60 replies to this topic

[Tenneko]

Thankyou. I'm new at this modeling thing and these are the first I ever made. Oddly enough, its harder to model low poly than high.

On another note, the sky grasper, Strike Dagger, and Aile pack all need textured and animated, so if someone would be willing to do that, I be thankful.

I've started the Strike Gundam.



This is actually why I did the Strike Dagger. The two are so similar, I can take each part of SD and alter them a little to make SG.

Edited by Tenneko, 06 August 2010 - 01:45 AM.

[Tenneko]

Well, I went back and made some changes.

I altered the Aile/Strike Gundam Shield



Lowered the Aile Grasper to 884 polys



And lowered the Strike Dagger to 1004



Finally, a small update on the Strike Gundam



It's bigger than I'd like at 545 poly, but I'll deal.

[Tenneko]

Another update on the Strike Gundam



709 polys

[Deecon]

Hey Tenneko, so after looking over the model you sent me for a few days I have some pointers that will hopefully help you out.

Ok so first things first. The first thing I noticed is that your proportions for the model are a little off. When low poly modeling, getting the proportions down is crucial to the overall look of the model. For this I suggest use of reference and really study were every part should fall in relation to another part.

Next, when I opened up your model, in the viewing options you were using smoothing + highlights. My suggestion, although its more of a personal preference, is to always model with that setting off. Instead I recommend using facets + highlights. There is a good reason for this. When smoothing is on it is very difficult for you to see how your polygons are reacting. So for example, as soon as I turned that setting off I could see that your daggers face was caved in. These are the types of things that may look fine with the smoothing on but with it off you can pick up on a lot easier.

Next I want to go over your use of objects. The more you separate things into different objects the more polygons you are going to use. This will also create a nightmare for anyone who is going to skin the model because all those hidden faces need to be addressed. Ill try to explain a little better what I mean. A good example of this would be your shield. I forget the exact number but your shield is separated into about 8 different objects all pieced together to form one shield. Ideally the shield should be made up of 1 object. Now there are exceptions. For example any piece that will be moving for animation is ok to have separated. So for example the chest would be one object, the head would be one object, the shoulder would be one object, etc.

All of this is kind of hard to explain with out showing you so I decided I would create a strike dagger.



Polycount on this model is 728

Ill send you the file probably tomorrow and you can go through it and check everything out. Your also welcome to use it in any way you like. Hopefully it will give you a better understanding of what I was talking about.

Anyway you are doing very well, keep practicing and you will be a pro in no time.

[Tenneko]

I get what your saying, but I do it that way because I understand it that way better. My high poly strike dagger was made the way you are suggesting and was 5 times as large, yet my low poly one has nearly all the same details. I tried deleting doubled up faces where I could, but in many places they stick out an thus cannot be deleted.

As for your model, if you removed my shield and rifle my strike dagger has around 840-860 polys, not a major difference . While I admit your head is better than mine, your body details especially the shoulders and arms look very little like the strike when compared to my models. Plus your models appears to lack the four cone thrusters needed if it is to be used in space battles, which would easily be 30 polys. Does your model have the back skirt, I can't tell?

Also, as I stated in an earlier post, I made my strike in such a way that I could easily edit it to make other models, in this case the Strike Gundam.

I thank you for the advice though, and you are right on the proportions, I even used a blue print from the Rx-79-2 which is very similar in shape, but still the proportions came out odd, yours would be perfect if you stretched the chest and pelvis a bit, as from shoulder to shoulder, the strike dagger is roughly two shoulders in width.



I decided to go back and try to match the proportion up on my model closer to the above pic.



If you weren't put off by my above rant, would you be willing to look over and tell me if you think its closer, or worse?

And could you tell me how to turn smoothing off because I do not know where that is.

[Deecon]

Ok let me try to address everything in your reply. First things first to switch out of smoothing and change to facets + Highlights, on the top left in your viewing boxes up were it says like perspective or front or left, etc. You want to right click the word and then go to Other>Facets +Highlights and that will put you in the correct viewing mode.

Now a quick note on the thrusters. My model does have the full backpack as well as the beam saber and back skirt. As for the 4 cone thrusters I think you need to check the reference again. The strike dagger has one large thruster on its backpack. Plus as for cone thrusters in general I don't think there is a single gundam seed unit that uses cone thrusters.



My model does lack the shield and gun but it wasn't meant to be a finished model it was simply to provide you with an example. However I could make both and still keep the model at about 800 poly's. While that 200 polygons may seem like its not that much multiply that by 50 units on the screen at one time and that's 10,000 poly's your computer now has to render unnecessarily.

Now while your model does currently look more detailed that is because mine lacks a skin. In a low poly model most of your detail is going to be from the skin. This is were the problems occur with your model. Its very hard to explain to you since you have never done the skin but I will try. Your model in its current state will not be able to be skinned and have it look even halfway decent. The main reason is what I described in my earlier post. You cannot use multiple objects to create a single piece like a shield. Physically you can, however when you go to skin the model you will not have enough space on the map.

So to fully explain this im going to try and explain a little about skinning a model. Basically what you are doing is flattening the model so that you can paint on the surface. Now on a low poly model we usually use a map around 512x512 pixels. Trying to unfold and entire model into 512x512 is not an easy task. But let me try to explain this visually



So take a look at the image above. Picture this as the map that the skinner is using. The objects unfolded on the map are the gray pieces on the shoulder of the dagger. On the left is the gray pieces on my model. On the right is yours. Now the red represents the part on your model the is covered by the shoulder. This is completely wasted space and you just cant have that on good map. Now multiply this by every part on your model that has something like this. You just cant skin your current model on a 512x512 map.

The other thing I forgot to mention in my first post was about how you did your thighs. The thighs on you model actually extend to form the abdominal of the suit. This will not work for animation. The abdominal and the thighs have to be separate pieces otherwise when the suit walks in an animation the stomach will be jetting out of place and the skirts will have no where to go.

So hopefully that better explains what I was talking about. Oh and its hard to tell from the image you provided if the proportions are better because of the angle its displayed. If you can show like a front view that would be better.

[Tenneko]

Okay, with the thrusters, I was using the Rx-79-2 blue print and might have gotten mixed up. I do need to change the back pack on mine and add the saber maybe. The whole point of this was to make a better looking strike dagger than what was already in though yours looks like it would fit that well.

As for the thighs, if you look at any pic of both the Strike Dagger and Strike Gundam, their thighs really do extend up to right against the red of their abdomen but slant in an odd way.



Finally, I know how to texture, but currently only have paint and I'm not good at using it. As you have my model, you should know that all the detail on it is through modeling, not textures as you implied. Out of curiosity I decided to unrap the shoulder to see what you ment, but for me there was only four very small and thin spaces of overlap.



Also, I have each part of the model saved separately to allow for easier texturing and modifying, but forgot and only sent you the whole model.

Anyway, I like your model and it really would work in-game better than mine, think you could stick around and help out with this mod. I gave a list of already done models somewhere, or you could ask Stargazer what is needed, or download the beta.

Quick update on Strike Gundam



979 polys

[Re4_wesker]

these are looking good guys. I'm looking at getting a new computer soon and once i do, I may have a look at mapping for the mod.

[Deecon]

If you look at a gunpla model you can see that the thighs are not connected to the waist. If you don't have a gunpla model I would definitely recommend getting one because they are great for reference.

Also I wasn't implying that your models detail was through the texture. I was saying that a low poly models detail should be from the texture otherwise its not going to be low poly.

As for the texture map. My point was not that you would have overlap. That is something that you can easily fix when mapping the texture. The problem is that you would not have enough space. What you posted is one shoulder unwrapped on a 1024x1024. Now cut that picture in half to a 512x512, which is the typical size of a low poly map, and try and fit the entire model unwrapped. You would lose so much detail that the skin would be one big blur.

Anyway you guys are welcome to the model if you like it but that's as far as im taking it. I was just trying to give some pointers to help the mod improve. However in my opinion the problem has never been getting the models built since Infinity and Sykes had plenty made. The problem was always about finding coders and people to actually implement the models in game. Unless you guys have a coder that I don't know about im afraid your just going to be repeating the same mistakes that were made before. But ive been here since the beginning and any hope there is for this mod to be completed im all for.

[Tenneko]

We know we need coders, but the problem is all the models except what was in the beta and a few Stargazer has are gone as Sykes lost his computer and Infinity disappeared.

I thank you for the advice, but have no clue as to how to fix my model to fit what you mean with the texture. Why would having multiple textures be bad? If that was a dumb question, I'm sorry. I only started modeling at the start of this thread and honestly have only minor abilities.

As for the coding, I only know basic xml altering. Meaning I could put a unit in the current game, but only if I have something to compare it with stats wise and even then it would have to be tested over and over to insure none of the stats are out of proportion. This would have to be done for each unit with constant backtracks to insure they stay balanced.

To my knowledge, Stargazer is the current group coder and what he needs is working models to code in-game. I could be wrong though, Stargazer hasn't posted in a while so there could be a problem I do not know about.

The other modeler Cristori hasn't posted either since he found out the poly limit was around a thousand a week or 2 ago but he did remake most the spaceships to a higher quality and sent them.

A quick update



I'm not ready to add the shield or rifle because the poly count is too high at 1015.

Edited by Tenneko, 11 August 2010 - 03:46 AM.

[Stargazer]

You're getting better and better Teneko.

one piece of advice I have, which was told to me by a former petroglyph staff guy, before you do the model, it is good to create a mock wireframe in something like photoshop or paint so you can make it ALOT easier to plan how you're going to do it.



kinda like that.

and yes, I will do the coding, but I would like to have the models first, deal with it.

[Tenneko]

That is actually a really cool idea with the wire frame thing. As for the models, texturing seems to be the problem now as I have three, almost five, models done, but they need textured and animated. While I may be able to animate them for basic things, I do not know how to fix the texture problem.

[KiraYamatoFreedom]

If you have not done so already try to make the model simple then improve on some parts that seem lacking. I don't know anything about models like these but I hope that helps to limit the poly count.

[Tenneko]

Yeah, I agree with ya, and that's what I did for most part. Honestly, it's probably going to come down to me replacing the hands and lower arms with less detailed versions as every other part is as simplified as I can get them.

[KiraYamatoFreedom]

Also with some units they are probably going to be big in poly count like the Freedoms, Providence, the Justices, Destiny and others since they have the wings, dragoons, and jetpacks to take up more room.

Also I think your models are getting better, if we can get some more models we can probably attract more people to come and help. One way is to show some of this on Moddb.com and it might encourage people to join, the last time Gundam Legacy was updated there was ages ago. This is only when we can get more models going and all.

[Tenneko]

I'm trying, apparently though, my models as is cannot be textured, so I'm going to have to remake both the strike dagger and strike gundam again.

[KiraYamatoFreedom]

Wasn't that Stargazer's job or something?

Wish I could help but I need to focus on High School since during my freshmen year I slacked off majorly and I am supposed to be a honor student. So I need to crack down on work a lot.

[Tenneko]

Stargazer is doing coding and anything else at happens to pop up.

The problem is, my models won't fit on one texture apparently, though, I do not know how to fix that.

[Stargazer]

the problem is that it's made from multiple objects, you need to start with a box of some kind and branch out from that.

and i'll texture them.

[Re4_wesker]

i may not know much about models but shouldn't there be a way to combine all those objects into one object?

PS: Glad to see someone else who is really looking forward to the new Bioshock SG.