•Hi everyone, pangahas here. I'm an aspiring game artist(to be specific an environment artist)and I have been lurking on the forums for a while now and I finally decided to make my own thread to be able to improve on my skills and get constructive criticisms from you guys. And to start things off here's my humble barrel. Nothing much really but I thought I'd take things slowly, begin with simple props then eventually tackle more complex stuff as I go along. I want to focus on hand-painted low poly stuff, so here it is and the first question goes - for a third person type of game is my current tri count of 660 just ok?




•The above barrel is actually a revised version of the one below, I decided to remodel it to make the metal rings be part of the barrel itself and not as a separate piece which I would then attach to it.





•AS for texturing and art style here's an earlier study that I made(rendered in max).This is more or less how I want it to look like, more stylized than realistic. I intend to bring it inside UDK for the final render, I just have to figure out how to recreate the style.

It's like the borderlands style.. i like it. I think your barrel is pretty high poly, but i don't know how low poly you want to go with it. The wood is looking pretty good, it's nice to see some color variation in it. looking forward to seeing your work develop.

glottis- hi glad you liked it..Yeah in terms of art style the Borderlands game is a big influence, I prefer stylized render over realistic ones for games and pretty much would like to go on that art direction with my works, i just find them more appealing. AS for poly count I was actually thinking of making it 8 or 10 sided but eventually decided to make it 12 thinking that I would be using it for a future game idea I have in mind which is either a third person or first person shooter type..but then again maybe I should double check on recommended tri counts for various game types..

Yea... i mean... as long as the low poly set that you have in mind fits the count of your props you should be in good position.

As for the engine shaders, there is a lot you will be able to do with UDK. Are you familiar with the engine?

Originally Posted by Pangahas

I really like how did the wood on the top bit - the hexgonal one, not a style that you see everyday, but I find it very aesthetically pleasing. Particularly the dark grooving you have on it, very nice.

@ glottis- Yeah I'm familiar with it, I've been reading & watching various tutorials about it but I'm yet to get hands on experience using it. I will eventually once I have a bunch of props made for a simple scene at least.
@ kaptainkernals - I'm glad you like the style I'm trying to achieve here, the challenge really is not to make it Borderlands much and try to come up with something unique on its own. Hopefully I could come up with one as I progress with my works. Thanks for the time..

When you go to make your renders, you might want to check into rim lighting for UDK in case you haven't. Max also has such abilities

Barrel is looking good. Just be sure to get some LODs for it, and all should be groovy

Thanks keres I would check on that. Do I need the latest build of UDK for that? coz I only have I think the January version. Hmm I'm not really familiar with some of the game art terms but I suppose LOD means level of detail?(looks into wiki )

•I did a lower poly version of the humble barrel and also a companion crate to go along with it..Now I have to finish the textures and bring them inside UDK

On the crate, you would save a lot of polys if you made the end bits floating. They do not need to be extruded out of the main shape of the crate. Then less polys would need to be spent on the flat surface of the crate it self.

Also you would only need to unwrap one or two of the end bits. Then just copy them across. The odds are slim that the player would be able to see all 8 ends in any great detail at one time and wouldn't notice that they are the same. That also goes to for the sides. This would help you cut down on texture space.

The same thing goes for your barrel. You could cut the painted sides in half and just repeat it on the other side. This may even allow you to fit the textures for both objects onto a single texture page.

Originally Posted by ariofighter

On the crate, you would save a lot of polys if you made the end bits floating. They do not need to be extruded out of the main shape of the crate. Then less polys would need to be spent on the flat surface of the crate it self.

Also you would only need to unwrap one or two of the end bits. Then just copy them across. The odds are slim that the player would be able to see all 8 ends in any great detail at one time and wouldn't notice that they are the same. That also goes to for the sides. This would help you cut down on texture space.

The same thing goes for your barrel. You could cut the painted sides in half and just repeat it on the other side. This may even allow you to fit the textures for both objects onto a single texture page.

floating geo..right I totally forgot about that..Thanks for the tips I'll do the necessary revisions asap

Wireframe is sound, the key is to have the wood contrasting with the metal, so dark blue / near black and dark brown go well.

In terms of optimization there's alot of ways you could optimize it depending on the type of game It's going into, but for the most part have the wood tiling in the UV's (which you've done) so you can re-use future geometry that has planks on the barrel UV's.

•I shaved off more polys to further reduce the tri count..

I'd get rid of the overlaps on the metal rings too, nobody will notice in game, I don't even think anyone here noticed with the wireframes or they would have said something.

Especially on the lowpoly.

I dont think you should try to save the polys people are advising you too. It barely registers with the engine at these counts, its also verts you should be looking at not polycounts so much.
These barrels with few sides look awful, they look last gen, its the thing that most betrays the fact that we are simplifying forms. I always spend twice as much on circular designs because its needed.

Also, with the new Lightmass lighting engine you need more extrudes to create realistic shadows and create the impression of true 3d so I'd just go right on ahead and ignore everyone telling you to optimize this stuff, it was better at the higher counts and no problem whatsoever.

Its the texture use that is more of an issue now, but I'm not going to get into all that now, but in general we spend twice as much on polycount and 1/4 as much on texture count if we can on the environment side of things.

Note I did not say we lower the resolution of the textures, we simply plan things out much more to reuse one texture for a variety of different unique pieces.

yeah i think at the very least you have taken too many polys of that barrel, its barely cylindrical!

I agree with what Kevin is saying. You're sacrificing silhouette and at lower polycounts that very important. Take off the horizontal ones before you take off the vertical loops. I would be less concerned with having a super efficient model. That stuff will come with time and experience.

Also the textures are pretty flat. You're trying to fake depth with textures and your wood texture so far is lacking shadows and highlights to give the impression that there is depth to the surface. Try to think about your textures as if they were modeled out. Angled surfaces, edges, etc will need highlights and shadows (both large and fine ones).

•THanks guys point taken, but for LOD purposes are the lower poly versions that I have that much of a use?

•Here's where I'm at in terms of texture..


•A test render within Max, came out washed out though hmm.

Originally Posted by Pangahas

•THanks guys point taken, but for LOD purposes are the lower poly versions that I have that's much of a use?

It depends on the budget I guess. At work, we make two LOD models of the final low poly. Usually the first LOD is about 66% of the total tris of the original while the second is 33%.

I really like the texture style you got going, looking forward to seeing more

Looking great so far!

You said that you want to focus on low poly stuff, so being aware of the polycount and staying in budget is a good thing to keep an eye on, but don't let it rule you. Reducing polies for optimisation is a common task during game development so it is good to know how to do it and getting used to doing it is useful. Its also good to think of LODs as you've already pointed out.

I wouldn't worry too much about those kind of aspects for now if you're just learning. Try to keep it fun - it is supposed to be fun - and make something that looks good in the end not 'this would have looked a lot better, but I ran out of polies!'

As for the work itself, I agree with PixelGoat, the texturing style is coming along nicely. One thing to be wary of is the overuse of black. The grain in the crate would look a lot nicer (in my opinion) if it was a darker wood colour rather than pure black. Also, where you have added highlights along the edges of the dark grain could be pulled back a bit so its not so uniform.
I would also suggest painting your textures on a bg colour that is closer to your texture's main colour. If the reason for the black bg is that you are working on a UV sheet, try setting that layer to screen, moving it above your general painting layers, fade off the opacity and turn it on and off when you need to refer to it.

With your MAX render and your worry that it is washed out, don't trust that unless that is going to be your final destination for your scene. If you were to export that into UDK or Marmoset or Cryengine, it would look different. While you are working, just use the viewport as your guide rather than being tempted to alter your model to suit some lights in a render scene.

Good stuff - keep going

@PixelGoat,glottis8 -Glad you guys dig the style I'm goin for..
@nullfed - The wood grain color being black is intentional actually, I wanted it to look like comics style inked work but then again I think you have a point there so I'll look into that as I finish it up. Ahm with the highlights did you mean I could do it in such a way that it doesn't follow exactly the grain's contour probably make it chipped in further away from the lines?

If thats the style you are aiming for then go for it. If I saw that crate in a game looking that way, I would have assumed that it was a cel shader-type effect rather than something painted in because its uniform across the model.

As for the highlights, again it was because it seems uniform across the texture - every dark line seems to have the highlight effect on it. I only meant to try not having it all over but only on certain parts.

As for the blackness, it makes all of the grain lines seem as if they are equal in depth. Once you get to black, you can't go any further down and it goes from fairly rich woody brown to black with not much inbetween. I've always avoided using pure black unless very sparingly and its something i've had drilled into me over the years, I guess. If you are going to do low poly enviro work, it can have some undesirable results sometimes - black ghosts horribly on the PSP, for example.

Nice models, I like the cartoonish look without appearing kinky in any way.


Colt