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LOW-POLY ART

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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  • sahil
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    sahil polycounter lvl 8
    Gorman
    texture made ​​dirty because it was conceived
    023bxe.jpg023bxe.jpg
  • Kordman916
    Does anyone out there have any methods or tutorials for modeling low-poly cars/ vehicles?

    I've been through the entire thread and I'd love to learn how to model cars too!
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    First note: I'm not hatin' on you, or anyone else. Or trying to say that you shouldn't post here. I love all y'all!

    That said, Perhaps this arm might be better suited to the WAYWO thread or your own (sketchbook) thread - especially if you plan on doing more with this.

    I'm gonna go and say that 840 tris is quite a lot for a single arm. At 840 tris per arm you'd end up with a character of 4000~5000 polygons, not exactly lowpoly. By comparison, this guy is 1628 triangles -a bit under two of your arms- and could still serve as a background character in contemporary games.

    The point of this thread is not an exact polycount (though I admit I've used it as a solid limit a couple of times just for kicks) but more a certain mindset. For instance props in current games can be relatively low on tris (especially walls, crates) but they have advanced shaders. Heck, I've seen props in Mirror's Edge that were literally a box with textures. On the other end there are props with relatively small textures and high polycounts, such as trees which use a tiled bark and 2~3 branch variations. So the pure limits for a specific object are very different.

    The important question you should ask yourself is not 'am I under 1000▲ and using a 256²' but rather 'if I were making a 3DS/iPhone game, would/could/should I do this?'. For most other characters it wouldn't work. There are a few exceptions, like Guitar Hero and Tekken, which are focused on 1 or 2 characters. And if God is the only character, or if he's at this size all the time, or if this his entire model (things which are quite plausible for the character of God, actually) it could work. But in most cases you should not use this many polygons on an arm. Low-poly is not about specific numbers, it's a whole mindset.

    Aside from this mentality of considering real world application, I've found out that I (and likely you) learn the MOST when you push yourself the MOST. I'm not the only one who's noticed this either: lifehacker has a related article. Example:it's doable to make (fully featured) a hand in 500 triangles. It's tricky to do it with 200. Damn near impossible in under 100 triangles. But when you DO manage, you have a far better understanding of which bits and pieces are the most important.

    With that said,
    I dare/challenge anyone reading this to make an arm+hand under 200 triangles.
    Make it as detailed as possible. Try to aim for at least having individual fingers. Push yourself.

    The one who manages to impress me the most (not necessarily the best looking, can also be most improvement or something else) wins... hmm... oh! This, which seems appropriate for a game-art forum. =)


    Lastly:
    Kordman - you open a program, take a box and some cylinders, and you modify them a bunch. Modify them how you think it would look nicest. Then you post it here and we can give specific feedback on specific questions. Your request is too vague, kind of like asking 'how do I fix my car' to a mechanic. For now: gather reference and check how others tackle stuff, pay attention to the silhouette, and think about in-game use (which angle is most important, do you need to include an interior, etc).

    paradise.engineering - you think you could spare a few tris to round out the garbage can? Or, you could use this, and even save some triangles! Yours is 40 tris without bottom, mine is 38.

    gilesruscoe - the ears feel weird. They look too soft/floppy to be sticking up in the air. I also think the texture could use a bit more work; the tail and feet are quite low in detail (toes?) and he could use an extra 'material'.

    TAN - you see how much of the shape you still have, at almost half the resources? That's HUGE savings!
  • paradise.engineering
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    paradise.engineering polycounter lvl 11
    thank you for the idea Snader, i think that would be better although my trash can has 30 tris atm with bottom - cause i didnt make the top edge
    10 sides instead of 6 with only 10 triangles more is really a great deal.

    edit: i had to use 12 cause of the uv..
    the_tramp-anim.gif

    added more tris on his belly
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Snader: Challenge accepted!:

    Heres what i could come up with, 200 tri's exactly:
    armpic.jpg

    armtt.gif

    Also i agree with you about the blandness of my orange monster,, needs some kind of belly material to seperate out the skin, rushed him though and layed down the basics, might go back to him when i have some time (getting university stuff sorted out atm which is a pain in the ass).
  • renderhjs
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    renderhjs sublime tool
    gilesruscoe: with just 4 sides for the arm, does it really need all 5 fingers with all those 3 sides and intersections?
    It looks that you wanted to save tris with the arm, but went super detailed at the finger area. Also it needs a lot more vertex pushing, to many continues straight line flows even though you added intersections - but they do not change the silhouette - like wasted extra tris.
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Well, i knocked it out in like 5mins, more of a topology test then silhouette (not sure why i bothered with the gif) elow and forearm can be alot smoother if you push out some verts and fiddle with it, same with the area where the thumb meets the hand. Snader said to try and include all 5 seperate fingers, which is why they are like that, 3 sides is the minimum you can have without them just being flat planes (which looks very odd unless you have an almost flat hand too). And seeming as each finger was seperate i figured they may aswell be posable, so i chucked in some collapsable geo on the joints.
    Im pretty sure, however, there is a better way of doing the hands, i saw some picture of blizzard's nightelf hands somewhere and they had some awesome shit going on.
  • beancube
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    beancube polycounter lvl 17
    gg_scoutship_01.jpg

    Enemy Ship for Unity Title - 580tris.
  • fabio brasilien
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    fabio brasilien polycounter lvl 11
    beancube: nice stuff!
    snader: great tips and I liked the idea of "arm chalenge"... :)
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Beancube thats brilliant, the fresnel shader does the model so many favours too...
  • TAN
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    TAN polycounter lvl 12
    Thanks Snider :D I will keep making the models :D
  • rooster
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    rooster mod
    dig it beancube and paradise.engineering (great colours) :)
  • Xaltar
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    Xaltar polycounter lvl 17
    Question about your challenge Snader, do you want textures too or just the geo?

    Either is cool, just means I will be done faster/slower :P

    edit: OK so I figure this is about the geometry so here is my entry, 200 tris on the dot.

    armbd.jpg

    This was fun :)
  • Psyk0
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    Psyk0 polycounter lvl 18
    Awesome beancube!

    SDK brainfart @ 256x128

    bobosdk.jpg
  • esquire
    Im really curious about getting that pixelated texture look at low res, in maya my textures are just very blurry, not clean/clear pixels. Is it filtering? Or AA? Any help?

    Also curious about starting and texturing a very low res texture 256x128 or 128x64. I could use some tips for packing my UVs and/or painting in photoshop.

    Thanks.
  • Xaltar
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    Xaltar polycounter lvl 17
    Turn off filtering and AA yeah. I use max tho so I am not sure what settings you would need to look at in Maya. I know someone wrote it down either in this thread or in the technical discussion thread just don't remember where.

    Psyc0: Tight texture their man, loving the detail and crispness.
  • esquire
    Thanks yeah I'll l;ook up the AA thing. Thanks.
  • willy-wilson
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    willy-wilson polycounter lvl 8
    In Maya its under shading>hardware texturing(option box)>unfiltered>and hit apply.
  • esquire
    Thanks a lot, that helped.
  • fabio brasilien
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    fabio brasilien polycounter lvl 11
    My "entry" :poly124:

    2qw0i9x.jpg

    Any crit?
  • Xaltar
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    Xaltar polycounter lvl 17
    Looking pretty good Fabio. You have put all your verts to work for you on the silhouette and the detail is pretty good. As for crits, your fingers only have 2 joints and only the index finger will bend properly without collapse, your elbow will collapse and lose form when bent a little too but it should hold up ok. Overall, while your model looks pretty tidy you seem to be thinking about it wrong, with this kind of low poly work you need to put tris to use better, 3 sided fingers will give you +/- 27 more tris to play with for example and hold up just as well at the resolution these models are intended to be used at. It looks like you built this adding detail untill you came close to the budget and called it done. I work the other way around, I make the arm as detailed as I want it adding every detail I can think of without overshooting the budget by a stupid amount; ie I start out with a 4 or 5 sided arm, 3 sided fingers etc and add all the details I need for a fully featured arm that will hold up to deformation without collapsing too badly. Typically at this point you will find yourself overbudget by a fair amount, then you set about optimizing your mesh. Welding 2 points of 2 loops together that do not add to the silhouette for example, reducing the number of sides of the arm in places where the extra side/sides are not needed in the silhouette, be creative with your use of tris, just because a vert is on the underside of the arm does not mean it can't add to the silhouette of the top or side of the arm. Don't be afraid of triangles and really push yourself to include as much detail as you can. On my "entry" :P I could have added a fair amount more detail if I hadn't made my fingers ready for rigging but if you have a look you will see that I used the additional tris needed for this to define the shape of the fingers from the side.

    What I love about this kind of challenge is that it really makes you think about your workflow. Hope you find this usefull and good luck to all :)
  • Snipergen
  • evilblah
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    evilblah polycounter lvl 18
    Wow Snipergen I really dig the character you have there! Any chance I could see a wireframe? I love looking at the break down on low poly stuff.
  • achillesian
    made a second one with extra deformation loop by main knuckles since you mentioned that in last submission.

    @fabio I think the 1 deformation helping loop you have on the index finger may be on the wrong side.

    FGDlz.png
  • paradise.engineering
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    paradise.engineering polycounter lvl 11
    pirate-painter-anim1.gif

    Not really finished but i got bored of it
    647 tris
    256x256 px text
  • Quack!
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    Quack! polycounter lvl 17
    So much sex here.

    Snipergen-That character has a ton of style using just a little information, nice!

    This is my noobish attempted at some work. Might expand this to a full scene of 256^2 textures.

    crate_1.jpg
  • Snipergen
    Thanks guys! Wires as requested!
    (Had a good look at spacey his TF2 lowpoly pack, so inspiring!)

    Quack - Awesome painting. Love the wood!

    wmTqa.png
  • willy-wilson
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    willy-wilson polycounter lvl 8
    Snipergen wrote: »
    Thanks guys! Wires as requested!
    (Had a good look at spacey his TF2 lowpoly pack, so inspiring!)

    Quack - Awesome painting. Love the wood!

    wmTqa.png

    that is awesome!

    heres something for today. Listen to this after you see it.

    Capture-149.png
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Looks nice, i'm guessing its for that gameboy you were working on? ^.-
  • willy-wilson
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    willy-wilson polycounter lvl 8
    Looks nice, i'm guessing its for that gameboy you were working on? ^.-
    yea i need to finish that but im always doing 100 things at once so
  • paradise.engineering
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    paradise.engineering polycounter lvl 11
    is it me or did you use too many polys on his neck?
  • Gorman
    Capture-149.png
    12 tris?!

    Please show the wire!!


    Joking, nice texture work :) Post the texture please?
  • sahil
  • willy-wilson
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    willy-wilson polycounter lvl 8
    here's the texture.

    LSDJTexture.png
  • TAN
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    TAN polycounter lvl 12
    OK. I am back :D I see that this thread is very lively :D

    I tried to make a " Shopping Women Zombie" for the previous game. Something close to that:

    11755281.jpg

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    256x256 Dİfuse Map. 479 Tris. Looking forward to hear for tips & tricks again :D

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  • paradise.engineering
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    paradise.engineering polycounter lvl 11
    GJ TAN. First of all try using a Flat Render. I can see some errors with the uv map where you've placed those golden circles.
    They way you made the arms atm will deform them in animations.
    Check this out, but don't mind the fingers
    2qw0i9x.jpg

    About your texture, i think you need to spend more time on it, try adding more details, being more subtle with shades and highlights cause atm it looks like you wanted to get it over with as fast as possible and you just threw some paint here and there.

    to quote green, it needs more love.

    edit: the arm is made by Fabio, and I'm not one of the experienced guys around.. sorry if i was harsh I just hope you rise your skills riding the learning curve :)
    Oh and take Snader's advices over mine any day! but i don't think that was the result he was guiding you to.
  • TAN
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    TAN polycounter lvl 12
    Thanks for all the tips and advices paradise.engineering. I can' t wait to see the day I will be as experienced as you guys :D

    Well I can't deny the golden circle thing :p
    Don' t worry about the arms. I didn' t put a good wireframe screenshot so you can not see it but at the joint points there are extra tris for deformation. I cared about that.

    Well you are right. I couldn' t find what else detail I could add ( it was 4:00 am ) and decided to put it here and get some advice. But now I look I think it could use a little more cockling on the dress.

    About the hard shades, Snader told me that I should not be afraid to paint on hard shades, so I went ahead. But now you said it I will think it again.


    Great arm modelling by the way paradise.engineering. Next model I am going to make will be closer to what you made I hope :D
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Some very bad paint over with some tips:
    tips.jpg
  • 9skulls
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    9skulls polycounter lvl 13
    Oh man, thanks TAN and sahil. You guys made my day.
  • TAN
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    TAN polycounter lvl 12
    @ gilesruscoe

    Forgive me. The screenshots I posted was really a bad choice. Here is a better one with discriptions.

    83490653.jpg

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    97678051.jpg

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    I guess you are right about the gold part. I thought it was shiny enough but what harm it could bring to make it more shiny ? :D

    Then what colour should I be using for my render backgrounds ? Something more lively ? I am open for any advice :)

    With due respect, I think the face proportions you show is kinda... I don' t know. Are you sure about ' em ?


    Meanwhile what is that " Tesco Bag" thing ? I always thought that the " shopping women" image was a bag of Prada or Beymen. But Tesco is something like a supermarket is not it ? Here is a high resulution of the difuse map. 1024x1024. If you look at the right hand bottom side you will see the bag part.

    diffuseo.jpg

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    @
    9skulls

    I guess that means it' s ... okay ? :D
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    I wasn't refering to your render background, i was talking about the colours used in your texture sheet, grey is, without doubt, the most boring thing to see in large amounts on a texture sheet, use colours, even if they are very desaturated tones, just not pure grey. The tesco bag was a joke, i know what your bag was supposed to be.
    As far as the shape goes, i still stand with what i said, the way you highlighted the breasts makes them look very flat, no matter how much geo they use. Shade them like you would if you were painting the top of a sphere. The leg shape from side view is very wrong too. Women have curves, your model also has no ass.. look at some reference images (your homework is to look at sexy ladies, im sure you can do it) and use this in your model. It doesn't look like you spent a great deal of time on the model or the textures, try and push yourself.
  • TAN
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    TAN polycounter lvl 12
    Oh. I get it now. Thanks a lot gilerescue. Starting right now :D

    TO DO List:

    - Shade the breasts accordingly.
    - Add curves to the model.
    - Change the colour variety of the model.
    - Add even more details to the texture.
    - Look at sexy women and study them :D
    - Don't be lazy while working on your model !
  • TAN
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    TAN polycounter lvl 12
    Okay. Except for the color varition I did what I could. But I just couldn' t think of an different colour. So I did out soft/ hard shadows.

    500 tri. 256x256 Difuse

    diffa.jpg

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  • Sukotto
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    Sukotto polycounter lvl 8
    TAN: If she's supposed to be a zombie why not use some green? Or you could use a blueish gray, just not straight gray.
  • D4V1DC
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    D4V1DC polycounter lvl 18
    Tan: Also crank up your diffuse to 100% self illumination and check out the specs thread/post for lowpoly specs here:
    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40563

    And rendering how to here:
    http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=51622
    Specifically max settings, since that is what your using.
  • System
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    System admin
    This is my first low poly model. i found this thread yesterday and it inspired me a lot so i started working on this guy. I'm still trying to figure out how to do UVs well... i have a butt ton of seams.

    i realized after i started coloring that i shouldn't have split the face in half u.u so I'm gonna fix that later.

    chibimonsterbeautyshot.jpg
  • skylebones
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    skylebones polycounter lvl 10
    Downloaded the demo of 3D Coat. Here is a quickie to help me learn the program.

    Cyclops1.jpg
    [Edit] added wireframe
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Ohhhh, he's nice! :p very nice, i like the stylized elbows and knees :P
  • System
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    System admin
    skyle, nice to see you added in the wireframe. i really love the design. his hands and feet are well rendered. would like to see his texture map tho.
  • paradise.engineering
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    paradise.engineering polycounter lvl 11
    skylebones love it! the elbows and knees remind me of "Escape from Monky Island"'s concepts.

    Sleepythylacine looks really good and good colors but i think your color variation is too obvious..try increasing the bluish opacity and add a tone of red or purple and definitely ADD some highlights
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