Bret McNee

Hey guys,

Quick update today.  I recently participated in a Polycount.com mini challenge.  For no reason other than getting my name out there a little bit and doing something fun for practice.

The challenge was pretty cool actually.  Basically, we had one week to complete three models.  The model had to be a dagger, sword, axe, rapier… etc and had to be done to fit a game style like World of Warcraft.  Basically a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG).  The first model had to be like a “starter” weapon.  Something simple and pretty weak.  After that, the second weapon had to “evolve” off of the first.  And finally, the third weapon had to “evolve” off of the second.  So in the end, they all felt like they came from the same start, but all had their own look and progressively got more menacing. If you would like to see the official webpage post, check it out here.

We had a week to do this, as I said, but also we had some other limits.  We had triangle limits.  For those of you who do not know games, basically everything you see in a game are made up of little tiny triangles that fit together to make the shape of what you are looking at.  That is honestly the easiest way I can describe it.  For the first tier weapon we could only have 500 triangles.  For the second tier weapon we could only have 1000 triangles.  And for the third we could only use 1500 triangles.

With those limits, I set off to make my models.  And this is what I came up with: (please click continue reading if you are currently on the home page.  Also remember to click on the images to see them in their full size.)

This is my super quick concept I did to get down my basic ideas. I did this drawing in about 8 minutes.

Here are my models finished and ready to be textured.

And finally the final result. Now, I only worked on it for two days, max time spent was about 10 hours.

I just had too much homework this week to put my foot 100% forward on this project.

My Triangle count:
Tier 1: 500 tris
Tier 2: 994 tris
Tier 3: 1490 tris
Rendered in Marmoset by 8 Monkey Labs

If I spent more time, what would I change? I would have done the normal maps in ZBrush instead of painting them in PhotoShop. There are also some corners I would have cut in my model to save poly count… I would have used these extra polys to make the hilt of the sword/axe more round. Each weapon has its own UV set and unique texture… Next time (because parts of the models are almost identical) I would reuse UVs on certain parts and therefore not have to texture as much (I redid the textures for every model), but at the same time I would have spent a little more time on my textures and improved the level of detail and quality (I only spent maybe 4 hours on them).

This was only my 2nd attempt at making game rez object(s). As I am a student and still very much learning… Hope you enjoy.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, August 7th, 2010 at 2:08 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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