Il never forget when i came across this mean ugly tank :p : What version is that from? 1.0 or summit?
Sometimes I wonder why I even reply in this thread, It's like I'm walking into a firing squad here, but anywho, it's a nice vehicle regardless.
Not much progress, but I rendered it to post it on some 3d forums for critic: I'm finishing off the hatch and then I'll start working on the texture and a high poly version for the bump map.
The turret could do with being slightly longer and the front needs to have more slope slightly. If the bottom half of the front came out a bit that might work otherwise it is amazing very good work :D
The front does looks a little odd. A little basic. It might look better if you make the front mostly flat and make a short, steeper drop just in front of the turret, and chamfer the edges as they come over the tracks. It'd give the barrel more clearance, and allow room for some greebling on the front bit which looks a bit bare compared to the back. The only problem is that the treads are rather large compared with the body, so any reduction in the height of the body would make it look like the thing is all tread. Personally I think it might be better with slightly shorter treads and a slightly taller turret mounting.
This looks exactly like an upgunned infantry fighting vehicle such as a Bradley, Marder or Warrior. Tall hull compared to a tank because the basic version has to transport ten men or so, but then because of the larger main weapon (and consequent shell storage required) the crew capacity is reduced. Vehicles like this are part of the modern battlefield; I think it sits well with Brenodi.
Chris. NF's LT is all wheels... And the whels take a lot more visibly the whole sides than this thing's treads take its sides. And I don't see any problems with the front's plainess. It can be always bump mapped and already that can add a lot more detail in it and when you combine it with texture the outcome is rather nice. See Renegade-X rendered models and bump mapped and textured models to see the difference.
I like it. Decent detail, shape, and it fits the style of the game. However, I am confused. This model seems way too high-poly to be the actual in-game mesh, and too low-poly to be the one to generate a normalmap from. An image explains:
Doesn't look that high poly to me, I'd be surprised if it's more than 15000 tris, which is like two and a bit metrocops. It could quite possibly be less than 10000. The fundamental rule of optimisation is that 'if it looks good and runs fine it's a good model'. You don't have to shave off every little bit of detail. The main thing you can generate off that model is an AO map, which makes texturing a hell of a lot easier.
That's what confuses me. Is this a high-poly model, or a low-poly? If it is just a mockup that will be devided into both high and low, then the detail is fine. Put as much as possible into textures and normalmaps. Especially detail like the slit in the back of the AFV, if it's not gonna open, why the hell model it? Bake it down into the AO map, and be happy. Now if Chris0132 would like to provide constructive crits, instead of general "do the right thing" talk, I would be delighted to hear that. dizzyone the AFV looks great. Don't stop working on it, and provide us with updates. Also try http://boards.polycount.net for better criticism than I can ever provide, since game industry professionals use those forums a lot for criticism-recieving, etc.
I would imagine it's a low poly model, as I said I highly doubt it's over 15k tris which would not be an unreasonable sum for something well over twice the size of a character which can easily be six or seven thousand tris. It is essentially a large character which will be seen close up by the driver, so it has to have complexity somehwere between that of a view and world model, and ultimately the rule remains 'if it works it's OK'. We aren't working for crappy old games, empires maps have very little detail in them so you can afford to put more detail into the game models, especially as you're going to be looking at them day after day. Dizzy knows how to model, I very much doubt he needs you to tell him where he can cut down the poly count.
Wo, Chris what chart have you been reading? Metrocops are roughly 3k Our current vehicles are only around 2-5k last time I checked.
Must have read it somewhere. Metrocops after checking are about 4k, soldiers about 4.5k. Current NF lights are about 4.5k, which is about the same as empires infantrymen. Considering the HL2 vehicles are about 5-6k each I think we can afford to improve on that given that HL2 is half a decade out of date. The episode 2 car is 16 thousand polies in case you're wondering. So it seems perfectly reasonable that empires vehicles should be similarly detailed close up, you can LOD fade them as far as I know.
Ah, good point but if one of our vehicles are 16k, and all the others are still the same, then the game would look funny. Also, there was only one Jalopy for a reason you know.
HL2 isn't nearly as open as most Empires maps are, there's more world rendering in the average Empires map than a HL2 level segment. If Empires models were at the same poly-counts as HL2, or any episode, it would be a lag fest. Not many people would be able to be close to 4 or more other tanks if they were that detailed.
