New Project, 77 Blazer

[loganADC]

Thanks for looking at my last model (old BMW). I started this one about a week ago, and have put about ten hours into it. the total poly count so far is about 6000 tri's. i plan on doing an interior, and underside (suspension and such), and map the whole thing. the doors are seperate from the body, but i am going to re-attach them. let me know what ya'll think.

[slice56]

looks pretty good so far :)

one small tip, though: You should triangulate your window corners like this (see pic). That way you dont have two edges going across to the middle of your window to a point, causing pinching.

[loganADC]

thanks for the input slice, i felt something was wrong with thoses windows, i just wasnt sure what to do about it. it seems better now. this is the final model, with wheels. as of now the wheels are just floating there. im going to make a simple under carrige, and attach the wheels to the body, making the whole model one object. once that is complete i will assign smoithing groups, and begin painting. any further suggestions would be much appreciated.

[UnsteadyTeddy]

Good progress but you could easily shave of half of those tris. Its a really boxy vehicle and doesn't need tris all along the sides.

One thing you can try is making a black material and assigning it to the vehicle, then moving the camera around. This will show you which areas ( the corners, bumpers etc ) are lowpoly and you can take the tris from the sides into these areas to round them out, and yuou'll still save loads of tris.

Whats the polycount of each wheel ? The rubber and bolts look far to dense. You could also shave lots of tris from the front grill and headlights.

Keep watching where you put the tris and make sure that they add some definition to the car. If they don't, you can remove them.
Looking forward to seeing the interior and textures.

[slice56]

I agree with teddy.

You could remove the splits that start at the tops of your wheel wells (straight edges, wasted splits) and remove them completely.

Kill a couple of spans on your sidewalls and add some polys to those headlights.

You are on the right track :) Just a few more optimizations and this model will be pretty solid :buttrock:

[loganADC]

well, i got the body to 8572 tris, down from 10340, and i can still see some areas that could still be opptimized.

the wheels are down from 1914 to 1528, the bolts, and center section i think could be done cheaper (as far as tris go) but i dont want to lose detail down there..any suggestions?

i started the interior, and im keeping it vey simple. still havent decided if the doors will open, it depends on time constraints.

thanks for your help fellas :buttrock:

[loganADC]

..oh ya total poly count is 24350, my target is 30000. does that sound right for a game?

[UnsteadyTeddy]

You could still lose more edge loops on the front ( vertical loops ) bumper as its not a very round shape and will still look good with less loops. There are a few places like on the roof where you have loops that are doing nothing.
You could triangulate some of the areas such as the bonnet and above the wheel arches as this would allow you to remove some of the loops which aernt doing anything to model, wasted polies!
One other thing to think about it is you have almost as many segments on those lights on the roof as you do your wheels which is overkill for game models. You wouldn't give two different sections the same amount of tris when 1 section is a fifth the size of the other.
If you want to keep the detail in the wheels but reduce the polycount, have you thought about normal mapping?

What plans have you got for texturing this?
Hope you finish, this is good work. :)

[loganADC]

okay, moving right along. cut the wheels down to 844 tris, and still kept my prescious bolt detail. the body has been taken down to 6876 tris, cleaned up the sides, roof, lights, bumpers and some other areas. :)

as far as texturing and normals go, i was planing on texturing the whole vehicle, and doing some normal/bump maps for some mud, and rust, or bullet holes, or something redneck like that. :buttrock:

question: what is the diffence between normal and bump maps, they seem to do the same thing to me. and which would you recomend for the details i plan on doing? :confused:

my last total poly count was way off, but now it is 10984 tris.

[UnsteadyTeddy]

That's much better. Notice how the shape is still there, but with less polys?
If it was me, I would makes some cuts above the wheel arches ( front and back ) so that you dont have an edge running up the side panel to the rear window and at the front, running up the side and across the bonnet.
The lights on the roof look like they could be optimised more. You could remove the loops inside the headlight, so that it is flatter. Also you can remove some loops on the metal rail that holds it to the roof.
The rubber around the windows looks very dense. Maybe you could look at removing 1 or 2 of those loops?
It also looks like you've chamfered the inside of the wheel well, at the back which you wouldnt see. Can remove that and save more tris.
As for the wheels, it looks like you've cut the wheel so that the bolts extrude out as one mesh? If you detach the bolts, you could really clean up that area of the rim, saving lots of tris which would allow you to add another edge to your precious bolts, and make them rounded!
Normal maps are pretty much drugged up super bump maps. They hold more detail than bump maps. If you only want to add bump on dirt, i'd go for a bump map. If you want to make a hi poly version of the blazer, with millions of tris and all the detail then you can bake that into a normal map and apply it to the low poly.

[loganADC]

so, its been awhile since i last posted on this project, i was driving cross country. not much has changed, i cleaned up alot of the extra polys, and have more or less finished the interior. no smoothing groups have been applied to the interior, but the exterior is grouped and smoothed (no mesh smooth or any such modifier). to night i hope to finish the interior and get started on the under carige. any further suggestions would be greatly appreciated. current poly count is 11658. i cant wait to finish the modeling so i can begin to texture it.:buttrock: im fell very good about the out come of this project, mostly because of the help i have recieved. thanks.:D

[slice56]

Its looking really nice, man!

If you are adding grime/dirt/mud to the car, Id use a normal map for it. You will get much better highlights/grime/grit with a normal map compared to a bump. Bumps are nice, but with normal maps you get an inherent grain which would really sell the mud. Cant wait to see it textured ;)

By the way, 30k for the exterior of a car isnt too high for next-gen gaming :o:

Dave

[loganADC]

Questions:

1)For a game model, is it important that the whole model be one object? or can it be many objects grouped together?

2) what size texture maps should i use? i was thinking 512 for the wheels, 1024 for under carrige and interior, and 2048 for exterior...

[loganADC]

these are the final models, i know ive said that before, but it is true this time, cause i am not unwrapping this thing again. :banghead: i began texturing but am affraid that will not be complete for some time because i also started school this week..

[RedFive]

Do you have a game to put this in, or are you just doing it lowpoly for fun?

http://cg-cars.com/forum/f114/showthread.php?t=4232

...:D

[loganADC]

So it's been a ahile scince i was last able to do work on my truck. I got some texturing done this eveniong. Let me know what you think.

[Tonn]

Looks as if someone had thrown plotches of mud on it, look for some reference on some off roading sites. The mud looks too thick, fresh and needs a more even spread and more small drops and some lines which get on the car when you spin the tires in mud. Maybe some scratches from branches in the mud? The mud itself, out of this context, looks quite good though. :)

[loganADC]

Mud update...it no longer looks like a chocolate covered truck, but i still feel like its not 100%