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LOW-POLY ART

polycounter lvl 19
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hawken polycounter lvl 19
This is the sweet spot for your low-poly models. Post 'em if you've got 'em!

Low-poly hasn't really been a requirement in the games industry for a long while now. This thread is for low-poly art style appreciation, so please take note of these rough guidelines:
  • Keep models under 1,000 triangles.
  • Scenes are fine, if all models are low poly.
Some dedicated low-poly modelling tools now exist that make this art style a lot easier to produce; Crocotile3D & Blockbench

Here's a handy list of ways to make your art look right in mainstream 3D software: Low-Poly Art Style Guide

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  • kitetsu
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    Deozaan: The hands and forearms are still lacking volume when looking at the side view. If you look at the example models, you can see that their hands and forearms have volume even when it's front or side view.
  • laperen
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    laperen polycounter lvl 11
    @Deozaan

    if you are going to copy a style, copy it fully, and then adapt from there

    playing around without direction isnt going to get you anywhere

    as an excercise, picture the shape you want and draw it out 1st, maybe even draw in the wire frame as an extra step, THEN do you dive into making it in 3D
  • Defaultsound
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    Defaultsound polycounter lvl 14
    Okay I'm calling this done, not too great but it's my first attempt at this. During this I've learnt a lot, so when I am going to work on my next piece I am going to keep in mind all those things.

    Here it is:

    y1qV2.png

    Qey7B.png

    uISe2.png

    As you can see poor UV space usage and unwrapping, but still I think the results are good enough for a practice. I'm calling it done at least. Feel free to crit where you think I could have improved.

    I'm off to enjoy E3 now, have fun :)
  • paradise.engineering
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    paradise.engineering polycounter lvl 11
    nice pixel art chainsaw

    this boat is incredible
    boat.gif
  • laperen
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    laperen polycounter lvl 11
    the chainsaw looks incredible

    the only flaw i think is the grill on the right side (if the blade was facing me)

    since every other part of the model has some pre-made shadows, seems alittle out of place
  • ruberboy
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    ruberboy polycounter lvl 10
    I have a question, when you have distortion in a UV island, what is more important, the distortion or making it squared? Because programs like blender have the option of showing colour for distortion/stretching. If I square a UVisland I get distortion because its not the original unwrapped shape.

    what about more curved shapes? can be squared too?
  • felipefrango
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    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    ruberboy wrote: »
    I have a question, when you have distortion in a UV island, what is more important, the distortion or making it squared? Because programs like blender have the option of showing colour for distortion/stretching. If I square a UVisland I get distortion because its not the original unwrapped shape.

    what about more curved shapes? can be squared too?

    I'd say making it square unless the distortion is too extreme. It's specially useful for low poly stuff where texture resolution is limited and you need more precision. On an irregular poly where you'd need a diagonal line, by squaring the UVs and making the lines straight on the texture they'll follow the shape of the model better, while if you matched the UV proportions you'd need to make the line diagonal on the texture, which due to low resolution, would result in poor aliasing and would look really bad. For example, look at Tennis's boat from a few pages ago. Faces are all irregular but have been squared, which allows for pixel-artish texture painting that adapts to the model's shape. Had he mapped without squaring he'd waste UV space and would have to distort the texture to compensate for the shape.
    Tennis wrote: »
    madPXL: looks great, love the texture!

    Vegas: very cool.

    managed to get a bit of time for some lowpoly stuffthis weekend, so i decided to do a quick boat.
    Wanted to add more details, but ran out of texture space.

    lowpoly_boat.png

    boat.gif
  • ruberboy
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    ruberboy polycounter lvl 10
    Felipefrango: Thanks! I have observed that sometimes the unwrapping of the program makes diagonal lines on purpose, so that is why I was asking.

    Circular shapes some times I try to keep a straight seam and conserve the circular part, for example a lowpoly cilinder with both taps seamed and a seam at the vertical unwraps in an almost straight shape. Or a circle divided in half. but there are shapes which when squared loose a bit of the "curved" part.
  • felipefrango
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    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    Yeah, it's a case by case thing, when unwrapping you should try to imagine what the texture should look like on that poly, see if it'll have any straight lines, etc. With low poly stuff you can do a lot with very little space once you start planning your UVs smart.
  • Oleg
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    Oleg polycounter lvl 14
    purple bat thing , much wasted UV here ..

    InfmJ.jpg
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Hey Oleg, Looks like your getting alot betetr at texturing, same deal with most the models of yours i've seen, your textures need more 'pop'. Did a quick paint over, hope you don't mind. Did this using an overlay layer and brushing on black/white (highlights/shadows) which will help to tone your texture further.
    batpaint%20over.jpg
  • kiril0t
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    kiril0t polycounter lvl 12
    Meh alotta hate on youtube, but heres an overblown video of my current project.
    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxaWatnxR9Q[/ame]
  • Oleg
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    Oleg polycounter lvl 14
    thanks for a nice comment , and what a lovely paint over I can learn a lot from it.
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    kiril0t very nice!
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    That app looks awesome mate, love the style and game play speed. Youtube is full of idiots, ignore them.
  • acarr
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    acarr polycounter lvl 6
    Youtube is full of 13-year-old punks. It looks good.
  • kiril0t
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    kiril0t polycounter lvl 12
    Yo, thanks dudes! But 13 year old punks are the target audience ;)
  • text_fish
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    The core of the game looks really good. I think you just need to have more stuff going on such as oncoming monsters/missiles and more height variation.
  • Mattaphylactic
    Hullo, this was my first attempt at doing a hand-held character - Moby Lick from Street Sharks.

    mlpresentationsheetv.jpg

    And this was my second, Hit Girl from Kick-Ass:

    hgpresentationsheet.jpg

    For the next ones, I'd do a better unwrap and try and keep more edges straight but I learnt this a bit too late in this case! Hope you like :thumbup:
  • zenarion
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    zenarion polycounter lvl 17
    My tablet started acting out so I couldn't sculpt or paint textures. So I made this guy here:
    ZgIZd.png
  • Skibur
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    Skibur polycounter lvl 5
    kiril0t wrote: »
    Yo, thanks dudes! But 13 year old punks are the target audience ;)
    Everyone's quick to criticise, but they wouldn't even know where to begin!

    Good work on the app!
  • Maph
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    Maph polycounter lvl 8
    kiril0t: That looks absolutely awesome! Mind sharing some insight on how you set up your levels? Are they procedural or just very large (if the game doesn't end of course). :)
    Also, need a beta tester? :)
  • willy-wilson
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    willy-wilson polycounter lvl 8
    working on an editor and polishing things as well more to come.

    Capture-131.gif
  • drelectro
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    drelectro polycounter lvl 8
    kiril0t wrote: »
    Meh alotta hate on youtube

    ignore the hate.

    the game looks very polished, runs smooth and is well executed.... but: from what i've seen it lacks a little bit gameplay variation. it looks much like canabalt taken to 3d with some extra controls .. its impressive for short but i suspect it gets boring pretty fast.

    is this your final release or are you still in development process? you should invite some beta testers (i would pm you my udid ;)
  • paradise.engineering
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    paradise.engineering polycounter lvl 11
    kiril0t that looks very nice, you're also the coder? My guess is that's only the first level
  • Skrewd
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    kiril0t wrote: »
    Meh alotta hate on youtube, but heres an overblown video of my current project.

    A few recommendations:

    `Don't keep using the same jump and landing noise, it's gets annoying after a while.
    `When he lands, try to make it look a little more natural
    `When he lands from a longer jump, have him roll to keep his inertia
    `When he starts a long jump or high speed jump, change it to look more dramatic
    `Maybe power ups? Double speed, Temp bridges, auto pilot for 5 seconds etc etc etc

    I think the idea of attacking is kinda hard to implement due to the nature of the game. I'm not a coder, so I can't tell whether the above can be introduced. Just offering my two cents.

    Looks amazing though mate. It coming to the Aus app store? How much it going for? Please dont make a trial with a million ads on it. Make a trail that is a designed trial level. then have the game be better and offer a cool story or something.

    Rambling, I know. Kinda my first time stoned atm and i just feel like typing.

    @ Gil: Bro, you need to put out some tutorials on how to use Photoshop, mate. I grew up with flash in high school, and it was Macromedia then so I had no need to learn Photoshop.




    :3
  • kiril0t
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    kiril0t polycounter lvl 12
    Hey guys, thanks for the comments.

    So a bit of insight. I just do the art. I dont code. The games in its final stages of iterations and were hoping to release by the end of the month. Were going to add a bit of a story element to it where in you collect journal entries and scepter pieces in order to break the curse of being forced to run endlessly. So there is an attainable "end", However TempleRun is all procedural and there are 3 level variations, wooden-planks/temple/cliff-tops.

    It does get a bit repetitive and it is just a 3d cannabalt but we hope to bring a bit of something new to the table with the 3d.

    Its all gesture controls and were going to be adding in an early jump-roll if you swipe down while in mid air. Were also going to be adding some More power ups, one of which will be a limited invincibility that makes you incorporeal and you'll turn into a ghost and you can walk on air and go trough obstacles without dying.


    As far as beta testers go, I think the list is reseting currently so I would really like to add a few peeps off of here that will give more art-centric feedback. But i gotta talk to the boss :P. If you're interested please pm me your emails and i'll do a blast once the time comes.

    Ill also make sure to drop some promo codes on here when the time comes.

    Cheers!
  • Damytria
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    Damytria polycounter lvl 7
    When fruit goes bad ....

    F___ it, I'll post it up. A friend of mine is encouraging me to post art more. Here's my first step into the foray.

    Images Removed! CRAP NDA!

    sorry for the image spam
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    Haha, those are cool :) The orange reminds me of Poopinmymouth's display pic :p
  • kaptainkernals
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    kaptainkernals polycounter lvl 12
    I love that banana character.
  • skylebones
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    skylebones polycounter lvl 10
    Those are really awesome.
  • Damytria
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    Damytria polycounter lvl 7
    Thanks for the kind words guys.

    And OHNOES! You're right! It does look like the poopinmymouth face - Nuuuuuuu! I can assure you it is purely coincidence D:
  • paradise.engineering
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    paradise.engineering polycounter lvl 11
    excellent UV Map, Have you used body painting?
  • Damytria
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    Damytria polycounter lvl 7
    I mostly just import the model into Photoshop directly as a, I think it's Create a "New Layer From 3D File" and go to town in Photoshop. I throw down base colors, shadows and try to 3D Paint as much as I can. Eventually I'll do a final pass on the flat texture.

    It's really helpful for hiding seams >.>


    I think something I could use some advice on, in Private tells or if we're not spamming the thread, is on color use.

    I'm kind of just use Analogous color schemes, and I have a feeling my work would pop out more if I used better color choices.
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    balloonTT.gif
    128x128
    254 tri's
  • paradise.engineering
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    paradise.engineering polycounter lvl 11
    wow, that is so cool giles, maybe the fire should be a cross between 2 planes, not only one plane and maybe add more details on the ballon, a logo or something
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    It would be a billboard plane ingame, so it would always face the camera. My crappy render just didn't use it.
  • drelectro
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    drelectro polycounter lvl 8
    @gilesruscoe: i really like it.. is it for something special?
  • Count_Incogneto
    tumblr_lmmpvwDMBv1qlq95vo1_500.jpg

    First real attempt at 3D modelling :)
  • rumblesushi
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    My game is basically finished, I'm just waiting to get it sponsored and ported to Android using Adobe AIR (should be a very quick job, seeing as AIR is basically Flash).

    Here's a shot of the second track, I'll upload a couple of cars tomorrow.

    cm_screen_01.jpg

    I'm pretty pleased that without the music the game is under 5 megs total :D
  • felipefrango
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    felipefrango polycounter lvl 9
    Awesome, man, eager to see the final product! I specially like how the cherry flowers fly off the ground when the cars drive by them. :D
  • rumblesushi
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    Oh you checked out the rolling demo, yeah I like that bit too. I was just going to make them float down randomly, but I thought it would be a nicer touch if they actually react to the car :)
  • gilesruscoe
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    gilesruscoe polycounter lvl 10
    @drelectro, nope, was just for fun. Inspired by tennis :)

    @rumble thats looking sweet man, GL with your sponsors
  • VPrime
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    VPrime polycounter lvl 9
    Rumblesushi nice, reminds me of initial D :)
  • Mr_Drayton
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    Mr_Drayton polycounter lvl 14
    My game is basically finished, I'm just waiting to get it sponsored and ported to Android using Adobe AIR (should be a very quick job, seeing as AIR is basically Flash).
    Ooooh, so you're almost done? :O

    I'm checking the new rolling demo right now, looks super! Very Initial-D-ish. :D

    Will it also be playable via Flash Player on PC/Mac?
  • Racer445
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    Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
    Mr_Drayton wrote: »
    Very Initial-D-ish. :D

    the very first thing that came to mind when i saw that screenshot was sega's awesome initial d arcade series. the game looks nice, rumblesushi!

    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0IUq3TfsRw[/ame]
  • diamond3
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    diamond3 polycounter lvl 7
    tumblr_lmmpvwDMBv1qlq95vo1_500.jpg

    First real attempt at 3D modelling :)
    You can cut extra polygons here and there.
    Just look for unnecessary edges which cut planar polygons into extra triangles.
    It is handy to have them during modeling, but after you're finished with the overall shape and details, you must clean up(optimize) your mesh.

    Also, you've made some really small creases with geometry. Texture will play there well enough, and it will be easier to unwrap/texture optimized model.
  • Mr_Drayton
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    Mr_Drayton polycounter lvl 14
    Racer445 wrote: »
    the very first thing that came to mind when i saw that screenshot was sega's awesome initial d arcade series. the game looks nice, rumblesushi!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0IUq3TfsRw
    Oh my, how can I have never seen this before? O_o
    It looks extremely polished.
  • Shin
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    WOW!

    I'm new here,
    I have looked all of this 200 pages...
    You ARE TOTALLY IMPRESSIVE!

    I'm learning some thing about Luxology Modo,
    But I'm curious, what kind of software did you guys use in this low poly models?

    Thanks
  • Shin
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    This is awesome!
    This is my first time here,

    You guys ARE TOTALLY IMPRESSIVE!
    I did see all of this 200 pages, and you have more and more excelent models!

    I'm leaning Luxology Modo,
    What kind of 3d software did you guys used?

    Thanks!
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