Making these treads to a good lp?

mobpapst · Jul 2015

Hey guys,

i want to make these treads for my lowpoly. its for a kind of tank and it shall be a first person one like the ones you know from battlefield.

whats the best and efficient way to effort it?

Obscura · Jul 2015

You need one or a few modules only, uv them, bake them, and then duplicate them around.

mobpapst · Jul 2015

these treads are made of one single module that is instanced around. but the problem is that i get way to much tris in the end because i need about 120 of them.

Obscura · Jul 2015

5-6 sided cylinder, and four boxes. This is the lowest you can get with keeping the bigger gaps.

mobpapst · Jul 2015

ok thanks so far. what polycount would you grant for a next gen tank? without treads iam about 14 k atm

Obscura · Jul 2015

I would say use as much as needed to make it look good, and hide angularity. It can be anywhere between 20 and even 100k in a next gen game. But thats a professionally made next gen game. Just use as much as needed.

This is about a weapon, but he is mentioning the important general rules:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=154493

mobpapst · Jul 2015

i tested it out. when i reduce it with one single object the polycounts is getting way to high. i get for all tread elements about 70k only. thats not good.

i decided to bake the whole tread on a box but i got some issues with the bake. maybe you guys can help me out to get a better result.

the highpoly is the same you see on the picutures above.

here is the lp the normal map and the baked result from xnormal:

i hope you can give me some advices.

thanks

JustMeSR · Jul 2015

Make one bake without padding and use it to mask "see through" areas.

Also: You can make a few seam along the track for better UVs. And why is your LP so huge compared to HP?

Octo · Jul 2015

Bake just a short section and map bits to that.
Although, ideally you should probably make it a separate tiling texture so it can be animated by offsetting the UV.

Mik2121 · Jul 2015

I would rather just bake a straight version of it that tiles on the long axis and do offsetting for the animations and all that. Also get a few more polys on the lowpoly and have it match more closely the original highpoly!

mobpapst · Jul 2015

i used a box for one single object with a little bit more geometry but it looks more worst then the big one i posted before.

now i tested it with a lp version of one single peace but the polycount is still too high as you can see on the following pictures. the results would be cool but you need to know that i need abou 60 pieces per side.

the tank has abou 14k tris without the treads. but only the treads in the way i show you would have about 58k.

i really dont know how to do it right. maybe you guys can give me an example. it would help me really!

EarthQuake · Jul 2015

In times like this, usually it's best to simplify the design of the highpoly so that your lowpoly can use less geometry. Is it important that each tread is modeled accurately to reference? What does the real world tread look like?

mobpapst · Jul 2015

You're right maybe i've to think about the design but i kept it kind of straitght to the original. here you can see a picute of the treads. the point is there are not only at the sides they are even as "backup" at the front.

depending on this what would you guys do and how?

AlecMoody · Jul 2015

The world of tanks models use tiling lowpoly pieces for the treads. It looks like each tread section is really low poly and I would imagine that these are expensive to animate:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/is3-world-of-tanks

A tiling strip on a second texture sheet that you scroll is how I have always done it.

Making these treads to a good lp?

Replies