My first model !

[Bozor]

Hello everybody !
I just begin my first project. I come to you and show my first Low Poly model. I got a lot of questions.
Here's my first try :

I thing there a problem with proportions... I found his legs are to short... It's strange because in real life, my model don't seems anormal and I respect the photo I took :

Perhaps, my friend isn't human... Perhaps I got problem with the lens of my camera... I took the photo with the camera at the haunch height. I don't know... In fact, the perspective cause me a lot of trouble with the feet.
Just for the record, I know my model has no head, for now

And now, my questions :
1 - This model will be the main charactere of my 3d person game. There will be few ennemy but never more than 5 in the screen. How many polygons can I use for him ? So far, I got ~5600 of them. I think the head will be made of 2000 more polygons. Is that to much ? How many polygons can Unreal use for all my map ? If I can, I really like add some polygons on my model !

2 - About articulations, I use 2 ways :

Wich one is best for animation ? The thing I did for fingers, with just an edge where the finger bend or what I did for the knees, with more polygons but no "bending edge" ? I feel the limit of my english with anatomy, sorry.

3 - If I texturise my model with UV wrapping and then, modify the model a little bit, to adjust something, I'll had to redo all the work of texturing ?

That's all folks !
To be continued...

[JohNLA]

Nice model.
12000 tris is not unheard of. Poly limit depend on may things you alluded to only 5 characters on screen at once but you also have to take into account environment and texture usage, particles, animations. So there is no one correct number.
Typically, I build to an average number which you are right on track at 7500. You can always add or remove faces later pretty easily.

Add some bones and test out your articulations to see how they are bending and working for you.

Small changes like a small move of a vert will move the UV the same way. If you start deleting faces and and adding detail may then it may require fixing or redoing the UVs.

[Bozor]

Thank you Johnla ^^
Nobody was chocked by the short legs ?

[micahpharoh]

I think that you should take a few more reference shots closer to ground level. I think that there's a lot of distortion due to perspective. If only we could take orthogonal pictures in real life

Aside from that, I also think that your friend is oddly proportioned, lol. The model looks nice overall.

[Bozor]

Today, I put my friend on a wall and mark it at different points. I take mesure on the wall and yes, my friend is strange. BUT, I realise that it is less visible on the left view than in the front one.
In fact, the butt of my model is "upper" than his pubis. On my model, I stop the quadriceps under the pubis... In real life, my quadriceps (and the ones of my friend ^^) continue until they attach with the pelvis bone (illiaque in french). I think that it is the reason why we see more the "difformity" of my friend on the model than in real life.
I'll redraw this muscles and set his pubis up.

For the orthogonal picture, I think we can have better result with a long focal, taking the picture from a long distance...

This thread is VERY uneasy for a french, sorry ^^

[BloodReyvyn]

It's hardly noticeable and if you look at a lot of games, the legs are kind of short... Everyone was ga-ga over Modern Warfail 2's graphics and every character in COD that I have ever seen beyond the very first game has really short legs, which is why they have to attach the camera to the top of the player's head in those games so you don't feel like a dwarf.

[Bozor]

Excelent observation ^^
But my charactere is an acrobat, not a warrior, he has to look more like a cat than a turtle !
I make an absolutly no violent game. I absolutly don't want a COD like game
In fact, I thing I'll exagerate the length of the legs and shorten the torso to have the opposite effect.

[CyborgGuineaPig]

Not bad at all for a first low poly model. Tapology is descent too. Only suggestion to make is not showing screenshots with black background as it makes it difficult to judge the silhouette of the model.

[Denny]

Always try to use three whole edgeloops around knuckles, elbows, knees and so on. You'll need the outer two loops to keep volume and the middle edge to deform the mesh. You can of course add more edgeloops if you want better deformation. The way you have one unified loop at the elbow and knuckles was a technique used in older games when polycount was very low, don't go cheap in those areas.

[Bozor]

Massive update !

About the black background, you're right CyborgGuineaPig, it's a lot prettier. I come and ask for critics but secretly want good ones... Human nature

What do you mean by "tapology" ?

So, here's the head I build for my model :



Then, I weld it on the boby :



About the body, I've made some correction :
- The legs are longer, larger
- The pubis is higher
- I've done 3 edgeloops on the arms, but not on fingers, I think it will be easier to animate this way.
- Some touch on the shoulders to match the head size ^^

Thank you, everybody, for your crits and advices ^^

[sueds]

pretty cool for a first model

[Bozor]

Thank you ^^

Just a question, what can do a normal map that a bump can't ?

[maybe123]

* Bumpmaps:
Single axis hieght information maps that the renderer can use to "shade"
the surface it is applied to. (1D Bump Maps). The hieght info is usually
stored as a grey scale 8 or 16 bits per pixel image file where the low
values (black) represent the low areas (valleys) and the high vlaues
(white) are used to represent the the high areas (peeks).

* Normalmaps:
Three axis hieght information maps that the renderer can use to "shade"
the surface it is applied to. (3D Bump Maps). The X, Y, or Z axis specific
hieght info is usually stored as a 8 or 16 bits per pixel color image file
where the low values for the x axis (black) represent the low areas
(x-axis-dents) and the high vlaues (RED) are used to represent the
high areas (x-axis-protrusions). Green is used for the y axis in the
same way and blue for the z axis. Because normal maps contain
hieght information for all three axis (x, y, z) it is posible to discribe
a complete 360 degree curvature on all 3 axis in the shaded surface.

In my example scene in the Normal Example thread try lowering the
camera a bit and modifying the pitch - You should be able to look up
his nose a little.

* Technique:
A specific technique, just one way of using normal maps, was developed
using LW and some inhouse proprietary tools whereby the non bump mapped
shading info of a surface or object could be used to generate the three axis
height information and store it in a separate file - as a normal map. When
this normal map is applied to a much more simplified object or surface it
still appears very very si,ilar to the original object that generated it.

You can kind of see the affects of this in the Normal Example where
the image shown in post #1 was applied to a simple six sided cylindar
with no other smoothing or anything to create the render you see in the
attachement of this post. See the 1st and second boxes specifically
from within that attached proof sheet for the example I'm talking about.

So there are the 2 types of bump mapping (1D and 3D) and the technique
of using high-poly objects to generate the shading for a low poly object.
Three separate although related, things.

I hope that helped!

Thanks to: http://www.spinquad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4478

[Bozor]

That's what I call an answer !
Thak you very much.