Rebel Snowspeeder portfolio project
polycounter lvl 8
Hello there! 
Im working on my first real portfolio piece, of a Rebel Snowspeeder from Star Wars.
I plan on making a high and low poly version in 3Ds Max, and then some details in Mudbox before i texture it with Photoshop.
In the end im hoping for a nice portfolio model that i can show, aswell as put it into Unreal Engine 4 and have it fly around
I would love to get some feedback, constructive criticism and help.
I'll pop in here every now and then and show you my progress, ask questions and look at feedback
Here is what i got so far.
Anyone have an idea or some tips on how to do the inside of the cockpit? Stuff like panels, screens etc and how i'd attach them?
And what about the glass? Can i just put a long plane through the cockpit wall 1 facing out and the other facing in, or should i have a plane for each window?
Appreciate all the help you guys can provide
Im working on my first real portfolio piece, of a Rebel Snowspeeder from Star Wars.
I plan on making a high and low poly version in 3Ds Max, and then some details in Mudbox before i texture it with Photoshop.
In the end im hoping for a nice portfolio model that i can show, aswell as put it into Unreal Engine 4 and have it fly around
I would love to get some feedback, constructive criticism and help.
I'll pop in here every now and then and show you my progress, ask questions and look at feedback
Here is what i got so far.
Anyone have an idea or some tips on how to do the inside of the cockpit? Stuff like panels, screens etc and how i'd attach them?
And what about the glass? Can i just put a long plane through the cockpit wall 1 facing out and the other facing in, or should i have a plane for each window?
Appreciate all the help you guys can provide
Replies
Nice Star Wars stuff!
My tips/suggestions:
- Watch out for mesh intersections on the canon and the backside engine thing. I personally think it is better to model a hole/connection for the canon. Just like in the real world.
- As for the cockpit: If you look for reference online you will get some ideas:
Notice the piece of rubber that is holding the window in place. In Unreal you can make a glass shader that works two-sided.
- Attaching panels: I would just make seperate objects/panels and put them in the front of your cockpit. (Just like in the real world. )
Good luck! Keep going.
I'll look into mesh intersections. I might make it look like there is a hole and something keeping it in place. But im just thinking about the tris count, was thinking it won't be very noticible with Ambient Occlusion and textures but i see what you mean
Oh and the windows
Will update when model is done with some wireframe views aswell
So people liking it means alot to me, you're boosting my confidence
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=155990
i'll be posting a wireframe view soon, as im almost done with the "lowpoly" model
Yea you're right, thats why most of my polycount went into chamfering and i focused on the cockpit and back of the model since those two views are the main thing you will see ingame (3rd person and first person cockpit view)
I usually try to make very low poly stuff, this is the most high poly for a game model i have ever went
I'll be uploading new pics with wireframe aswell in a few hours if anyone is interested
Total polycount is
16.458 Polygons
31.464 Tris
Here is some pics and wireframe views, any critique or feedback you guys can give is welcome
Looks great!
Anyone got any tips on how to unwrap this? Should i attach all the objects into 1 model and unwrap it, or have seperate models/objects with it's own UV map and textures?
Any tips and tricks you have is very much appreciated
At first it looked as though you were making a high poly model.
For a low poly model there is virtually no optimization here, and at the moment I can see a lot of unnecessary edge loops which can be removed since they are not doing anything other than increasing the count.
Once that is done and the model is cleaner than what it currently is, you could combine the mesh parts, do an auto unwrap for the whole model so the UV scaling is somewhat consistent, then cut out the areas where you want your texture seams to be.
Any distortion can be cleaned up in an external UV app.
You might want a smaller sized separate texture for the glass if you plan on using an alpha.
I prefer unwrap peaces separatly and then combine in a few uv sets - major parts and floating geo.
But you need a lot of optimization before you start uv-ing. For example all those bolts, buttons, pannels etc. should be on normal map so you dont need it on low poly.
I see what you mean, but i was thinking that this would be a rather high end game model. I was planning on making most panels and buttons with normal maps, but having some of them as 3D models to blend in.
Ideally, i'd like a quality close to what we see in Dice new Battlefront game. But i don't know, i might have overdone it
Dice battlefront cockpit for refrence
Also, anyone know about chamferes? I was told long time ago that they where important for baking highpoly to lowpoly and make it look good, so i chamfered quite alot of the model. Was that a bad idea? Any tips on how much should be chamfered or which parts? Or if i should chamfer at all.
Well i tried to clean it up, but there is a huge amount of work to be done. Looking at the model now, and where the cleanup will get me... im thinking of going back to a save before all the chamfers, when it was around 6k polygons instead of 16k polyogns. Do you think thats a good idea?
For a 3rd person model that is not static, I would say beveling is unnecessary and that a good normal map bake would be sufficient enough for edge detail.
Keep in mind that a cockpit model like the DICE example above is in most cases (as far as battlefield games are concerned) a separate model from the actual 3rd person model (the model you see flying outside next to the cross hairs on the screenshot).
So the 3rd person model might have anywhere between ~10-20k.
The actual cockpit (secondary model) may very well have a similar count all by itself.
I'v cleaned up my model and it looks pretty much identical, yet only half the tris.
Old one had 31.000 tris, new one has 14.000 tris
Got a small question about the UV unwrap map, yes this again sorry
I plan on baking normal maps, and i'v read this thread http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Modeling
But got me abit confused, i see 2 options for me and was wondering if anyone knew which is the most correct or gives the best results.
1: I could merge the whole model, delete the seam through the middle and unwrap it as 1 big model with no middle seam or symmetry.
2: I could delete half the model along the middle (symmetry) seam, then unwrap one half and symmetry the other.
Also should i mirror or symmetry it? I never thought about the difference really.