Here's a project I've been working on for some time. I decided to make it my pet project so I'll be working on it for a longer period of time, without worrying too much about time constraints
I'll put quality above speed on this one, so your critics are very welcome!
Without further ado, here is the Dacia Logan facelift! The model will eventually make it into a game, don't know which one yet.
These are some screenshots of the first stage: the high res modeling.
Stuff worth mentioning:
1. This highres mesh is only meant to serve as a source of normal map and ambient occlusion for the low resolution ingame model
2. Don't mind the windows and tires, those are just placeholders for the moment
What's next?
1. Ingame model, complete with interior, engine detail, trunk, underside and detachable parts for an eventual damage model.
2. UVs for each of these parts.
3. Generating the normal map and ambient occlusion map for the exterior of the car using the high res model in this post
4. Texturing.
5. Exporting the car to a game. I'm waiting for suggestions here, I only did some cars for NFS 4 and GTA Vice City. Any other games I should consider?
Well, after a week of work @ work, I found some time to do the low res version of the car.
I only managed to do the interior and wheels today but the rest are coming soon. I think I can get the entire car with interior, engine detail, underside and suspensions somewhere under 20k triangles.
The modelling in no way looks bad, but there are a few things you need to reconsider for game modelling.
Normal mapping the outside of the car is not a good idea and would not be used in a game. It would need an awfully high rez texture to get any detail into it and typicaly textures are compressed a lot for games causing some ugly problems for normal maps. They're just not suited for the kind of detail on cars.
Grills and lights, along with the interior are more suitable for normal mapping though.
You're considering damaging the car, yet your doors have no verticle divisions in them. That will make it very difficult to get good deformation in them.
Your basic mesh for the high rez version is somewhere closer to an in game model, it just needs some of the chamfers taking out and some of the mesh tidying up, with polies distributed more evenly.
(I used to go by the name of Herminator but forgot the password and it's tied to a redundant email address)
Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions.
I would like to comment on some of them to explain some of the choices I made for this particular model.
1. I'm aware of the artifacts caused by compressed normal maps, usually not even uncompressed normal maps are enough to define the whole range of smooth surfaces from the high-resolution model.
I'm just doing this car as a showcase of my skills. Having a stark contrast between the number of polygons on the highres and lowres models is one of the key elements of the build.
The final geometry that will be exported will vary depending on the target game. I plan to build the geometry and texture and then ask some of the guys that have experience in "conversions" to export it to a game. I will provide the geometry and textures in a format that respects the game's technical specifications
2. Yes, you are right, those are areas that would benefit more from normal maps in a ideal situation, but very few games support normal maps, and even less use them for the interior so I will not do a high resolution model for that area. Maybe Test Drive Unlimited is modable, as that one uses normal maps for the interiors used in the cockpit view, but I am more interested in exporting this game to GTA than other games.
3. Depends on the way the game is built. If you're talking about GTA, that uses a simple geometry swap so simulate damage, so the number of vertices is irrelevant as the pristine and damaged meshes don't need the same number of vertices. I can always add more geometry for the damage model.
4. That's a good idea, I could use that if I plan to add that to a game that supports a larger number of polygons.
Actually, I initially thought you were nitpicking, but now I realize it gave me the opportunity to explain some of the stuff I did in there. Thanks!
ahhh... yeah, this car looks very familiar to me, i wonder why? : ))
the modeling looks pretty good and clean. this model will look better in high poly but you've already choosed to do the game model.
looking forward for this
nice to see more romanians here.
@petter: Thanks man. You're right. Don't worry, I'm still adding small details to the high res model to do some renders at the end. I plan to use the textured low res interior as a fill in.
@PeteRef: Yup, normal maps rule when it comes do damage modeling, you can add a lot more detail into the mesh without increasing the polygon count. Again, too bad there are not too many modable games out there that support this
To answer your question, I work in the gaming industry, I am the Lead Vehicle Artist at AMC Studio, a game graphics outsourcing company based in Bucharest, Romania.
You can follow the link in my sig to see more of the stuff that either me or people in my team have done /shameless_plug
Visit Homepage
