Bret McNee

Hey gang.

Today I have a quick work update I want to share with you.

In Mudbox (digital sculpting) class we were given the task to sculpt another Pokemon, and both a male and female torso. I did two female torso studies and a male. I would love feedback on them. What looks right? What looks wrong?

Also in modeling we had to do a game resolution weapon. My high resolution (that I will post) had 35k triangles. I was able to get it down to about 4k in my game resolution. I also normal mapped and textured my gun. For you people who know nothing about game resolution I will explain a little in the next paragraph. I hope you enjoy, and as always, click continue reading to see the post.

Thanks.

For those of you who don’t know: When you model objects in 3D, the more detail you add to your model, the more of the computer’s memory the model requires. In games, all these assets that you build are displayed in real time on screen so there is a limit to how much detail can be in the object or objects you model. In movies, there can be as much detail as you want because the computers don’t display a movie to you in real time.

So because of this, the process to make a game resolution object is the following. Step one: build a model in whatever geometry you can, add as much detail as you want. Once this is complete take the same object and make it “game resolution.” This is the process of taking the high detail model and deleting detail until you only have the basic shape and bare necessities of the object. When this is complete you create what is called a “normal map” in the 3D program. A normal map takes the detail from the high resolution object and projects the detail on the low one to make it look like the low has the same detail the high does. This is simply a trick of the eye and light, and does not work in a profile view. Once this is done you texture your object.

With that said, here is my FIRST ever attempt at a game resolution weapon. Feedback is appreciated.

Here is the concept art I modeled from.

Here is my high resolution with the wireframe turned on.

Here is my low resolution weapon with the wireframe.

And finally, here is the low resolution gun rendered in the Marmoset game engine with diffuse, spec, normals, and ambient occlusion turned on.

And I am also posting my normal maps and texture maps. Now, these are not optimized AT ALL and are unwrapped really weird. Why do you ask? Well I kinda did this a day or so before the class on it trying to do it on my own and I did not know about several of the optimization tools in UV Layout. (like symmetry, keeping objects straight, stacking UVs etc…) So please excuse my NOOB UVs and maps… But I learned a lot and I know some people want to see what this stuff looks like, so here it is:

And now for Mudbox. Again, i would really appreciate some feedback on the anatomy of my male and female busts. Thanks!

Pokemon: Venonat

My very first male torso:

My very first female torso:

My second female torso:

Thanks for reading.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Bret's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave your thoughts, or trackback from your own site.

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