl 13
    you could use a Blue Print, that would make it easier
  • andersh
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    andersh polycounter lvl 10
    Hey guys, here's the art I made for the game I used to propose to my girlfriend with. Its all very low poly, it is a unity web game you can play over on my web site.

    dinnerLove_characters01.jpg
    dinnerLove_foods01.jpg
    dinnerLove_screenshot01.jpg
  • Spacey
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    Spacey polycounter lvl 18
    andersh wrote: »
    Hey guys, here's the art I made for the game I used to propose to my girlfriend with. Its all very low poly, it is a unity web game you can play over on my web site.

    You have inadvertently stolen my heart as well. Great job on the whole thing <3
  • Cap Hotkill
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    Cap Hotkill polycounter lvl 13
    That Ramen Bowl looks soo tasty! I can has some? ^^

    Btw, that was amazing, I almost had tears of joy at the end of the video ^^
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    wow thats such a great idea, looks well made and it worked! hurray :D

    cactus_final_01.png

    made a cactus as is my name sake. tryed some shading this time, shame i couldnt match the textures up properlly, it was too hard :(
  • odium
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    odium polycounter lvl 18
    Why did you unwrap it in such a way? You could have unwrapped each "tube" as one whole piece, thus with no seams. You could possibly have only mapped half of either that main mesh and mirrored that, OR mapped half the floor and mirrored that, and then fit the whole thing on a 128x256 texture with no wasted space.

    Textures fine, if a little odd for a cactus :p
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    odium wrote: »
    Why did you unwrap it in such a way? You could have unwrapped each "tube" as one whole piece, thus with no seams. You could possibly have only mapped half of either that main mesh and mirrored that, OR mapped half the floor and mirrored that, and then fit the whole thing on a 128x256 texture with no wasted space.

    Textures fine, if a little odd for a cactus :p

    Yeah I really need to re-unwrap, I'll try those tips thanks. With no seams this cactus will truely be fantasticoooo!
  • Bruno Afonseca
    Yeah I really need to re-unwrap, I'll try those tips thanks. With no seams this cactus will truely be fantasticoooo!

    you can make your shading with vertex colours. that´s how a lot of older games did it, and even recent handheld games.
  • CactusFantastico
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    CactusFantastico polycounter lvl 12
    fonfa wrote: »
    you can make your shading with vertex colours. that´s how a lot of older games did it, and even recent handheld games.

    oh yeah a guy from TT Fusion came down to my class a couple of months ago and talkedn about making indiana jones DS and showed us vertex lighting. shame i forgot how haha oh well, good old google lol
  • Raider
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    Raider polycounter lvl 9
    that tower is looking sweet man :D
  • zenarion
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    zenarion polycounter lvl 17
    Proposed "in-game" view size:
    screenshop_mockup.jpg
    Close-up:
    toon_soldiers.jpg
    Lessons learned: Textures are hard. Practice more!
    Unwrapping is governed by what bits of the model will be seen the most.
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    What kind of soldier is that?
    The hat is WW1 English, the rifle looks like some sort of AK-47 and the uniform looks British but with German colors
  • odium
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    odium polycounter lvl 18
    Your ingame view size is in a random resolution ive never seen before... it LOOKS like iPhone scale, but not resolution. My advice would be to always preview stuff at the final resolution just so you know what works.

    Also, if that is final scale, dont you think hes al ittle too big? you wont see much of anything else action wise with him that size.
  • Harry
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    Harry polycounter lvl 13
    zenarion wrote: »
    Proposed "in-game" view size:
    screenshop_mockup.jpg
    Close-up:
    toon_soldiers.jpg
    Lessons learned: Textures are hard. Practice more!
    Unwrapping is governed by what bits of the model will be seen the most.

    painting looks reasonably solid but you should pay more attention to the overall shapes, the head looks weird, particularly the eyes slanting inward on extreme angles
  • zenarion
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    zenarion polycounter lvl 17
    Thanks for the crits guys.
    Soldier is just based of some existing real-world things. The game he is supposed to go in will be a blend of WW1 and fantasy/steampunk.
    Game resolution isn't really set. The programmer is experimenting a bit with it. Game will be run from Unity Web player if all goes well.
    Will have to take a look at the unwrap of the head.
  • d2king10
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    d2king10 polycounter lvl 12
    Alright, been keeping busy working on the Tower defense game for my university final (due monday), and here it is so far:

    HordeZonepic1.png

    HordeZonepic2.png
  • jondo22
    hi all, i love this thread! thanks guys, so here is my first contribution


    helicoy.jpg
  • krisCrash
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    krisCrash polycounter lvl 9
    d2king10: you have a really cool style going with these, it seems to have some humour! loving the colourful textures
  • Ajax
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    Ajax polycounter lvl 18
    Scrapped prototype ~800 tris rigged, about 3 hours. parts are swappable

    5-7-2010%2011-31-00%20AM.png
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