Well those people were wrong. If you want to make environments, stick to UDK/other game engines, Rendering enviros in maya is a big nono. Also its alot easier to work with environments in an engine than in your 3d-package.
Yes, I am using Irrlicht 3D as the 3D engine. It being open-source and all is a big advantage. Not to mention I've found it one of the easiest 3D engines to compile. I'm using the latest version of Irrlicht 3D, version 1.1
You are right if he doesn´t want to put it in a 3d engine, but if he wanted to do so it would be better for performance, because the engine doesn´t have to triangulate the n-sided polys. Correct me if i´m wrong ;)
1st question possibly depends on the engine the model is destined for.. some engines dont like open meshes. But here ive seen models combined. 2. no idea myself, but i wouldnt quite rely on a pretty render to push your work.
Some nice stuff in there, eventhough the post effects are coming from the same engine Yebis 2) that is already running the Lumnious engine. I like the small detail on the camera that seem to be tessalated into the mesh. Might be overkill but is selling the the model really well.
Modelling=Top-Notch Particles=need some attention. I know this is difficult to do in a renderer. See if you can get into a game engine and use the engine's particle system. I find these much easier to work with than modelling softwares.
We use .tga files and .png files, however they both get converted to another format (which I can't mention any specific details about) for use in the game engine. I believe this to be the case for most game engines. -Adam
I think your polycount is quite high compared to the details visible in your model. I don't want to argue if 60.000 tris is too much for such model. As it always this depends on how it would be used. My very first impression was that the model was about maybe 12.000 tris Especially the shots showing the backside are…
is blender where you are going to do the final rendering? it totally is fine if it is but as you said "a game i am making" i suggest you put the mesh into the engine and work with the shaders in there. unless you plan is to replicate whatever you do in blender in your target engine, which is totally fine.
Wider padding will take a little longer to render, and generally isn't necessary except in some extreme situations. Wide padding shouldn't cause any problems though, so you can set it as high as you like. It's worth noting that depending on your texturing workflow, the padding in your baked maps will likely be replaced in…