Here is the High and low


I cant figure it out, the only way i can get the normal map to not look like ass, is to render it out at 1024 other wise al the details disapear.
here is what i mean, i intended to hae this at 512, and have the details easy to see, but something went wrong as you can see as i have to use a 1024 just to get that crapy resault.


any ideas on ways to optimise? i'll show the texture too if that

Perhaps make the details larger? It's for an RTS, those small things will be less than a pixel in the game.

thats a good idea, most all my deatils look good only in big renders. here is the texture just incase that gives you guys any ideas.

You've mostly modeled just tiny details in the hipoly, and tiny details need more texture space. That's just common sense and has nothing to do with normal mapping [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I'm probably confused here, but forgive me, I'm dense.

Normal maps shine when it comes to introducing nice big chunks of structural definition. Dont think only in terms of the plain game mesh "cage" and then the ultrafine hipoly detail. There are lots of levels in between the two that could be more valuable to explore

What would you have me do to make it better?

Rite now i have basicly given up on this baing a low poly unless i make some major changes. What those would be i dont know. Rite now this thing looks like ass, not something id use for a game.

I think the problem is i'm a details guy, so i get the form then go to town on details. This doesnt work for normal mapping it seems.

Are you just saying that you can't pick up the small details with smaller texture sheets? Becuase that makes sense. The less pixels there are to describe the details the worse they are going to look. And if its for an RTS, does it really matter? considering how small the average RTS unit is. but im new to all this so i'll shut up if thats not what you mean.

Anyway, i think that looks pretty sweet. If im not mistaken its a Destroid Phalanx, from Macross. are you making a Macross(or Robotech) RTS?

Your hipoly is pretty much a lowpoly model with smooth edges. Common mistake. Hi-detail is what you need rather than hipoly. 'Hipoly' is very missleading it seems.

http://www.macrossworld.com/macross/...dai/37106b.jpg
An image i found of the original, as you can see it has a lot omore of details yours is missing.

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I think the problem is i'm a details guy, so i get the form then go to town on details. This doesnt work for normal mapping it seems.

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That doesn't necessarily work for hipoly models. Part of what makes a decent hipoly model is the feel that the object was build and consists of different pieces. If you model it all as 1 piece and then juist carve in some details, it will never look like it should.

Take the black cilinders that are his hands, they have a seam separating them from the arm, they are a separate chuck of metal. That's something hipoly models should always depict, and with some rounded borders they are major details that will help break down your lowpoly beautifully. Otherwise, small random details are never gonna make it look right and from a small distance they wont be already noticeable. Concentrate on breaking the model down into it's bigger components, and then go nuts on the single parts with details.

Smoothing groups....

Also something to try after you sort out the smoothing groups is to mesh smooth or teselate the larger polys to avoid getting those wierd shadow lines that run down the center edge of a poly. Sorting out proper smoothing groups also help Quite a bit.

As for details, toss in some rivets, bolts, hatches, wires going from one hatch to a panel, indent parts of it and put fuses or pistons. If you want it to have a junk yard look you can put big fat welds seperating the round smooth pieces into metal plates. Also don't forget about dents, dings scratches and raised warning lables =)

Check around for ref on air plane parts and add some of the details you like into it. If you are lucky and happen to live by something like The Museum of Flight take a camera and snap shots of intake vents, hatches footholds access plates, landing gear anything you think is cool and would be found on a mech. By the time you are done, you will have so many detail ideas you will have to start tossing them out. Or build another model =P

Thanks for the feedback.

Well after looking closer at that guy i dont think he will be an RTS unit, i'll make him into a FPS char or something later.

This is my RTS character.

Its 400 polys and uses a 128 texture. Texture will be up later tonight.

Done!


Textures:


Mesh:

that looks like a good use of normal maps my exotic friend.

ditto, I like how you used your texture/uvs

I think the texture (diffuse) could use more variation to th red/black you have going on (ie: make the legs different materials than the RL's).

Otherwise she's a beaut.

Your second model looks much better, I think what helps it is you concentrate more on low and medium frequency detail like the people suggested above. This is important in an RTS because you're never going to get too terribly close. The important thing to remember while entering this highpoly normal mapping era is that you cant necisserrily build things the way you have been for games. In a lot of ways you can be a lot more lax in how things are constructed. What I mean by this is now you are able to use tons of seperate objects, layer meshes, have stuff simply intersect etc.... The high poly model is more than just one mesh meshsmoothed.

One thing I would like to see differently on a model like this ( this would most likely require starting over) is to make it look like it's smaller parts pieced together. Right now it looks like one big piece of metal, with a few panels tacked on. Keep up the good work.

I think the texture on the last mech needs some work. The actual metal and all looks pretty cool, but the basic layout of colors makes it hard to distinguish one part from another. The whole unit blends together, and only the silouhette really lets me understand the shape. As someone above me said, it looks like one piece of metal with panels grafted on.

Looks good. I think every ones has said it all. Add some dirt and metal overlays to it so it looks more interesting. Later.

Alex

Thanks for the kind words, and for the crits. I used an overlay, but at that texture size it doesnt show.
I'm going to make some diffrent guns using those textures and maybe a diffrent style of legs.

AA cannons done.


Mini guns done.


All of them, and some at game scale.

That looks like you handpainted (via plugin) or rendered the normalmap from a plane.

Is it a turret or a walker? Those legs don't look like it can walk with them so my guess is "turret".

Also might want to give the different weapons slightly different colors, in RTSes it's pretty annoying when different units look too much alike.

tinman: Intersecting parts can cause trouble with normalmaps, not everything that works in hipoly works with NMs.

I was thinking walker, but i'm not all that sure how it would walk... They are rendered onto planes then merged onto one file. As for the weapons, i just might change the textures they are using, but i'm not sure... I dont think it would work.

Different base colors would work already, perhaps even for the whole thing.

I am glad you posted the last shot with the mini versions that gives people an idea of how they will look in-game. Most of the crits seem to be as if the model would be viewed as a full size mech in a FPS game, which it is not.

It looks freakin awesome! I really like the varriants and you didn a good job at implying detail that would hold up even if you zoomed in.

It might take you a few more tries to get out of the low poly mindset and go detail crazy when making a high detail model, but you're getting there =)

Suggestions:
- Make the center part of the upper body a different main color than the arms. Paint it silver or a team color like green, red, blue. If red is the team color on the model it kind of blends in and units from different teams might get confused.
- Have the different gun arms be different colors. Different shape is important and you nailed that but sometimes having colors (that are not team colors) for specific types of weapons will help the player tell the differance between units. So energy weapons are yellow or purple, and projectile weapons are dark green or silver, something whatever.

Ideas for different lower legs:
- Tank treds, mono and duel.
- Wheels, 2 big wheels one on each side or many small wheels like treadless tank tracks.
- Hover tank, or lower body that is a an energy repulser.
- 4 legs that form an H pattern instead of a +. Two legs going forward and two legs going backward, with wheels on each leg, or make it a hover body.

That's all I can think of for now...

Damn vig you and me are on the same page, i was planning on making 12 more textures and bring my full texture size up to 256 for all the diffrent parts. I just have to figure out what other weapon types i want to make and think about the type of things i would want in the design of the legs.

oh and red is the team color. Thats why its the only thing of color on it.

I work in the same building that Total A was made in, MANY MANY MOONS ago, so everyone here has a bit of bot love, myself included. Of course Cave Dog is long gone but we still have a few old timers kickin around and every once in a while a server goes up. My cubemates and I talked about it and this is what we came up with, feel free to pillage our ideas or flat out ignore them =)

Suggestions:
Not that you MUST do these or the world will end. But I think it would help if you classifed the units by type and gave each type a specific class. For example Atariliary would have 3 classes light, med and heavy. Light might have wheels, medium have walker legs and heavy have treads.

- Artilliary/anti armor:
Light: 4 wheeled bots with rocket shoulder packs launch larege amounts of highly inacruate misquito missles.
Med: Mobile single load and fire rocket truck looking bots without human pilots of course. Slow to fire but pack more punch than light. Must be stationary to fire, and the missle raises up then launches.
Heavy: Tank treads, with large shoulder mounted rocket packs. Missles would be much more accurate and each missle would pack close to but not equal the ammount of of med missle. The trade off being it would fire more at one time or more quickly and be able to move and fire.

- Mobile Shield/health:
Light: 4 wheels, light/fast, can put up a weak shield around surounding units but must stop to do so. Can also repair but either unit can not move while repairs are going on.
Med: 4 legs, can move at a med pace and put up a med shield. Remains moblie while the shield is out.
Heavy I thought of this one on my own) Spider legs for getting to the wounded everywhere they may be. To repair it releases a bunch of smaller units to make repairs/heal. Upgrades for this unit could be the more tiny repair bots? Like a big spider gives birth to a ton of spiper babies. Only instead of having one giant ass it would have 3 in a row. The back two could be dropped in an area as a repair point for bots to go to. The last canaster of repair bots would always go with it.

- Solid projectile/energy:
Light: Wheeled, shoots stuff... stuff dies... umm yeah...
Med: hover, see above but bigger and slightly heavier weapons.
Heavy: 2-4 walker legs, one arm is like an assault rifle and the other is a long range cannon, the bot must kneel or brace its self somehow to shoot.

- mine layers/defensive traps:
Light: wheels, tiny fast moving kamazi bots. Don't do much damage and often explode spontainously or when they reach a certain distance. Like they have a battery life and when it runs out they explode.
Med: Kind of like a dump truck with legs. but in the bed are racks of mines that are ejected out around the bot making an instant mine filed.
Heavy: Spider legs, plants mines by squating down and dropping them like eggs. They then burry into the ground like the mines in Star Craft, they will get up and chase the enemy.