8 replies to this topic

[Golan]

Right, so the plan was to make a detailed model but still sticking to an acceptable - 800 to 1000 Polys with full equipment which should be adequate for high settings (low LOD version would have less, about 600). Well, nice plan, but the current WIP already has 1056 polys and that is without weapon, backpack and side arm holster (replacing the "armor plate" on the right leg). The model is supposed to be viewed more close-up than what is standard in KW, so some details that could be painted on the diffuse for TW models are made with geometry on purpose.
The body was made from scratch, loosely based on Future Warrior Equipment (or whatever it´s called), currently has 764 polys.
The face is a streamlined version of one of the (unused) highpoly models of Art Pack 2. Together with the helmet, it takes 292 polys. It´s probably the part where most polys are wasted, but a face is a must-have for this design and I lack experience with modeling faces (obviously ).

So yeah, my head basically fried while scraping this guy together, so i just thought "hey, why not ask for some advice?". Suggestions are highly welcome.

[Dr. Nick]

Looks pretty awesome

Maybe there's a bit too much on the back?
I don't think the curves on his back will be that visible ingame, even if you zoom all the way in.

Edited by Dr. Nick, 21 January 2008 - 09:27 PM.

[The Best Guest]

Very nice will this be for a mod?

[Hostile]

face might have too many polies as you'll never see them ingame. Great model but maybe alittle too great for a unit that is not so visible in such detail.

[Devastator]

Not bad

[Golan]

Refined the model a bit, the soldier (body + uniform + helmet) now only takes 988 faces instead of 1056, including the added bags, holster and hands. Naturally, the newly made assault rifle had the polycount skyrocket - 230 faces is way too much and will be reduced in the future.

Some screenshots made with w3xViewer when testing animations:

Very nice will this be for a mod?

It will, though the mod hasn´t been announced yet (and probably won´t be in the next 2 months).

@Hostile
I agree that it´s slightly more than what is actually visible ingame, but keep in mind that this is the version for high settings and was also made with the intent to look acceptable for ingame sequences.

[Soul]

Looking good .

[Mighty BOB!]

Unless he's gonna have facial animations like blinking and talking he doesn't need that much facial detail. You can still keep things like the nose lips and eyes while reducing the triangle count and then further enhancing them with the normal and spec maps rather than solely adding those details in the textures.

He looks damn good though.

[Golan]

Problem is, the better he looks, the harder it is to decide which polygons to cut of.

About using Spec and normal maps: I´m going for the standard infantry shader to keep drawcalls low - this means that there will only be a diffuse map, nothing else. I´m not sure how it really effects performance but from what I gathered, draw calls have a much greater effect, so I guess it´s less stressing for performance to have ~100 polys more on a 1-1.5k model instead of having one or two additional calls. With my average tank scoring 2.500 polys on 4 calls (6 if w3x doesn´t count spec/HC only because it doesn´t display those), units that appear 3 to 5 times more often seem reasonable to me with 1k to 1,5k on 1 call (2 calls with HC).
Again, this is based on assumptions. If anyone has some more precise information on how polygons and drawcalls relate to performance, I really wouldn´t mind changing the plan. Normalmaps are always better to work with.
Anyways, removing the lip polygons probably won´t hurt. ^^