Fire Hydrant - help with low poly of chains
polycounter lvl 8
Hi everyone
I have been making a Fire Hydrant game asset but have become a little unsure how I should approach the low poly version for the chains. These are really high right now at 8792 polys (for the chains alone). The model without the chains is 3520 polys. I'm aiming for around 4000 - is this a little high?
As to the chains, I was thinking maybe I should be approaching this by making an alpha or masking. Is this a good idea? Or will this not be good in optimisation terms for a game?
Thank you all for your help.
Please see below the high and low poly versions.
[IMG][/img]
I have been making a Fire Hydrant game asset but have become a little unsure how I should approach the low poly version for the chains. These are really high right now at 8792 polys (for the chains alone). The model without the chains is 3520 polys. I'm aiming for around 4000 - is this a little high?
As to the chains, I was thinking maybe I should be approaching this by making an alpha or masking. Is this a good idea? Or will this not be good in optimisation terms for a game?
Thank you all for your help.
Please see below the high and low poly versions.
[IMG][/img]
Replies
Chains. When to plane and when to model
Alpha Map Chains in video games?
As you are building this for personal work/portfolio work it is probably better to make it look really good rather than just optimized but at the same time you want to be efficient. If done right it could look amazing at 1200.
Keep up the good work!
Jeremiah_bigley - Yes that does put tri count into perspective for me. I took a look at your website and can see exactly what you mean by having a low count but the work looking great. I'm going to try go all out and get the hydrant down to the 1200 level and see if I can maintain the quality.
Next, I'd look at cylinders with identical radii but varying number of sides in your game engine to decide how many sides each really needs to appear round. You also seem to use the same number regardless of the size of the cylinder.
So I've knocked my low poly down to 1426 - that's without the chains which I've still to do. This is it so far with my normal map on:
[IMG][/img]
DWalker - I didn't want to get rid of the nuts on the base and underside just for portfolio purposes but I agree that if the player was only seeing this from top down they would be unnecessary. I decided to get rid of some of the mesh on the underside bolts though so thanks for pointing this out because it made me take another look at them. As to cylinder sizes - I think this is a case where I really should have thought ahead a bit more. I feel like I built my high for these cylinder sizes but I will keep it in mind for the future.
red - remove
green - collapse
orange - new topology/target weld and connect
[IMG][/img]
I've also added the chains now - decided to go with the two overlapping boxes to keep the polycount down - although I fear I've now knocked it up in other areas! I'm on 1784 polys.Please pretend the alphas are on - Maya's viewport doesn't like them.
[IMG][/img]
You have these because your tangent basis is different in your viewing application than the one you baked it in. If you're going to end up with synched tangents, in the end this wont matter. If you aren't then you need to break your UVs islands and smoothing splits at the 90 degree angles. Or add support edges.
Personally for this model I'd go with smoothing/UV splits
You could also model the damage into it in zbrush so that you can tell where to paint when you're in Photoshop.
If it bothers you that much though just add edge loops.
[IMG][/img]
I wasn't sure whether to make a new thread for this but I'd like a bit of critique on my textures. They are 1024x1024 - diff, spec, gloss and opacity. Thanks in advance!
[IMG][/img]
[IMG][/img]