Baelkin Posted February 8, 2009 Author Share Posted February 8, 2009 I just realized I've had almost an entire week off from working this project. :unsure: Oh well, I'd better snap to it as it doesn't finish itself. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baelkin Posted February 9, 2009 Author Share Posted February 9, 2009 Well after a short modelling spree, I've managed to "low-polyfy" the shoulders (also aggregated into single mesh items rather than the multipart meshes of the high poly) as well as the body armour. I don't really have any renders of them at the moment because they don't look that different from the high poly, however I'm surprised at how difficult it sometimes can be to reduce the polycount and maintain the shape you have planned for the mesh, such that it still conforms pretty well to the high poly model. Even by compromising a lot I'm going to have difficulty reaching the goal of having a somewhat equal polycount to the vanilla meshes, but I guess it's just another challenge to overcome (I've planned for ~7500 polygons all in all, just does not look like I'll be able to reach that goal and still maintain the planned surface shapes). Bah, next time around I should probably reverse the process and make the low polygon model for ingame use first, and then make the high polygon version based off of that one. It feels a lot like you are doubling the work by making the high poly first, even though you know exactly how the low poly should look afterwards. :wallbash: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baelkin Posted February 11, 2009 Author Share Posted February 11, 2009 So far I've gotten the body armour, shoulders and lower body low-polied, and am pretty surprised at how redundant modelling I've actually done on the high poly model. After mucking about a bit, the polycount on the below renders lands at a somewhat comfortable ~4300 although most of them are quads and not tri's, which will bump the end polycount with as much as 50% although I don't expect that much of an increase. All that's left to do now is the vambraces, gloves and, unfortunately, the entire belt section which probably will bring me a good deal above my intended polycount. Hopefully it won't have too much of a performance impact on a mid-end machine, but it's still to be seen whether it will run decently or not. I kinda' hope that the reason the vanilla models are low poly is because they're designed to be run on console hardware and television screens and not a decently powerful gaming rig (har har!). :happy: http://i425.photobucket.com/albums/pp337/Baelkin/Item%20Renders/Low%20Poly/LowPoly1.jpg http://i425.photobucket.com/albums/pp337/Baelkin/Item%20Renders/Low%20Poly/lowpoly2.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feltorn Von Dentai Posted February 13, 2009 Share Posted February 13, 2009 Maybe do two versions? a belted one for mid-high end PCs and a non-belt one for low end PCs? Just an idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baelkin Posted February 15, 2009 Author Share Posted February 15, 2009 Maybe do two versions? a belted one for mid-high end PCs and a non-belt one for low end PCs? Just an idea. Myeah... I don't really want to make several versions of it though, and without the belt I think it looks pretty daft. I figure the best solution would be to primairly make sure it runs smoothly on my own rig with a decent amount of NPCs in the same area (Probably 10 NPCs or so), and put my system specs in the readme as recommended minimum system requirements. My rig is nigh a year and a half old running on an older Nvidia 8800GTS card, so I think it's pretty representative of what one would consider an "average" gaming rig - people can then opt to use it even though their system doesn't meet the requirements. Taking all systems specs into account when making a mod just seems a little overkill to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flickone Posted February 15, 2009 Share Posted February 15, 2009 nice progress there Bealkin waiting to see more... How many polys did you end with?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaintJames420 Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 I think that the leg wing thingies are a liiiitle overdone. You should make them look more like what they are....big metal covered combat boots. They're not supposed to be pretty. Not trying to be rude just some...constructive critisim. Meybe a extra glowy uniuqe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baelkin Posted February 16, 2009 Author Share Posted February 16, 2009 I think that the leg wing thingies are a liiiitle overdone. You should make them look more like what they are....big metal covered combat boots. They're not supposed to be pretty. Not trying to be rude just some...constructive critisim. Meybe a extra glowy uniuqe? Whether the wing thingies are overdone or not is really not for me to decide as this model is an implementation of an already existing design and not one I've originally created. I could take a few artistic liberties and change some parts of it like the wings (I'm not entirely too keen on them myself nor the MC Hammer-like pants) but then it wouldn't be a true replica of the original work. I think the second post of this thread has a link to my reference material, on which the wings on the kneepads really are that prominent so I'll keep it that way for the first edition at least. :smile: nice progress there Bealkin waiting to see more... How many polys did you end with?? I'm not quite done yet, but I expect to hit at least another 750-1000 polygons for the vambraces and blastshield plus maybe 1500 additional polygons for the belt and the items attached to it like the crotch and thigh guards. All in all this should take the model to around ~7500-10000 polygons in total before the auto-triangulation of Nifskope, so I calculate a worst case scenario to land the game model at 20000 polygons, which seems like quite a lot. By comparison the Enclave Power Armour has 7150 polygons completely triangulated, so I'd like to optimize my model to have maximum twice that amount triangulated as it otherwise could have a rediculous impact on system performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SaintJames420 Posted February 16, 2009 Share Posted February 16, 2009 Yeah. I think it's cool that your gonna do it like that. Stay true to it. Still don't like the wing's.(or the mc hammer pant's.) Have you ever watched the movie itself? Good flick. Yeah maybe in your second release you could put the glowy one as a prototype and have a few non-glow non-uniuqe's floating around? (raider's anyone?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baelkin Posted February 16, 2009 Author Share Posted February 16, 2009 Yeah. I think it's cool that your gonna do it like that. Stay true to it. Still don't like the wing's.(or the mc hammer pant's.) Have you ever watched the movie itself? Good flick. Yeah maybe in your second release you could put the glowy one as a prototype and have a few non-glow non-uniuqe's floating around? (raider's anyone?) I haven't watched the Live action movies but the Animé is pretty good. I think the armour version I'm building has at least a good 25 years of development behind it based on the designs of the armours used in Jin Roh (ie. in the universe of the Animé) as it looks like it's made from high density polymers rather than metal plates. What do you mean by "glowy" by the way? I'm not quite sure I follow what exactly it is that's supposed to glow besides the eyes of the mask (which I've already built). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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