Pandaria hut model

Warotic · Dec 2011

hey everyone just started modeling out this fella, its at about 5388 tris and i had a question about "blizzard style". when i go into World of warcraft most of the new objects you cant tell are really low poly from certain angles. for example a cylindrical wood post that has 8 faces looks smooth and round from straight ahead, but if you look at it from a top view you can definatly see its very low. then when i look at the one i did alot of it is sharp and jagged from every angle is there a way to smooth thoes over like blizz does? is it just good textureing? crits and comments welcome!!

reference (blizzard concept piece)

model

Bensart · Dec 2011

Seems to me you are talking about smoothing groups. Or am I wrong?

Warotic · Dec 2011

i am not familiar with smoothing groups. i tried smoothing the normals and that made it look all funny. and i dont think blizzard builds there mesh to smooth because that would greatly increase there poly count. i may be wrong tho

Noodle! · Dec 2011

Maya doesn't use smoothing groups, but what you could do is select only the edges you want to smooth between and set the normal angle for them to smooth it out.

I'm also assuming you're not going to use normals or a high poly. I don't play WoW but I guess they don't use normals?

Mane · Dec 2011

Looking forward on this. I want to learn too how to model, texture blizzard style.

Warotic · Dec 2011

@noodle! trying that out now. from my understanding i do not believe blizzard uses normal maps, this is not for anything special so i could do normals if wanted thanks for your help

(does setting the "normal angle" do anything tri, poly count, or anything like that to the mesh? effect proformance in anyway?) also it worked noodle! thank you very much

Bensart · Dec 2011

Oh ok. Im a max user. I didnt realise that smoothing groups was a max only feature. I would hate not to have them but I guess this is a whole new debate

.

Seems you have fixed your issue now but I searched on google for "maya smoothing groups" and found this.

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_2/smoothing_groups/smoothing_01.php

Also heres a quick explanation about the cost of smoothing groups... if you're interested.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83495

I believe one smoothing group is cheaper then multiple smoothing groups in game engines.

Your model is looking good. Seems you are modelling a lot of it out of quads. Is that the plan? If not you might be able to make more efficeint use of triangles in some places - mainly in the big beam across the roof.

Warotic · Dec 2011

amazing! just what i needed to know. thanks alot bensart! i was planning on converting the whole thing to tries after i clean it up a bit. if there is better ways please let me know

Baddcog · Dec 2011

Bensart wrote: »

I believe one smoothing group is cheaper then multiple smoothing groups in game engines.

Not really.

Basically what happens is when exported or imported a mesh is split along smoothing group lines for hard edges. Thus doubling the verts on those edges.

But some engines (Max .ase to Doom3) only support one smoothing group, so you have to split those edges manually in Max. Which sounds like what Maya requires. Either way you end up with the same amount of verts in engine.

The benefit to smoothing groups in Max is when editing the mesh, weighting verts to a rig, it is easier to work without split edges.

Anyway, it's looking pretty good. I think the curved parts on top of the roof could be rounded out a bit, right now they are a bit rough.

Pandaria hut model

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