Thanks to ALL!

[bearkub]

Thanks to all of you who participated in this halloween challenge. I was really kind of getting drug down that people weren't participating, but man, you guys made a big fat hippy liar out of me!

So, to the guys who organized it, the guys who participated, everyone who worked on this, THANKS! You guys rock. =]

Now, how about another good one? =]

[cholden]

Yea for real! Thanks everyone, you all made it great! I almost shit myself one day when I came to PC and saw the (23 viewing) next to the challenges forum. We're usually lucky to get two. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[ScoobyDoofus]

I made 2 items, and started 2 more, but never posted em. I guess I should huh?

[Ninjas]

Sure dude, post 'em because I want to see 'em.

I thought this one was cool, and I had a lot of fun doing the character I did, and seeing everyone elses stuff.

[Thegodzero]

i liked how open it was, not to mention the fact the all he things you had to make were warmup exersises, that can be done in an hour or less.

[b1ll]

That low poly thing Look fun, Another low poly character theme one would be great, I would join this time!!

[ElysiumGX]

I had the time off to join in, and glad others did as well. This was something new for me, and lots of fun. Not to mention quick. Really allowed the creativity to flow, instead of being knocked down with intimidating specifications or lame topics :P . I mentioned in the chatroom that we should have a low poly christmas as well. Or one with more standard specs, or both.

[Zergxes2]

That was cool, and less intimidating than the uber contests you see on cg talk. I don't know how people have the time for those. Ooh... Thanksgiving?

[hobodactyl]

I really agree with Elysium, the low specs made it so quick that you could really mess with several ideas and see what worked and what didn't. You can see this with my first vampire model (didn't work) :P

I will definitely be in more of these comps if we keep 'em up, the support here was really a welcome surprise for me /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[Lee3dee]

i found some time to fit it in /images/graemlins/smile.gif you can count me in for the next challenge /images/graemlins/smile.gif We should start a christmas challenge towards the end of november.

[Thegodzero]

how about a psp christmas, low/med so 1000 polycount and two 128 textures.

[Spoon_of_death]

I loved this comp! And most of the entries looked awesome and were very inspiring! More low-poly comps plz :P

[Slum]

Great fun indeed, too bad I didn't do more for it.

I suggest using the theme "badass turkey" for the next challenge

[bearkub]

hrm...a rebel turkey fighting for survival on Thanksgiving?
it does leave room for humor!

=]

[CheapAlert]

i was thinking of a "classic megaman villain" contest but I thought that would limit a bit of creativity. still a try though (original or not i don't know. time to crack open the old nintendo power issues for the fan concepts)

[cholden]

The next two holidays are coming we might as well enjoy those months with more low poly loving

"Thanks for Low Poly Givings" & "It's a Portable Christmas!" (Charley Brown)

I already have some less than interesting ideas /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[hawken]

Wooo! yay for polycount!

Low poly stuff is shure nuff addictive eh?

[ QUOTE ]
That was cool, and less intimidating than the uber contests you see on cg talk. I don't know how people have the time for those. Ooh... Thanksgiving?

[/ QUOTE ]

erm, for those of us outside the USA, thanksgiving has little to no meaning.

But low poly "coyboys vs injuns" gets my vote!

[bearkub]

yah, hawken brought up a point I thought about after I posted. Thanksgiving is a US holiday which kinda leaves our overseas brethren a bit in the cold.

[Ninjas]

I had an idea I thought would be cool...

low poly 3D platform mascot character of yesteryear (some could do 2d characters that never made it to 3d, like Carnov or Rastan dude, and others could make totally new 80's and 90's themed characters)

500 polys, 512 texture

[cholden]

Ninjas: I love it. That also goes along the lines of what cheap suggestest as well. Though a 512 texture for a 500 triangle model is a bit ridiculous. Balance yer budget, son. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

Bear: to rememdy the situations for our overseas friends, we could make it a "mock an american holiday" challenge. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[Slum]

That's sort of why I suggested "Badass Turkey" rather than thanksgiving in general. A turkey's a turkey no matter where you're from. :P

[bearkub]

OK gang, here's the dish:

You all seem geared up for this. I am going out of town tomorrow and won't be back til Sunday (at least...). Once again, this is my OK to start another challenge as soon as you like (as I really prefer them selected by you fine laddies..) If you need a topic stickied or anything else (I can't really imagine anything you would need...) just either grab one of the other admins (r13, etc..) and ask them, or just leave me a PM here on the boards and I will tend to it when I get back.

Enjoy!

[ElysiumGX]

hawken: can you be the one to post the official guidelines thread of whatever is decided? And can a separate thread be made elsewhere (GD?) to have a global setting, so questions and discussions can be made in the guidelines thread.

[man_o_mule]

i vote for ninja's idea. 512 might be a bit much thouhg. 256 for the win.

and if this idea does end up being the one picked i claim dibs on strider (http://www.vgmuseum.com/end/arcade/a/mvcstr.htm).

[Ninjas]

Yeah I guess 512 is excessive...
Strider 2 was pretty tight. I beat the original on 2 quarters.

I think I may have to do the "lost" Vanilla Ice platform game character.

I liked how you could do items on the Halloween one, and it makes sense that you could do platform game items to go with your character.

[Justin Meisse]

sounds groovy, I'm sorry I missed the Halloween contest /images/graemlins/frown.gif
If we're doing the platformer idea, I call dibs on Rick from Splatterhouse!

[CheapAlert]

i've done firebrand too much so i don't know what i'll do

maybe "Bert"...

[Lee3dee]

I think I may try Boogerman. hehe or the knight from Ghost n' goblins /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[ScoobyDoofus]

I think some amalgam of characters would be more interesting. Like, Megaman mixed with Simon Belmont, or Shinobi with Mario, etc.
Perhaps that sort of thing is more a conceptart.org idea?
Just thinking out loud...

[CheapAlert]

[ QUOTE ]
hehe or the knight from Ghost n' goblins /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

YES

or astaroth, rushifell, general arma, etc

[flaagan]

how about a vegetative state of being..
plants, trees, organic things, doesnt have to be natural, can be fantasy or alien, or maybe even mechanical?

[Skizot]

http://img56.echo.cx/img56/7217/rygar7nm.jpg

oh yeaaaah... i might just get back to modelling to do rygar.

[hawken]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah I guess 512 is excessive...
Strider 2 was pretty tight. I beat the original on 2 quarters.

I think I may have to do the "lost" Vanilla Ice platform game character.

I liked how you could do items on the Halloween one, and it makes sense that you could do platform game items to go with your character.

[/ QUOTE ]

low poly models of the characters from LOST!

[hawken]

[ QUOTE ]
hawken: can you be the one to post the official guidelines thread of whatever is decided? And can a separate thread be made elsewhere (GD?) to have a global setting, so questions and discussions can be made in the guidelines thread.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this one needs to be steamed a bit more in this thread, not quite cooked yet...

[cholden]

psp screen resolution is 480x272
characters are from 750 triangles and 2x64x64 up to 1600 triangles and 2x128x128. Though some cinematic and main characters can go higher, it's probably more effective to stick with standard NPC specs.
The Nintendo DS has similar character specs, but usually lower if not half since the screen size is only 256x192.

These specs in mind, a good comp could be recreate a game character for NDS or PSP game specs. This could be a classic or next-gen game character. For example, as fun as it is to up the specs on old classic 2d characters, it can be just as fun to bring the Master Chief or that Doom 3 guy down.

(Note: any other portable developers with their own character specs contributions would be great)

[TelekineticFrog]

OK so Mr. Holden says post what i know...I dev DS and GBA games.

-DS resolution is 256 x 192
-Characters that I work on usually range from around the 225 to 1100 poly range.( the higher be an exception if the character is like the only one on screen or one of maybe two) Generally around 200 - 360 for a platformer character. We'd get around 5-6 on screen at once.
-Texture sheets are most of the time single 64 x 64 tga files.(currently the ones i'm working on are using a single 128 x 128, but they may be reduced later to 64 x 64, it really depends on the game and how much is on screen at once eating up the memory like any other game)
-I do use bones for the skeleton but always skeletons made up of poly objects.
-Skin weighting is most always kept to no more than 2 bones influencing a single vert. This is more than likely as a requirement by our set of code and not necessarily a hardware limit. You have to work with what's given I guess.

Just a side note the last DS game before the current one I'm working on was Incredibles 2: Rise of the Underminer the single 64 x 64 textures for the characters were compressed to 32 color images. The game I'm working on now has not been compressed to such a small palette at least yet and are 256 color images.

If there are any other questions, I'll do my best to answer them, so feel free to ask.

additional info: The DS only supports 2000 polys being rendered on a screen at a time, but you can pull off doing 4000 but then you drop to 30 frames per second instead of being able to do 60 frames per second with 2000. You can do both screens 3D rendering but it accomplishes this thru rendering the screens one at a time and going back and forth. You (the player) may not notice this but it occurs on any game that's doing 3D on both screens. The game I'm working on currently utilizes both doing 3D and 4000 polys at 30 fps. I've actually been impressed with a couple of our minigames so far in how they look. Oh yeah and you can see Incredibles 2: Rise of the Underminer for DS now since it came out in stores this week in North America. /images/graemlins/wink.gif I'll see if I can post a couple example models from it. For a challenge theme what about a theme based on like something of early exploration style, jules vern, journey to the center of the earth, around the world in 80 days type stuff. Maybe some steam tech but nothing high tech or modern and crazy creatures like the giant squid, cthulu type squiddies, mummies, etc. Not really like aliens and gore. Maybe that's too vague but it's an idea.

[aesir]

how about we have to make several platformer characters with the DS or PSP's specs. I loves the low poly!

Still we'll need a slightly tighter theme then that. I'm not a horribly big fan of remaking characters from past games, but cant really think of an idea I'd rather do atm.


(Low poly LOST characters would be funny as shit)

[hawken]

The dogs in nintendogs look awsome! There's no real slowdown in the game, even with 3 dogs running about playing ball or eating etc. I'm loving this game at the moment. My next purchase is mario cart, I'm simply creaming my pants for this one!

Thinking it's quite fun to stick with the power of two specs, because it seems more fun. 64tri char with 64px tex, 128 with 128, 256 with 256 etc.

Again for maximum fun, maybe the DS should be the target model, because lets face it, handhelds are only going to get better and 1000 polies already starts to sound out of "lowpoly" but under 512 is incredibly fun.

[blankslatejoe]

a long the lost lines... what about low poly movie characters?

dude, I'd totally call dibs on a 256 'Sloth' from goonies!

[hawken]

could lost work? series 1 characters only!

[Ninjas]

Dude. I don't watch TV. Anyway, I would probably just end up making a guy in jeans and a t-shirt even if I did know the show. Not to crap on your idea or anything, but regular old humans in low poly doesn't seem very exciting to me.

[TelekineticFrog]

I don't watch television either, so in all honesty I couldn't even tell you what Lost is about, let alone who the characters are and what they look like. One thing that was great about the halloween idea was you had a unified theme...no matter what somebody made you could possibly put all entries in one scene and still convey the theme regardless of what the object/character was, who did it and with what style. A theme that works in that way is probably going to yield the most interesting results. Just my two cents.

[cholden]

Yea, I don't even know what lost is. You have to assume that taking the biggest #1 show on television means: the majority of people have never heard of it. /images/graemlins/wink.gif
Not a big fan of the power of two, but whatev's, as logn as it has a very open, diverse theme or no forced theme if you want to keep it that limiting.

[Slum]

Expanding on scooby's idea, How about "flashback merger" as the theme. You take a main character from an old game and recreate him as if he were in another game. For example, Starfox and Mario. Fox McCloud in overalls and a red hat. Or try Yoshi and Excitebike. Yoshi dressed up in motocross outfit :P

[Toomas]

I agree that the merger idea would be very fun to do.
But with no game age restrictions and with DS specs.

[hawken]

low poly 80's. items, humans, rock stars, cars, cereal, haircuts... anything!

[Slum]

That sounds great hawken.

[Ninjas]

I could live with that. I call Magnum PI... that's right, the whole damn show.

[Makk]

Just want to say there was some really great work done for the halloween challange. I liked ElysiumGXs in particular.

[flaagan]

Low poly or not, I'd like to toss into the hat the idea of doing a weapon or gun not powered / fed by 'normal' ammo...
think along the lines of the Halo Covenant Needlers or Plasma guns, or Star Trek's phasers, or Unreal 2's Spider Gun.

Something where you can visibly see that the weapon in your hand(s) isn't normal.

[Gmanx]

I'd like to suggest doing a 'team america' style parody of either a game or a tv show using the same handheld low poly specs. Stylised characters with big heads, cheesy backgrounds etc. Like a 'superdeformed' game version of, well anything really, from Magnum through UFO (UFO = my dibs) Starsky and Hutch, Splinter Cell, Fear - whatever.

[hawken]

super deformed 80's tv characters!

spinning quad!

[TelekineticFrog]

few suggested themes;

-50's sci-fi (you know silver rockets, ray guns, fish bowl space helmets, martians with big pulsating brains, flying saucers, etc.)

-Creat a Wrestler (think the crazy wrestlers from Kinnikuman from Japan aka MUSCLES in the US, the lil pink plastic wrestling figures but a popular anime and manga series in japan).

-Or each person create a low poly building/structure to populate a Polycount city and in the end we all place them into one scene to make that city. Age of Empires III buildings and structures being perfect examples.

[cholden]

[ QUOTE ]
Or each person create a low poly building/structure to populate a Polycount city and in the end we all place them into one scene to make that city.

[/ QUOTE ]

If we don't do this one, we MUST do it eventually. Quick, somebody carve this one in stone.

edit: another community oriented theme: low poly polycounter. Being your interpretation of them, could be based on name, avatar or what they really look like.

[hawken]

on that note, how about low poly portrait?

[Ninjas]

Polycountville is a cool idea.

I really like the idea of all our low poly stuff co-existing. It would be cool to have a style guide before we started so that they all try and fit the same style.

[Gmanx]

How about 'as you would like to be', so Jon Murphy would be a predator, Cheapy would be...um.....well y'get the jist.

Polycountville - "F*ck Yeah!!"

[CheapAlert]

[ QUOTE ]

edit: another community oriented theme: low poly polycounter. Being your interpretation of them, could be based on name, avatar or what they really look like.


[/ QUOTE ]

we haven't had that theme for 3 years, anyone remember the old Polycounter sketch thread of early 2002? /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[cholden]

polycountville, low poly portrait...sounds like a a multi-challenge tie-in!

[Skizot]

i'd so be down for that... i am already thinking of ideas for buildings...

[Slum]

I haven't been around this community too long, but I think Polycountville would be wonderful!

Each person would start up a thread stating who'd they be doing. Just so there wouldn't be duplicates. But of course with this you'd have the people (like me) whom would cry in bed at night because no one chose them. (oh how I remember kickball when I was a youngster. :'(

[CheapAlert]

or we could do a "model a internet meme/fad" thing or "make a gargoyle within cheapalert's criteria (http://www.planetgargoyle.com/gargcriteria.jpg)" if all else fails, mwa.

[Slum]

by "criteria" you mean enormous genitals?

[ElysiumGX]

no style guides, as no one has the same style...and I'm not going to follow someone else's for a freetime project.

we're getting a pile of ideas making it harder to decide on one. we need to choose and get started. I like the 2D character remakes idea as a start. then christmas, and so on.

[cholden]

just to clear things up if you don't understand cheap's criteria. warning, do not click this link
http://chrisholden.net/cheapscriteria.jpg

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, cause I doubt anyone wants to model low poly porngoyles.

[Ninjas]

I say we put it to a vote between "Polycountville" and "80's-90's 2d game character rebirth"

I could see that style guidelines would cut down on the fun factor, and so I probably shouldn't have even suggested it.

[Slum]

nice Chris, I like how you took the time to draw in the detailed veins. for 'illustrative' purposes, right?...right?

[hawken]

I'm willing to handle the entries and compile a final thingie in max for the polycountville.

[TelekineticFrog]

Any chance that a topic will be finalized today (Monday)??? We've had a flood of ideas but no solid direction yet...time to throw down. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[flaagan]

I like how Slum says he hasnt been around here for long, but he's already all too aware of what cheapy is known for /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

...and yes! polycountville. let's do it. make it a challenge from now until early December. gives everyone plenty of time.
and before anyone starts worrying about the polycount limit, i'd say take a look at Death Jr.'s environments.

[Cubik]

Polycountville sounds like a blast. Lets do it!
BTW, Hawken, what happend to the suprise that you had planned with the halloween comp?

[ElysiumGX]

Alright, Polycountville. Let's do it. Just so everything will fit together in the end, a square section of land? About how many units so we get about the right scale? This could be like SimCity4.

[aesir]

Im up for polycountville as long as I dont have to make some boring suburbian house.

I want a cool western-ish bar.

[TelekineticFrog]

If Polycountville it is, then awesome. We should though set up a unified scale for everyone to work with though, so in the end when the city is composed the buildings won't need a bunch of rejiggering, <--is a great word in order to come together. I guess if we want to set up a generic lot file that is a file everyone can freely download that has a lot size set up for creating your building within and at the proper scale it would save a lot of headaches.

[Zergxes]

Mmmm. Perhaps an infested apartment building is in order, like my last one!

Would exported obj's be alright?

[flaagan]

Maybe a UT2k4 level with all the buildings on a long city block, or populating an island?
Setting up something like that would be slick.
And I have an .obj with a 1'x1'x1' cube to UT scale laying about.

[aesir]

I'd rather not get into high detail enviros like the type you'd see in ut2k4.

[ElysiumGX]

doesn't have to be something you'd normally see in UT2k4. just be fun to walk around in. someone could gather all the resources at the end, scale and import them to create a 3D gallery. flaagan, myself, or anyone else familiar with UnrealEd could manage that easily. the buildings could be small, and the UT characters could be godzilla sized...haha!

[CMB]

I agree with polycount city and high detail enviroments.
Woooo raaayyy.

[flaagan]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd rather not get into high detail enviros like the type you'd see in ut2k4.

[/ QUOTE ]

high detail... /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

puuhlease, not to insult anyone that's worked on Unreal-related stuff, but when you start digging around you start seeing all the nifty shortcuts and whatnot they take to give things the appearance of being high detail.

Who says the building have to have interiors? I dont see the difficulty in making a lawn, white picket fence, and a geodesic dome house /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[CheapAlert]

i am in linux and i can not use the unreal editor /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[Gmanx]

I say K.I.S.S. Low poly as before (that's what made it fun right?) set a scale and let rip. Too many criteria will turn people off.

I know I'm a fine one to talk, I didn't do diddly squat for the Hallowe'en comp, but a super-deformed style polycountville would be a different matter. Anyone who watched the extras on the TeamAmerica dvd will recall the 'dollar bill' palm tree leaves and all the little hidden details, we could do the same sh*t, but with a gaming flava.

[cholden]

nevermind, hawken posted the rules a second after I did.

[Ninjas]

Sweet... looking forwad to this one.

[ElysiumGX]

That plot of land I dl'ed is huge. What do we have to keep scale? Can a human sized bounding box be included?

[hawken]

it's 500cm by 500cm in max, with a human scale template in the file. What prog are you using?

[ElysiumGX]

all i see is Plane01 and Plane02 same size and position sharing a scene material. i was wondering what that davinci image was for in the folder. max cannot export proper obj. files.

edit: the 3DS works. I'll fix up the obj. if anyone needs it.

edit2(the sequel): man, that's a small piece of land. alright. maybe that's generous...in japan. I'll stop bugging you now...maybe. /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

OBJ file: http://www.elysiumvisions.com/files/polyplot-obj.zip

[hawken]

the estate of polycount is generous, but not too generous /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[ElysiumGX]

is it possible to fit one normal sized home on it? definately not a skyscraper or anything. maybe a hotdog stand. http://boards.polycount.net/images/icons/poly132.gif

[hawken]

or an xbox maybe. only just though.

[MoP]

I really think 5m x 5m is too small. At least with 10m x 10m you could have a house/building and a little front garden or something. 5m x 5m is just a joke! You can hardly even build a shed in that space.

Oh and the OBJ export was probably screwed because you forgot to Reset XForm on the mesh before exporting. Am I right? OBJ has always exported fine from 3dsmax for me...

[cholden]

I have to agree with MoP, this is silly. I've made two different scale envs. Allow more meters in size or WAY less triangles/textures to work with.

[hawken]

is 10 x 10 too big?

you're welcome to 4 plots /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[ElysiumGX]

that's sounds reasonable

[bearkub]

so, are we going to try and put this all into one map and make it playable? =]

[MoP]

If we use 4 plots, does that mean we still only get a 1024 triangle budget and 512x512 texture for the 10m x 10m plot?

[ElysiumGX]

I volunteer to place them all in one DM UT2k4 map if that's alright with hawken. I could use the practice, and I know I'll probably have the freetime for it.

[MoP]

Hmm, just thinking, with these texture/poly limitations, they'll probably look fairly crappy up close in a DM UT2k4 level.

Not that I'm against assembling one, I'm sure it'd be cool, but with these constraints I was thinking something more along the lines of an RTS or The Sims 2 as a viewpoint (up/isometric/zoomed out) rather than up close and personal in an FPS view.

[ElysiumGX]

It would keep the map file size down. And really, there isn't much difference between 512 and 1024 in UT2k4.

[aesir]

I think its gonna look pretty weird put together anyways Mop, since we dont have any sort of contraining theme...

[Keg]

i'm content with how things are. it's easy to use up 1k in tri's.

I vote for the next little thing be build your own floor and have one big tower with each floor a different polycounter's creation. seniority get's higher level floors while new people to polycount get bottom level floors.

[Disintegrator]

Okie, guess I get the parking garage, or the sub-parking garage.

I love the idea of compiling all this in a UT2K4 DM level. Who cares about theme, we might be surprized. Afterall villages don't really follow any theme, there just well....villages. Woot!

[hawken]

31 entries for polycountville!

Ideas for the next one? Lets make a vote thread...

[hawken]

Two DS inspired challenge ideas:

mario kart tracks
mario kart racers

nintendogs other pets (not dogs)

On the low poly theme... I wonder if we could get info on the polycounts they use...

[ElysiumGX]

I'm still dreaming of a low poly christmas.
No matter what's done next, my entry will be christmas based.

[adam]

I like the idea of doing a tower and each floor of the tower is someones creation. Do the template so that it'll stack properly. It'd be the floor, hole in the floor, and stairs (which would lead up and through the hole to the next floor).

Would be fun to walk up this 30-something floored building to different rooms.

[flaagan]

just had an interesting idea... snowboard challenge.. maybe a 512 challenge (allows for nice smooth boards with straps / fins / whatever).. the point is more to design a cool lookin board... as many as you want.. with the focus being moreso on the texture than anything.

[flaagan]

few more ideas...
- disposable weapon: something you fire off once and then discard, i.e. an organic single-use weapon or a seld-contained RPG

- organic weapon: a creature (or part of one) or eggs for a creature that when 'fired' either launches a creature or some sort of bio-organic weapon, i.e. HL's Snarks, HL:OpFor's Pet Alien, or Unreal2's spider gun