WWII German Tiger Tank Model

[brandv3d]

I just finished modeling this German Tiger Tank and plan to use the Hi-poly model to bake the normals into a low poly model in 3ds Max and then import it into CryEngine3. I do have a question about terms. What is the meaning of Tris and Faces in Maya. What is the actual poly count?

http://i.imgur.com/eQnwm.jpg

[DaveSilver]

No Offense dude but you should put some major work into that low poly tank.

Here is a quick draw-over I did to help illustrate some points
http://i.imgur.com/P1DSM.png

So the first thing is that based on this image it looks as if you have some N-Gons on the faces I've marked with xs. Both of those faces seem to have 6 sides. That may just be a trick of the lighting but it is hard to tell. Next time try and upload multiple views of the low poly so we can get a better idea of how it looks.

Next we have the wheels. You seriously need more wheels in there. It is going to look super strange if there are only two actual wheel on that thing. Also you could definitely lower the polycount on each wheel. You could easily get by with only 8 or 10 edge loops on those wheels. You obviously have the default 20 and it is a huge waste of model space.

In a similar vein, your treads could probably work just as well with half as many edge loops. It depends on how low poly you are going as to whether you want to do that one but I suggest it.

Finally the same suggestion could be made for the barrel. That could probably be cut down to 8 or 10 loops around and not the default 20.

Finally we have the area I marked as O. I am not sure since you only gave us one angle but I think it could be simplified a little whithout much loss of quality.

Those are just the things I noticed right now. Cutting down the polys in the wheels, the barrel and the treads, and increasing the total number of wheels is definitely important. The thing with the n-gons and the O piece may just be tricks of the light or whatever based on the angle. like I said earlier, give us more views and more renders next time and I can give you better information.

[rube]

Maya counts all polygons in the model as faces, and the number of triangles in the model as triangles. The triangle count give you the number as if your whole model was triangulated. Faces can have any number of sides, eg a default cube would only have 6 faces but 12 triangles. Triangles are the number you want to look at when making game assets since everything will be triangulated in the engine.

[DaveSilver]

Rube makes a great point and it solves the internal question i had of how your polycount was so damn low.

[brandv3d]

This is a render of the progress of my Tiger Tank. There are more views but I will post updated images in the next few days after I comp it in Nuke and then maybe throw the model into cryEngine 3 Sandbox just for fun.
Any comments are welcome.
http://i.imgur.com/aJJOq.jpg

[elGuapo]

If you are going to make a low poly game model, you should start by looking around for similar or identical game models to what you want to make. This is a good practice, because then you will get an idea for the level of realism you will have to at least achieve, if not beat. I decided to go ahead and help you with that:
http://worldoftanks.com/media/show/1026/

Some great feedback has already been given to you about how to make more effective use of your polys on the tank. As for the textures, google is your friend. First off, German tanks did not carry the nazi symbol on them. Secondly, tank treads were not camouflaged. Most importantly, the texture should make the object look real. There should be dirt, scratches, perhaps damage, maybe rust, overall imperfections. I realize this is a work in progress, but since this is not stylized, try to match the real thing as much as you can. Good luck.

[brandv3d]

Ok. I finished my German Tiger Tank. Here it is. I used Maya for the modeling, 3ds Max for rendering and Lighting, Well here is a list of what I used:

Maya
3ds max
vRay
Zbrush
Photoshop
Nuke
Ultimate Unwrap 3D
CryEngine 3 Sandbox
Fraps
Wacom Tablet

It took about 3 weeks

http://i.imgur.com/1vNp7.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/1OTyy.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/n4H1V.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3z9Bw.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/utnzj.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/a9MXu.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/dbIjO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/oTAaD.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/SldUC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/PN7DO.jpg

[brandv3d]

The video got taken off, but the above pictures tell the story.

[Lachtan]

Texture color feels over-saturated imo.

[brandv3d]

I case nobody noticed that's 3ds max on a Mac computer.

[Razgriz]

I case nobody noticed that's 3ds max on a Mac computer.

Yes, quite amazing what software can do these days.


I'm not sure you entirely understand the game-art workflow, or the purpose of creating a high-poly model. The fact you list it as "only 400,something tris" is odd, because it's not relevant to list tri stats on high-poly models, let alone try very hard to keep them low. If you did happen to use the high poly to bake a normal map, which is the purpose of modeling a high poly - it isn't evident on the low. Your high poly model should be an ultimate-souped-up-turbosmoothed-insane model, and I can barely tell the difference between it and your low in any significant way.

Like others said, tone down the saturation on the textures, they are a bit extreme right now.