Spring RTS Engine

Okay guys critique this

The window insets and the front grille are a waste of polies, the rear wheels look out of place. You could have spent those polies on making the sideboard rounder.

ianmac wrote:"Are you kidding? That's way too many polies to put into a game!"
For the polie count you can have quite a few becose thare are only going to be 8-16 cars at the most(how many can you have in a maltieplay match?). Whats the problem whith having 10,000 polies a car if that's the polie count for ten to fifteen units in a standerd game?

You're acctually making it harder to texture and at 10,000 coming pretty close to the point where it will pressure video cards. Plus there's no way in hell you're going to get a coil like that to animate properly in spring. I was thinking a pair of cylinders, a big one at the top, and a little one at the bottom, like mountain bike suspension. It gives animators something useful to work with, and takes only minimum effort to texture.

Also, KDR is right. One of those coils alone will match the poly count of the rest of the model... why not show off detail like that where it can be seen? Why hide it away?

For the oldies style car: It looks good, generally seems to be aiming at the poly count we're going for... The insets in the windows and doors and stuff may prove to be difficult to texture. I like the grille though, these models will be seen up close and details like that, while wasting polies, will add to the overall model. The back wheels lack any real character though, they will be seen the most, they should look nice.

I feel ignored. Was my car that bad?

Not as bad as ianmac's tricycle.

ianmac: You just beat Caydr in wrong use of polygons and sides per cylinder.

Begin with something easy, something like a jet plane. Try to do it with the least amount of polygons possible and use reference pictures, makes it easier. Where ever that model is supposed to animate in spring, don't model it in one piece. A flag for example has to be three pieces in spring. An arm two. A simplified body eleven (head, torso, pelvis, upper/lower arms/legs).

Also, realism doesn't matter. Never model details this far unless you are doing it for normal baking which you probably aren't. For example a suspension spring is a well textured 4 or 6 sided cylinder, not a modeled spring. It is not only a pain to UV map but eats up roughly 10 to 20 times as much polygons.

ok hows this? the polie cownt is 1649

PolyCOWnt? Moo...

Still bad distribution of polygons. Put some more emphasis on the car and take polies off things you'll barely see at all. And uh... don't use the smooth function unless you spend some time to remove useless polygons.

ianmac, try to shoot for under 1,000 polygons, and under 3,000 triangles. You don't need to be in such detail, heck OTA units are all under 400 polygons, [Even the Krogoth to my knowledge]. It does look nice, but ask yourself, do you feel like spending 3 hours UV-mapping this, and having ugly textures? Or would you rather have simulated polygons, and spend less then an hour UV mapping it?

I know I like the latter, for Tactical Smash, every model was under 200 polygons, and I could texture it to make it even better.

Um, rc, the polygon count doesn't matter in the least, only the triangle count.

Um, I'm gonna remind people that this isn't a generic spring unit thread. In this mod you'll only see 5-6 models at a time, and you'll see them up close very often. Conventional spring modeling practices don't apply the same way, poli skimping isn't necessary/beneficial for units like this.

You wouldn't recommend a UT3 engine modeler try to keep their polycount under 1000 for units, because you know the models will be seen up close, and it will matter if the units are blocky, same thing applies here.

[edit] This isn't to say ian's car is perfect, but he's getting alot of bad advice in context to the project still.

I think that car is spot on. I was very impressed with it.

In fact, if they don't want it, I do!

I was workin on something at work that might be good for this, but... should i smooth just for the sake of smoothing? (Of course.. I should prob post a screeny to show what i mean but im not at work... so i don't have the model)

I mean... a barrel with 6 sides is still fine, surly? and a 12 sided wheel?

I just mapped it so ill be pissed if i have to go back and change it now...

aGorm

Show us it first, you master of tease.

Well thsi is what i was doodeling at work... it was under 2000 tries but tehn i smothed teh excaust pipes and the wheels and it shot up to 4000.. But then i havent striped out any of teh spare quads either yet so im sure that will go back down.

Its not finished befor anyone says whys it white at the back...

And annoyingly I saved it after smothing the wheels and pipes... without backing it up ! DOH.

aGorm

aGorm wrote:after smothing the wheels and pipes...

ha ha ha

Yhe, your name keeps croping up when I cant speel.

aGorm

I think I'm going to make this map when I get home:

metalSpeed:

LOL

In retrospect. I am very lazy... someone else do it.

I should have you hunted down like a wild dog.