[teaser] Concept/'10 Chevy Camaro

Nice to see how it's going. Beautiful model - how many polygons?

djpimley wrote:Nice to see how it's going. Beautiful model - how many polygons?

Thanks, it's at 3,389 polys ATM... I'll have to be careful when I redo the front end.

Also, I'm having trouble getting good definition... Here's my problem:


The curves and such show up fine when I choose a weather like Sunset, but daylight is too bright, and washes everything out. Is this a problem with my model, or maybe a texturing issue?

Superslow wrote:The curves and such show up fine when I choose a weather like Sunset, but daylight is too bright, and washes everything out.

The contours of a model usually stand out because of environment mapping. Don't worry about that kind of thing whilst modelling - it's normal - just get it smooth and accurate. When you make your textures, use a combination of colour and shininess that shows up the contours (light colours tend to wash out environment mapping.) While you're modelling I would advise you to create a 25-50% grey texture (a medium to dark grey) because this will allow the game's lighting to show up the contours of the car to best effect. Bright yellow is actually one of the worst colours to use because the RGB is almost at maximum (255,255,0) so highlights hardly show up.

djpimley wrote:The contours of a model usually stand out because of environment mapping. Don't worry about that kind of thing whilst modelling - it's normal - just get it smooth and accurate. When you make your textures, use a combination of colour and shininess that shows up the contours (light colours tend to wash out environment mapping.) While you're modelling I would advise you to create a 25-50% grey texture (a medium to dark grey) because this will allow the game's lighting to show up the contours of the car to best effect. Bright yellow is actually one of the worst colours to use because the RGB is almost at maximum (255,255,0) so highlights hardly show up.

I'm not sure I can do anything about the shininess. I only have PhotoShop Elements, which doesn't support channels of any sort.

Superslow wrote:I'm not sure I can do anything about the shininess. I only have PhotoShop Elements, which doesn't support channels of any sort.

I can help you with that. Once you lock your textures, send me a PSD and I will help you make mattes for transparency and environment mapping. FYI I use Photoshop to build my mattes and Graphic Converter to apply them to my PNGs.

A new american muscle car is coming on a redline near you... and me... ok, it's the same. We love the fights with those boats!

With your polygon counts, did u included the wheels/interior too?

DonaemouS wrote:...With your polygon counts, did u included the wheels/interior too?

Unfortunately not. I haven't modeled the interior or wheels yet. The current wheels are from NNB's GT500.

Superslow wrote:Unfortunately not. I haven't modeled the interior or wheels yet. The current wheels are from NNB's GT500.

Your probably at what we'd consider the "reasonable" limit now. People have pushed it further, but that leads to a lot of griping in MP from people with low-end systems.

I'm using the GIMP in combination with Graphic Converter to do all my texturing work. GIMP is not native on OS X, it relies on the X11 environment. I find it quite capable for my needs.

djpimley wrote:Your probably at what we'd consider the "reasonable" limit now. People have pushed it further, but that leads to a lot of griping in MP from people with low-end systems.

Would I be able to continue with this model, then make another copy and simplify it? Then I could put both models into the plug and people could choose the high-resolution or low-res model to suit their machine. Didn't Dandy do something similar with the Porsche 997?

A polygon reduction tip:

If I assume that you're using the same amount of vertices on the inside of the wheel arches as on the outside of the wheel arches, you can probably remove 100 triangles just by reducing the amount of vertices on the inside wheel arches to 3 for each wheel. Given that you hardly see that bit with such large wheels blocking the view, you can safely do that right away. Don't you agree?

C14ru5 wrote:A polygon reduction tip:

If I assume that you're using the same amount of vertices on the inside of the wheel arches as on the outside of the wheel arches, you can probably remove 100 triangles just by reducing the amount of vertices on the inside wheel arches to 3 for each wheel. Given that you hardly see that bit with such large wheels blocking the view, you can safely do that right away. Don't you agree?

Yeah, that makes sense, I'll do that. Thanks!

Superslow wrote:Didn't Dandy do something similar with the Porsche 997?

Yeah, but that's because he was converting an existing model. It would be much better just to make it once with a few compromises. Multiple versions is just more work for you and a pain in the ass for everyone. My models have got more complicated as I've become better at modelling - and generally the poly-count of all our plug-ins is creeping up over time - but in my experience there are many sensible compromises to be made that can keep the poly-count down without ruining the model. Consider it part of the challenge!