Originally Posted by e-freak

on the other hand it's an exterior and an interior that should count seperate - right? (assuming this is for a racing game it's gonna render either of these not both at the same point anyhow)...

Good point!

Originally Posted by itismario

thanks for the help, but i'm using maya10 and i can't find anything about self illumination in the hypershade editor and nothing about smoothing groups

thanks again

Smoothing groups is his response to the hard edges you have. In maya you want to smooth your normals by softening your edge loops. Go into edge mode > select all edges > SHIFT RC > soften edges.

I've never heard of self illumination. BUT, it would look much cleaner if you used ambient occlusion on your model. Just applying the texture with no light map information can make it look like "poo". haha

Originally Posted by GCMP

Nice work Mik2121

Finished with this for now...

Presentation


Specs;
987 tris total (699 tris exterior, 288 tris interior)
512x256 diffuse map only
90% hand painted

I'm guessing the bricks that go under the rims are another 12 tris each?

Originally Posted by Mik2121

whats going on with the cap there? 4 x 10 sided quads = unhappy game engine

wip, 272 tris with mouth interior and teeth. Somewhat influenced by Brink :p

@LoTekK Woohoo, effing epic win dude Looks like the bald dude in X-men! This could easily be a mugshot of a WC3 unit

Originally Posted by Mik2121

Gotcha. Thanks for pointing it out!. I just meant to keep a 128x128 texture, but I will change it to a 128x64 texture in a bit!. I just wanted to keep it into a squared texture.

Oh, here is another object I did. It's basically the oil drum I posted above, but even lower poly and lower texture.

holy n-gons batman

Hawken: 10-sided quads?
Mr Machette: while it's good practice to get rid of ngons, I don't know of a great deal of engines that would care (they'd just triangulate on ex-/import), and on a planar face the triangulation will hardly fuck up the smoothing.
Not to say it's not good practice, but I do get tired of the whining everytime someone spots an n-gon.

Uhm? Just because they don't show up, it doesn't mean they are not there?.
I usually try to keep all quads and triangles, but either way, when you export, you usually convert it to mesh first or else the game engine itself will convert it to triangles anyway, so I don't see the problem.

And as I was saying first, just because they don't show up, it doesn't mean they are not there. If you see the polycount in the pic, it says 68 polygons. That's actual triangles and that's the data that shows up in the 3dsmax viewport info display, so it was actually counting the non-visible triangles.

That doesn't mean I usually go around leaving n-gons. In fact I barely do that, but for a plain surface like this, any non-defined triangle won't break the mesh either way, so I don't see what's the deal. Any of my other models don't have n-gons as far as I know, and those WOULD in-deed have issues if any n-gons were left around, because the triangulation could mess up with the actual shape of the object.


(of course, if I'm going to import it in any other software like ZBrush and stuff like that, I keep it all squares and triangles just where needed)

EDIT -



Happy now? :P

EDIT 2 - This doesn't mean I don't appreciate the critics, obviously. Thanks for pointing it out either way and I hope I can get comments on more content from now on too!

that's true pea but some engines do a lousy job of the triangulation, ie take one vert then make edges between that and all the other verts, so you get a bunch of thin sliver polys. Just hitting triangulate in max/maya would probably give reasonable results tho

ps, mik- people can only respond to what you post so if it looks like the edge flow's not been worked out, thats what it looks like. I would take this as a lesson in presentation, rather than edge flow

Here's my first attempt at a character under 500 triangles, Aurra Sing from Clone Wars. Was a pretty fun challenge for sure. Still needs a lot of work on the textures but I thought I'd post where I'm at so far.

@Spur That's lookin' great Hands look a bit funny though. Texture is very clean, maybe add some shading at her chest? Not to make her more booby but to make it more interesting as that area is flat in colour compared to other parts.


... and is that an antenna sticking out of her head?

Originally Posted by 9skulls

@Spur That's lookin' great Hands look a bit funny though. Texture is very clean, maybe add some shading at her chest? Not to make her more booby but to make it more interesting as that area is flat in colour compared to other parts.


... and is that an antenna sticking out of her head?

Thanks! Yep that's what it be! One of her well known characteristics, her tracking antenna, long fingers, pale skin and sunken eyes. Definitely a chick you don't want to mess with. One of my favorite least known Star Wars characters, I'm glad she's finally gotten some well deserved attention in the Clone Wars series.

As far as the hands, I had a hard time trying to translate her long fingers yet keep it low poly too. I may go back and change them but I think I'm going to try a texture on them first and see how it works. I decided to make the other hand a fist to save on the triangle count and enable her to hold some sort of weapon.

I definitely see what you are saying about her chest.

I didn't even think to post a little ref of her, so here are a few shots.

Originally Posted by Mik2121

Not trying to give you a hard time, but if you want you can triangulate circles like that in the shape of a fan and save one triangle. It's magic! Nice texture btw, maybe could use some sharper detail/contrast here and there.

I'm fairly certain that fan triangles are bad for performance. That one triangle is not worth it.

I've heard that "save one triangle by fanning" thing before and still don't get it. Do I need to go back to elementary school and retake math? Show me your magic, polygon wizards!



i feel dum


Edit: Maybe I'm thinking when you have a vertex in the middle with edges coming out like spokes? But that saves two tri's when you take that vert away (either by fanning or doing strips)...and also, who would have unnecessary polygons laying around like that?!

Good point, Spacey
Fanning, if anything, is worse - it leads to irregular shading, if you were using all one smoothing group (as some engines, especially handheld, may still force!).
Personally I tend to suck it up and put a vertex in the middle and waste an almighty 2 triangles. Perfectly regular shading that way, plus it means you can do stuff like texture just a quarter of the top and mirror it 4 ways...

Uhm... I was thinking of exactly the same thing as Spacey. But if it's that other kind of fan, with a vertex in the middle, I end up with 18 triangles at the top, as opposed to 16 triangles with the method I used.
What method would give me 15 triangles?

Originally Posted by 8-bit kid

I've never heard of self illumination. BUT, it would look much cleaner if you used ambient occlusion on your model. Just applying the texture with no light map information can make it look like "poo". haha

See my post on the previous page for an explanation of that one...

Hah! I've made a fool of myself. You're right, strips are equal to fan. I was replying robotically - so much for trying to be nice! The smoothing is a good point, and I thought about mentioning this, but I am used to self-illum on lowpoly, and therefore used to fanning triangles, etc. And I am so rusty that, yeah, where does "save one triangle" come from? It's two! From how MoP does it! Which is a lovely way.

Also, this is what I get for using object space normals so much. With them, you don't have to worry about vertex smoothing. What a magically educational adventure. Edit: okay, I felt bad, so I made everyone a pizza.

Best napkins ever. Soda cup is way too thick though, and so is the straw.

There's a tiny table in the middle of your pizza!

Looks great

Originally Posted by glynnsmith

There's a tiny table in the middle of your pizza!

Looks great

I had to look to see what those pizza tables were really called, pizza box supports apparently. $17 bucks for 1000 of those little guys, someone should make a sculpture out of them.

http://www.nminc.com/scan/fi=product...p=hitlist.html

Originally Posted by glynnsmith

There's a tiny table in the middle of your pizza!

WTF MINDFUCK DD

I stared drooling at that pizza for 5min and didn't even notice that "table" 'till I saw your comment :F My eyeballs are decieving me!