NASCAR COT (Boxmodeling attempt)

[dannisbet]

Box modeling has kind of been a weak spot for me, so I used this as sort of a way to learn how. I think I grasped the concept fairly well... interested in how clean my mesh is and if there are any critiques!

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w14/dannisbet/wire.jpg

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w14/dannisbet/ryan1.jpg

[petter]

too many triangles...
take a look to some other cg members wires... and try to understand how 4 sided polyes are going around the fenders.

[rodderworld]

you need to create a few more edges across the side and hood, that way you can connect them down to create quads. essentially, 2tris can be turned into a quad.

regards,
rodder

[dannisbet]

So perhaps a fix like this? (Would delete the red areas, add the green) I didn't go through and edit all of the tris around the wheel well, but I figure it got the point across. I guess I'm just looking to keep within a 5,000 poly limit total and am trying not to get too wild adding polys everywhere. Is there a better way of smoothing out the wheel well without adding polys, yet not having tris? Also need some guidance where I circled in blue.

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w14/dannisbet/fixwire1.jpg

[rodderworld]

the blue area can be solved by adding one row down the side and another 1 or 2 on the hood, that shouldn't cost too many polies.

regards,
rodder

[petter]

this is how i would do... and in this way you'll reduce the number of polyes.
better thatn having tris

[dannisbet]

Followed Petter's advice... how's this?

[zylak]

much better :)
ql 4 me dannisbet ... good luck
pozdro

[rodderworld]

looks much better.

regards,
rodder

[Tonn]

Unless you add smooth to the whole body, I think it looks worse now :p . It`s low poly, those tris over the wheelarchs where working fine, check the textured pic, no shading issues, now you just made it look more boxy.

[dannisbet]

Unless you add smooth to the whole body, I think it looks worse now :p . It`s low poly, those tris over the wheelarchs where working fine, check the textured pic, no shading issues, now you just made it look more boxy.

Yeah, that's the confusing part of starting out for me. I understand I want four-sided polygons all around, but get confused when 3-sided polys get the job done well in some places and not others lol

[ericmattison81]

well it depends on what ur going form. From looking at ur pics with the shaders and textures, it looks like ur doing a low poly car and if you doing a low poly car, you will get a horrible result without using tris. Thats how you get curvature on low poly models but if your using a smooth then the tris can be bad so you have to determine if this car will have smoothing groups for low poly or a mesh smooth to give it a high poly look before you decide if you want all quads or if you need tris

[dannisbet]

Gotcha. I really doubt this model will ever see a meshsmooth in this state. It's actually modeled with the intent of going into a video game (not rFactor, but an older title; NASCAR Racing 2003 Season).

I have kept it in the back of my mind though that I could maybe refine it more and have a detailed high poly display model later on, in which I'd just use this model as more of a starting point for a project like that (and it's going to need some cleaning up I'm sure to get it to a high poly model).

[ericmattison81]

well if this is a game model, you have to go back to the old wheel well. I never seen game models without a lot of tris esp. for rounded corners. YOu would need to unless you have so many polys lol but if you going low, you old mesh is the way to go for wheel wells.

[petter]

you don't need to make it only tris...
anyway, the game engine read the mesh only by tris...so whatever you have a 4 sided polygon, it will be readed as two triangles ;)

[ericmattison81]

you don't need to make it only tris...


yup i never said u need only tris and as petter said, it reads tris so it will tesselate your mesh turning a quad into 2 tris. Yea the tris are really only needed in areas that are round like circular headlights/ wheel well etc... that way u can save your poly count on other things. anyways more updates

[petter]

well if this is a game model, you have to go back to the old wheel well. I never seen game models without a lot of tris esp. for rounded corners. YOu would need to unless you have so many polys lol but if you going low, you old mesh is the way to go for wheel wells.

this is how i would do... and in this way you'll reduce the number of polyes.
better thatn having tris

yes, but how following my advice, he'll have less polygons.but anyway, it doesn't matter if it's read by a game engine, coz in the end, the numer of tris it's the same... :P