Acumen

quite some polies could be saved on the blade.

2 things bugging me even more.

the totally crazy colors on the model. god, how did you come up with these O_O

second thing is the smoothing. Get some neutral colors and some nice assigend smoothing groups, tweak some unnecessary polies out of the blade and you're ready for uvmapping

\o/

thanks for your comments

nah, sry, Nazul, as its based on an original concept I didn't have anything to do with it can't be used in any mod, but I thought just for modeling it, it should be ok to use the concept, still

OL, you mean the head scary in terms of polyflow ? Or just the way the mouth is formed ?

yeah, St_George it's just the smoothing groups which I colored. I always end up having the hair being too short or too long, but since almost none of my models got skinnned so far, I can't prove the difference

I might be trying to animate this character later on, but right now, I'm totally into some alien model, I have to ask if I may show it in here, though ^^

Hm, finally could be arsed to make a player model. I was totally out of practise, so it took me quite some time to finish it up. I think I shouldn't concentrate on modeling statics Has 3640 Polies. You may recognize the model from a certain concept

But as it's not for mod or anything, I think that should be ok

Anyways the character. Is supposed to be the "rider" of the bear which I did last year

Smooth:

Wire:

Wire:

7000 triangles only for this head ?

Are you serious about that ? If so, I'd really like to see a wireframe.

edit:

oh wait, I think I misunderstood. You meant that the budget is 7000 in the end, I guess. Anyways getting to know the actual polycount is pretty interesting no matter at which dev status you are, but if you wanna keep it to yourself, then do so

Well of course you use smoothing groups to get hard edges, I just noticed some errors here and there, which could be easily fixed by applying them properly.

whats the polycount so far, good sir ?

cause I have the feeling that it could be optimized in certain areas. Some parts look really nice and round and others look very edgy/blocky.

And the smoothing groups are bad :/

When you pos wip's I would either make nice smoothing groups, or just post some wireframe overlayed renders. I mean somehow we need to be able to criticize, otherwise it doesn't make sense to show a wip.

yay, next one is "done". I'm not too sure which vehicle I should do instead of Diddy's cart, so I may do a couple of different versions and then choose the final one. We'll see. The first character should be ready tonight.

oh and btw. always remember. It's not about what game is better O_o

Just about doing a mod in the style of diddy kong :/

lies, FrieChamp, lies !

I could never be motivated for mario kart, but diddy kong racing made my day.

That's the only game I ever played from start to finish - well that and Solitaire

And about saving the polies. That's quite right, cause I mean in the end there will be like 8 of these things ingame and then the players with some polies as well, so that's quite heavy.

But if I wouldn't have modeled the grid/lattice it'd have 2500, so I wasted 500 polies only for that I mean that's just to show, what I wanted it to look like. Of course I'll do that with some alphaplanes...I guess.

Same goes for all these cylinders. There's plenty room for impovement concenerning the polycount, absolutely right.

But for the basic vehicle body I wanted to keep the polies, cause I wanted it to look round *runs*

Anyways I'm gonna go modeling the cart now.

wuusssch \o/

mh, well as we are in the planning stage for this other hl2 mod I decided to go for another mod now. It's gonna be a Diddy Kong Racing Tribute Mod

Maybe you guys have some suggestions concerning the characters choice, that would really help me out. I really want to got for some totally cute animals, but some that haven't been included in the original game.

So basically I wanted to keep the system of Diddy Kong Racing, cause I totally enjoyed this games. The little car, the plane and the hovercraft were so different in handling that I don't wanna change this concept. I wanna make unique new levels and characters but with the same cute looks, cause I'm so into this

Anyways this is the first vehicle I did, it's not quite finished, once again I missed the most obivous...

These jet/ventilator things are not really connected to the vehicle itself, so I'll do that tomorrow, along with the second vehicle ^^

Again, if you should have some suggestions for the characters, just tell me, I'd be glad to hear some (serious) proposals.

oh boy oh boy. That sounds cool. Modelling backgrounds is fun

*waves*

Take me, take me \o/

*thinksaboutitagain*

*readstextagain*

nooo, why on earth can't i do textures. buuhu

i suck ;(

I looove this wireframe shots, no matter what model

So will you add some more detail, like modeled rims and lights and stuff or is this the finished, more low poly version, just out of interest

I mean, yeah, you said, it's finished, but maybe it's not "finished" yet.

Oh and does this car have (side) mirrors ? Cause it looks a bit lost without them, but if that's what it's meant to be, ok ^^

pretty cool. Good to see you getting back into modeling

The poly distribution could be a tad better, like the "handle" hasn't too much polies, but the trigger guard has this little extrusion that's not too noticable (hope that's a word - if not, put "visible" in there). I'd say either make the handle/grip (whatever this is called) have more polies or reduce them on the trigger guard, next time.

Well and you said the Uv could be better, anyways, so whatever

Well I'm just with OL on this one:

"dont try and align your vertices to a grid when modeling, only the ones that need to line up with the floor or other walls in your map."

That's it. And it works fine for me. My statics worked pretty good ingame, so far. When it comes to them staying on the ground or the walls, I'll use the grid, but that's it. I read this on many forums know, and I don't see a reason for sticking with those grids in Max. So far I couldn't make up an example, where it was really really reasonable to focus working with the grid.

Like, when I'm modelling a building, I'm using the feature that allows me to only move things/vertices on a certain axis and when I need this wall to fit exactly to the floor in terms of no overlapping or having leaks, I'll just use the moving options, where I can work with numbers, so its like "oh this vertex lies on 3,42 x axis", then I'll copy it and paste it to the vertices of the other object, and I'm fine.

But for achitecture it's important to often use the limiting axis option, it works great for me, and I can extrude as often was I want. Apart from the Extrusion being quite weird from time to time. I'm using the edge cutting and dividing features much more. Anyways, this axis-limiation-thing is pretty handy, imo. You'll always have exactly straight lines, which is important for modeling buildings.

Anyways, the way this snap tool works is described in FrieChamp's Thread

http://www.mapcore.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1118

Quite similar problem...I guess

Still I don't get it why you guys even try modeling when you want to always work on the grid. That's just too much of a limitation and it's not CLEANER at all.

OL said it quite clear:

"dont try and align your vertices to a grid when modeling, only the ones that need to line up with the floor or other walls in your map.

that was the first barrier i had to get over when learning to model, to disreguard the grid. its evil."

That's it. But oh well, nobody can change your minds...so stick with the not working snap to grid function in Max.

thanks for all these comments guys. I think I learned a lot during the making of this building. The alpha thing, great idea, I just didn't think of that while modeling this building cause in the first place I wanted to make rooftiles not straw/hay, so I didn't think of that at all. But later when it came to skinning, I saw those screens from Anno3 and the Settlers 5 and thought, man, do the straw thing as well

But then the uvmap was already done; and I didn't wanna spend another day on this, so I decided to leave out the alpha thing.

Another thing I've learned is "don't give window in one floor different heights" that looks rather funny, when it comes to skinning, as you can see on the back of the house :/

Same goes for the door..

So next time, I'll do this kind of building I I get myself a concept, cause that was a mistake to not use one and I think about the skin first, then model it. ^^

I'm just happy I finally did a skin from start to end. I could not have asked for more

But for now, I'll stick with the modelling. Cause in no way, my skinning is somehow efficient. There's no relation between the quality of the skin and the time I spend on it...

hui, I'm done. My first finished skin.

Can't believe it took me the entire day to finish. My friend was like talking to me and telling me, he'd go and play some game, then he returned and told me an hour passed. And I had only finished one of those barrels in this hour. Wow, didn't know that it could take that long

the 3 things that bother me the most are the wooden stack and the roof. Cause these straw roofs are made up of a bunch of layers, not one single straw thing. And it looks differently. The straw you used would fit more of a straw sack (Heuballen mein ich ). Should look a bit more like that, imo:

http://www.reggie.net/japan/oita/2313127-600.jpg

Well and the wooden stack is just too symmetrical, there's no place on earth where they plant totally identical trees that all weigh the same, have the same thickness and stuff.

and the drop shadowd of the beams is a bit too heavy and continuous, imo

But the rest looks cool to me

woot, IR.

I don't even wanna know how long that overpaint did take you. I bet it's like 2 minutes or something, and I'm fiddling around with this for hours

Funny thing, I talked to Splitta the other night and told him that my only goal would be to finish this skin, cause I always fail, when I show a wip and someone paints over the skinmap ^^

Cause then it looks 10x better. And now I woke up this morning, saw this....and am depressed

j/k.

Now while I think this is an awesome skin I'm not really sure about the dirt and stuff. It adds a ton of quality, but when I'm thinking about this being a RTS model that's just being constructed I think that it could be a bit too much dirt. Maybe this could be the skin, after it was hi by attacks 1-2 times or something...

But still I saved your pic and will by trying to imiate the detail you added for practise reasons

For use in a ww2 game that would still be awesome but I'm more going for a straw roof and. So, thanks again for your help, I'm trying to figure out how you added all this nice detail and adding this to my skin try. Just takes soo long ^^

Minotauro, on which models do you think I could save some polies ?

mh, which of the renders were you referring to ?

The first ones are simple 3 point lighting-renders, done in max, well and colored meshes of course

And the buildings are simple max materials with 40 % self illumination.

Well, and I really started on a little skin. I'm rather new to this, so forgive my lack of skill so far. The only goal for me would be to finish this skin and then enjoy the rest of the night ^^

Skinmap:

http://v091259.dd2110.kasserver.com/mod ... n_wip1.jpg

*cough*

all of them ?

That would be something people like me would get a lifetime achievement award for

I got the small house done so far. ^^

but thanks for the comments guys

Hi guys, I thought I could share some models I made during the last week with you.

The first models I did for this HL2-Mod

Nothing spectacular, but oh well, it should work ingame, once they are skinned.

Well and then I did something different (for me), I got into modelling some (possible) environment models that could be used in an RTS game, which I really enjoyed and today I will (at least try to) skin the small house.

sry, I thought it would be funny, when I change them around and put that watermark on it. But, um.

It wasn't obivously. :/

Should never happen again, i put it on my "not-to-do-again-list" right next to "do-not-talk-offtopic-in-friechamps-or-anybody-elses-threads-on-mapcore"

[edit]

no, you weren't

sry, OL

I couldn't resist.

http://v091259.dd2110.kasserver.com/tem ... ze_rip.jpg

But I guess FrieChamp won't let go from his grid

well but now you can save lots of polies on the outer side (is denn das ein wort ? Außenseite mein ich halt) of the bridge, cause the shape doesn't change but its still using lots of polies for a basically flat surface. O_O

If I could speak English I wouldn't have unterstood myself right now. I can use my crazy MSPaint skills to illustrate my weird explanation try, though ^^

pretty good, but then again pretty basic shapes to really judge without some textures on it, imo.

For what engine would you want to use this model, cause you said you want it to be in some of your maps. If it's for HL, you can save some polies, as vertex lighting isn't really included in there, and therefore you can just stick parts of the model in each other (like above the window, this box sticking out, doesn't need to be connected to the rest then) and if it should be for a newer engine you could surely add more detail to it. Even for Half-Life you could add some more

At least you could rounden those arches a bit more, cause that won't take much more polies.

And I think the roof could be a bit more massive and go over the sides a bit more. But then again I don't know your ref ^^

I hope you're gonna texture this thing. Really looking forward to that

mh, i think thats what döner meant, when he said, the face sucks ass :/

now i heard that the second time and the longer I look at it, the more I think you're right, but I can't really put my finger on it, why it looks so female. Maybe its the shape off the lips...I really don't know

But I'll mess around with it tomorrow, I guess.

thanks for your feedback so far \o

but on the other hand, when I look at the normal smoothed render, it looks much more male, imo, cause of the shadows in the eye region. Pretty weird O_o

I'll see what I can do, anyways