Quanto's 3rd Attempt at Unit Modeling.

[Quanto042]

I've decided to try yet again at unit modeling. This time I would like attempt to remake the Arm Kbots. Now as many of you know, I'm a shitty scripter, so I'm not remodeling the units from scratch, I am actually taking the existing pieces and increasing their polygon count in areas that make sense from the perspective of them being "Piloted Mechs"

As you can see with the Rocko here, I've given it a western style cockpit and a wider body overall (along the z axis). The Rocket pod has also been beefed up as well, giving it a more dangerous appearance. The main effort has been in filling in the holes that were used in the original game to lower poly counts.

The next step for me of course is to texture this, I'm think I'll follow Cremus' precident and use a similar texture style for each of my arm units. The problem is, my modeling software (silo) doesn't have a particularly awesome UV Unwrapper and I was wondering if one of those third party ones would do a good job with this?

[SinbadEV]

I like it.

[Quanto042]

Well, I sucked it up and we ahead and UV Mapped my Rocko through Silo, it actually isn't all that bad, I would actually recommend it to all of you guys. But at any rate, here it is.


Good? Bad? So-so?

[Pressure Line]

somewhere between bad and so-so. you've got some pretty heavy distortion going on there, and you could use mirroring better (identical parts using the same part of the map, saves you having to draw the same part of the texture twice as well as saving texture space)

[Quanto042]

How do i go about mirroring UV pieces?

[Gota]

Hey,maybe make it more detailed?

[Quanto042]

The detail will come in the texturing. Adding little widgets to the model only needlessly ups the count.

[rattle]

I'd suggest finishing the UVs in a different program like Wings, as it offers a lot of tools to make aligning and mirroring easy. Never used Silo so I cannot comment on what Silo can do and what not.

[smoth]

the legs need work. not in the matter of pointless greebles just that they are 2 quad prisms slapped together.

[[Krogoth86]]

The problem is, my modeling software (silo) doesn't have a particularly awesome UV Unwrapper and I was wondering if one of those third party ones would do a good job with this?

What don't you like about Silo's UV-tools? I think they are excellent (although certainly some additional minor detail features might be cool). Other tools also just cook with LSCM algorithms - they won't magically unwrap for you...

When talking about the model itself:
The "cockpit" is good but to say the truth the rest could use some more love & work. You're a bit too ungenerous in terms of polycount - you easily can use 500+ polies for a Rocko. That's also what your main problem is about: You use too little geometry and thus it looks blocky & bad. Especially the legs are a bit ridiculous: Not only did you skip any joint for the the "knees" and just have some faces intersect each other but you also made up a single tetrahedron as foot which even doesn't seem to be aligned properly (i.e. it doesn't seem to be centered below the leg)...

Apart from that the general shape fits the Rocko just fine. Simply add some more geometry detail and make sure the cockpit isn't glued on one big flat face of an eight-sided main body...

EDIT:
Oh and don't mind the OTA scripts when outlaying your model: You should be able to find quite some scripters doing new scripts for you - me being one...

[Quanto042]

Thats a nice offer Krogoth, but I'm not about take any risks with custom scripts just yet. For nearly every custom model I've added to BOTA so far, I've had serious compatibility issues. My goal at this point to just create something simple that translates easily into BOTA.


Btw, more polies for you poly lovers out there.



Honestly though, its a unit that is going to be spammed by the thousands. I don't think it needs more than this.

[Otherside]

people make to much of a deal about tri count.

spherebot has 1000+ triangles (CA peewee) and its spammed alot without any noticeable extra load

model looks just like old rocko but id think of redoing the legs a bit but still good job

[Hoi]

Silo huh? Did you buy it? Free version doesn't allow exporting to .obj when tricount is above some number.

It looks pretty good, no need for the small insets though.

[[Krogoth86]]

Silo huh? Did you buy it? Free version doesn't allow exporting to .obj when tricount is above some number.

The cool thing about it is that it's an active developed piece of software with a nice price (although it got a bit more expensive since they introduced the 2 versions of it) that focuses just on modelling and imo is the most effective tool on this sector (well Modo might be on par with some cool UV features up its sleeve but it also is a different price range and not just a modeller). It's also quite popular for professionals which tend to create their base modell "quickly" in Silo and then export it to ZBrush for refinement...

@Quanto042:
Allright although I don't share your experience as I did and altered many scripts and they all worked fine for me...

You also could have changed some certain details on the rocko then. At least I probably would have changed the shield arm joint so it could rotate around the main body and I also would have changed the rocket firing system. Instead of that "tube" that fires the rocket I'd have totally removed that and done it by having let's say about half of the "gun arm" slide open as I never thought a tube does fit here (although it sure made sense in terms of having something very low poly and still give some firing animation)...

Your improvements already are a big step forward. Still I wouldn't make the cockpit being "glued" on that big flat face of your main body and I'd really do some serious feets (which still don't seem to be centered proper├Ây below the legs. At least on that "frog view" screeny the don't seem to fit while it's ok for the top-down view...

[Quanto042]

In all seriousness, if you really want to do some scripting for my models I would seriously appreciate it.

As far as my rocko is concerned, a key point about Rockos in BOTA, they fire 3 rockets at a time against their enemy. Each rocket is about 1/3 of the strength of the original rockets, but my plan was to widen the launch pod so that it launched one rocket at a time from 3 separate tubes (textured into the beveled area).

I suppose I do a "from scratch" remodel, but I would only do so if there are enough scripters out there willing to animate them for me. Or even better, give me a clear written tutorial on how to do it myself so I can take some of the workload.

[ About Silo, yes I bought it, for only 100 bucks its a steal compared to other commercial modeling programs out there, and I'll admit, I've gotten used to the way it does UVs as well. Beats the hell out of 3D Max in a lot of ways too. Its only about 20 megs on my HD and I can open multiple instances without a problem. Its also very highly customizable. ]

[Wolf-In-Exile]

You can save yourself alot of polies simply by omitting the bevelled areas on the arm and cockpit.

Otherwise its a decent and clean model.

[FLOZi]

You can save yourself alot of polies simply by omitting the bevelled areas on the arm and cockpit.

Otherwise its a decent and clean model.

Otherwise it's just the OTA Rocko. No offence meant, Quanto.

[Quanto042]

In all seriousness, what do you want it to be? We're trying to remake the OTA units after all. They don't have to look revolutionary. The whole point of S3O was UVmapping, not High Poly.

Take the original models, UVMap them, and enjoy life. Thats the approach I'm taking at least.

[FLOZi]

I'd like it to be a true geometrical improvement, not just a textual one - like Mr. D's models.

As i said, no offence Quanto as I believe you are a great mapper and have contributed postively to thiscommunity, unlike others. But I do feel your modelling needs further work

[MR.D]

I dunno, seems like he's on the right path so far with the unit and it looks nice enough with the base geometry.

Yeah its more of a clone and just prettied up a bit, but this is one of the basic units that will be spammed like mad during most games (at least if its put into BA).

You have to take that into consideration, as a high polycount could cause some performance issues with such a basic spammable unit.

I would love to see it given some more details as well, but lets be honest about how that could impact gameplay speed.

If anything stands out that needs to be changed, I would say the legs could use some tweaking, but that is just my opinion.