Are the car props in Metro Last Light/The last of us high poly props baked down?

synergy11 · Jul 2013

Good day.

I am fairly new to identifying which props I should and should not spend time creating a high poly to bake down the normals to a low poly.

I am planning on doing a few rusted car props similar to what you see in Metro and Last of Us games.

I am wondering if the car props in Metro Last Light/The last of us use high poly models baked down? Or are they just carefully constructed low poly models.

Thanks for any help or input.

http://www.gamearics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/NTIyNTQ1NjUz_o_e3-11-metro-last-light-gameplay-trailer.jpg

http://www.onlysp.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/1337246230_the-last-of-us-cars.jpg

MikeF · Jul 2013

Something like this could be a bit of both.
I'd say there is definitely a bake going on, but any surface detail (like grooves on the roof, tire treads, vents etc...) could be very quickly added in using nDo or something similar

radiancef0rge · Jul 2013

Based on what we did in Second Son I would guess that a large percentage of the vehicles in Last of Us were made from reusable textures so not baked down. That being said we had a few unique cars that were uniquely unwrapped high poly and then textured.

synergy11 · Jul 2013

Yes. I figured with so many different vehicle designs they could not have everything unique to save resources.

It's hard to tell though upon close inspection the vehicles look pretty smooth. They must be high enough poly to support the detail/shape.

LMP · Jul 2013

in the second screenshot I can see that they reused whole car meshes multiple times. I'd guess they're probably multiple unique car props.

radiancef0rge · Jul 2013

polys are cheap on ps3. textures are way more expensive, making detail there is simple.

synergy11 · Jul 2013

So you are saying it is better to have more poly's per car and have sharing textures rather then baking down each car prop with a unique normal map?

Thanks again.

radiancef0rge · Jul 2013

yes hands down

rogelio · Jul 2013

Cars were baked from HP to low with tile rust and paint and masks. You can tell if you get up close. variations were done with a tint that can be placed per instance. Some interiors are shared, tires are shared also, or use one texture atlas, some windows were also shared. For those shots your seeing the cars could have been up res since those are cinematic shots and are not really indicative of the actual cars in the entire game.

So a combo of unique and tile for the main chassis and shared textures for interiors and wheels.

synergy11 · Jul 2013

Oh that's surprising.

I see that you worked on the game! Now I now for sure.

Time to get modeling some HP cars.

Any idea on the average poly count on those cars?

Thanks for taking the time to help.

Are the car props in Metro Last Light/The last of us high poly props baked down?

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