Character/Game/Other stuff questions

[uncle_frankie]

For smooth meshes

on a buttons window press F9 and it's in the first panel

[thondal]

i've seen a tutorial out there... try google "low poly game character tutorial" or something... it's a rather nice tutorial, including texturing.. think it's for 3dsmax, but you can easily apply the way of modeling to blender.

Good luck.. not so good at those poly questions, sorry...


-thondal-

[gplzth]

Smooth/solid shouldn't matter. It's internal to blender. It turns phong shading on and off, respectively. But your shading will be done in Panda. However, it is important if you're going to be baking normal maps. I would guess with a 2000 poly budget you wont be using those, but setting smooth/solid will of course affect normals.

Normal rasterization natively uses tris. Engines & APIs "support" quads but at some point it all gets converted to tris. Don't bother modeling with them, you can triangulate later if that's what Panda requires. Come to think of it I don't know poly count in games generally referes to quads or tris.

Where you choose to spend detail is really as simple as where your player is going to be looking, (and from how far away) and usually that means your character's face. This also relates to texturing, because any detail you can't squeeze into the mesh you'll likely end up wanting to put in your texture. Flat details, like a belt, work well this way. Those spines on the shoulder, of course, would not.

As long as you don't plan to remove the armor or animate it separatly, I'd think modeling it all together would save you a lot of polys.

Well that was fun. Good luck!

[Xerian]

Thank you for the info. I was reaching the conclusion that Smooth/Solid didn't matter as much as I had though.

I'm currently "redoing" the mesh for a more traditional armor look and then I'll add a fantasy flare after. Also I do need to cut out a ton of wasted polys... If already above 2000 and without even finishing the hands I'm in trouble. Still have to take into account weapons and the like.

Really I'm just grabbing at straws when I ask any question since I'm learning as I go so any adding info (especially if you have used Blender and Panda3D to make a game) is more than welcomed.

Don't expect this thread to move too fast... the fact I'm learning as I go makes it slow enough but with a job and family to boot... and the lack of a pen tablet... but gain any help well be welcomed with open arms

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