In-GamePort Zone Test for GameLoft
polycounter lvl 13
I'm doing one of Gameloft's tests as practice. Before showing some of my works, I thought I may share you GameLoft's rules so that you won't critique beyond their boundaries.
Here are the rules:
Here are the rules:
So without further delay here's some of my work; so far the total number of tris is around 3150.Based on the above design, you must model a port zone scene, respecting a maximum of 3500 triangles.
Your scene must be designed in a realistic style and include at least two cranes, a cargo ship (or part of a cargo ship visible to the player), containers, a warehouse, and props of your choosing.
You must respect the ambiance defined for the design: rainy night with a full moon. You do not need to model the players weapon nor the players arm.
Texturing constraints: Maximum texture size is 512 * 512. You can use multiple 512x512 textures but try to fit a maximum number of objects in the same texture (texture sharing). Only diffuse + vertex color + Lightmap.
Lighting: 1) Vertex colour only + additional patch for light cone.
2) Lightmap only (512x512) + additional patch for light cone
Skybox: Cloudy night sky with a full moon.
Animation (optional): Put in some animated objects in your scene (props etc). This is optionial.
Ground reflection: Partially transparent ground allows you to duplicate some objects in order to fake some reflections (up to you to decide the essential elements).
Integration of rain and water-drop FX is a plus.
Replies
I am pretty sure there will be some gameloft artists around here to give some sugegstions
Well, me as ex-gameloft artist i guess i could give u feedbacks as well, but if u could only arrange your images in a readable/viewable way ;P
With that in mind I really think what you are missing is color. Tons of concrete, need some brick walls, metal warehouses, something else imo.
wires would be good too, it's hard to tell where you used them. Are the cables modeled 3d, or are they alpha planes (if 3d a huge waste of polys there that could go towards more important and larger details).
Also any railings should be alpha, just too low of a count to waste on them imo.
I think a few car models would go a long way to, they'd add some various shapes and colors around the scene.
Well, nevertheless.
@Ged - actually those limitations are even lower that what could be done. That is dated from the times of iphone 1 i guess. The iPhone memory is large. Even on past gen (iphone 2 and 3) it was higher than the PSP and using like 15 different texture sheets ONLY for level (excluding characters, vehicles, weapons, lightmaps and SFX)was ok. Not to mention half or more of them were 1024s
So what is possible on iphone4 should be even higher than that i assume.
What IS a limitation is quantity of IDs. That is why it is better not to go over 10-15 IDs per level.
Now concerning the actual stuff posted.
Definitely I agree what ppl said about posting wires cauz it is hard to say what is what. For now cranes look too hi-res.
What I think will help u a lot when submitting that is to show how u can create interesting surfaces with lower res.
Your concrete stuff looks just plain boring. Buildings need more stuff to break down the huge flat planes. Use trims, separator and edge supports on your architecture.
Windows and more roll-up doors would help as well. Maybe even use a wall texture that takes all the height and tiles only horizontally. This way u could have some nice vertical detail going on.
You also have huge quality contrast in your textures. Concrete walls are photosourced and have actually some details in them while pillars are plain noise which does not even fit with concrete walls.
The ground texture does not need all those lines. U r wasting texture on them, and moreover the ground res is too low. It should not only match the rest but be even slightly higher.
Ship is plain blue color. That needs to have actual details like rust, leaking dirt, seams etc. Of course u don't have to create unique unwrap for the that cauz it will result is uselessly huge texture, but u could unwrap one section of a ship and re-use it.
Also when working with low-poly and texturing it will go better if u use fullbright view for the meshes cauz that defaul viewport lighting makes things look bad in this case and don't let u evaluate the texture as needed.
They are in alpha; all of them are.
I'll keep that in mind thanx.
I think it's ur browser lol.
This sounds interesting because I'm always using Multi-sub objects in 3Ds Max. I have assign a Number ID to a polygon side so I can apply a certain texture to it.
Alright thank you guyz for critiquing this rookie 3D modeller; I'll keep this thread updated and seek further for advice.
I think you need to plan further, identify possible tiling elements, and design your meshing accordingly. So far it looks like you are simply tiling textures on big surfaces. Try to define your scene with a grid and blocks ; and make sure your geometry as modular as you possibly can. That way, you will be able to reuse geometry everywhere (instead of doing big unique objects)
Right now it looks very empty with no vehicles, no containers, and using a lot of grey boxes gets boring pretty quick. Add some interesting shapes and some colour. And like MightyPea said, paint in lighting effects and trim and such. If you plan ahead carefully, you can get very far with very little - check out old games such as Unreal Tournament and HalfLife 1, or low end games like WoW.
red = actual geometry
blue = faked shapes with texturing
Polys: 362
Tris: 804
Texture number: 32(way too much)
Rendered Shots
Textures
Unfortunately this site only supports up to 16 images so I have to give you a link to check them out instead.
http://s52.photobucket.com/albums/g12/franman007/Crane/Textures/
Be sure to check out page 2 as well.
also if you want to mimic how this will look on the device use bilinear mip mapping and a screen res of 480x320. You may find that some of your textures turn into unidentifiable mess on the device even though they look clean and crisp when you look at them on your pc.
another rule of thumb if you want to support older devices eg 3G iphone then you may have to limit tris(not polys) to about 5000 per scene or less.
can you give any insight on how to go about setting up " bilinear mip mapping and a screen res of 480x320" within 3dmax?
Would be much appreciated
i found a good image to explain this.
basically , start with something like lego, or module.
and start with big but basic object first like wall, and floor.
unlike UDK for PS3/pc/360, T junction in Iphone is OK, because your polygon budget is limited.
however something like you will see frontal, like buildings. big pilars landmark,
you should make it as unique as possible.
if you see that module/lego pieces in first example you can see it has unique shape/color even without
high frequentcy detail ( bump or etc)
if the pixel allow you can add more small frequents details later on
try to work without ambient and shading, or try using white vertex color. good texture should be look good and stand out. even in flat shading.
this is a good example, http://www.armchairempire.com/images/previews/ps2/radiata-stories/radiata-stories-3.jpg
you dont have to do hand painted texture like this but, Im just want to mention that even in flat shading we can see the distinct overall details.
this modular technique has been used in industry in many generations
what did you mean by go under for the reflections. Thats the only part of the test i don't get. Make the ground transparent? do you have and example of this or can you explain. I've always used materials for reflections.
thx in advance