Vehicle: Volkswagen Touareg

[phunky_nick]

Hi Onno -

I don't know how applicable you'd find it, but there's this really cool method that I picked up for doing wheels for low poly cars -

you model the main bit of the tyre(tire) with 6 or 8 quads, then model the front with a 2-poly square. then apply the tyre texture with an alpha to it.. after I post this i'll do a demo and put a link up.. it's very effective and completely within regs.. especially for such a low polygon car


see you in a few .. lol



Nick.

[phunky_nick]

Hi there,

here's that demo - I haven't really paid attention to the bitmap size, but you get the idea..
for really low poly stuff, it works a treat.

http://www.neogothic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/tyres.jpg

i think this particular one works out to about 34 polys
but only because the cylinder has 16 sides.





hope it helps, anyhow.

Nick.

[Onno]

Thanks for the tip, but to make it match up, you would have to draw it with the square sides nontheless, since else it wouldn't match.

It does make a big difference though, since one would always need at least 4 of them, so every 'discount', counts four times.

[Nosalis]

Onno ?! You can make it better, can`t you ?

This one looks W.I.P ... not finished model. The mentioned method on wheels works fine. I`m working on models from 700-1000 polys, so I know it`s not easy to work with that small amount of polys.

Don`t know If you`ll tweak it, but I think it could be done better. (you probbably haven`t got much time) How long did it take ?

I would give it 3 stars of 6

.
.
.
ha, .. now I see it :) 8 hours, .. hmm for that amount of time is ok.

also, .. you were limited to one texture only ???
it is better to make 512x512 as a main texture and two 64x64 on wheel (texture + alpha) or one with keyed colour (background colour with woun`t be seen) and probably 16x32 tire tread.

The whole texture for body will have than more details. Check this out :))) (sorry, that I`m posting my work in others forum)
:)


http://www.racer.euweb.cz/test/Primera2w.jpg
http://www.racer.euweb.cz/test/Primera2.jpg
http://www.racer.euweb.cz/test/PrimeraTEX.JPG

[CADster]

overall it looks fine. it conveys what the car is, and it looks good. you have spead out the faces very well and you have plenty of detail for your polycounts.

if you need to get poly counts lower the backs of the wheels can be trimmed a little, or the square face with alpha (alrealy mentioned) works better if its on the backside where its not as noticable. the roof can be trimmed a little as well.

if you have a few more polygons to spare, add wipers front and rear, font and rear licence plate, or an antenna .. little things like this really look good (you already added the mirrors and luggage rack)


now for my crits - I would of given the rear of the car more texture real estate then the front .. if this is for in-game use/play, chances are you will see the back far more then the front. i also would of added a 'textured' bottom to the car, its just a few faces to close it up (it looks like its already closed) and very little of the map is needed for underside detail. if the car ever flips over (like in 99% of all driving games) you will really need the underside to look at least a little like a car underside.....bottoms being all black is just no fun.

id also work on matching this corner to look more like the other corner ... this end is not matching up very well

http://www.onnovanbraam.com/temp/touareg/touareg-17-final-tex-d.jpg

[Turk]

ooo lookie he posted that primera again :\

hey onno, youve helped me out alot wit your website, nice to meet you. anyway not sure if youll want todo this but it i were you...

i would remove that line going through the middle of the car, i cant see flats so im not sure if its actaully doing anything but by the looks of it it isnt changing the apearance of the mesh much and your not mirroring your texture so mabye if you got rid of the link you could use the 40+/- polys around to smooths things out? just a suggestion tho.

Also i think a vert has strayed away from wher eit supposed to be, the vert on the middle right of the windscreen?

hope that helped...

[Nosalis]

to Turk: does it bothers you, that I posted a link ?

[Pyke]

and so it begins...

Nice model BTW.
I dont really like the shines tho-i think it detracts a little from your clever poly use. But for those time constraints-damn!

[Turk]

to Turk: does it bothers you, that I posted a link ?

yep.

[Witchy]

>>>sorry, that I`m posting my work in others forum

Not that sorry as you keep doing it. Can't we just take it as read that you are the definitive car maker and overall superior being and move on Nosalis? Or perhaps this thread is about you too :)

Nice vehicle and in a tight time frame too, any tips on what parts you spent the longest time on and where you saved time?

[Nosalis]

To Witchy: So should I refer to others pic. or send private message ? IMHO the texture can be done better (belong, if he can use more textures) so I show him my sample... that`s all ... (Btw. it`s still better than rabaja whos post is everytime the same, .... "great work + link to his portfolio" ...)

I can`t underestand, what people like you have against me....

P.S. if you don`t like the primera, I can post a lancer :)

[TheWriter]

"also, .. you were limited to one texture only ???
it is better to make 512x512 as a main texture and two 64x64 on wheel (texture + alpha) or one with keyed colour (background colour with woun`t be seen) and probably 16x32 tire tread."

Nos.. Im not sure I agree with this. Every texture you add restricts the bus bandwidth. Also, for every texture you apply to the same object, you get extra verts that need to be cloned. both of these can severely tax the graphics card.

[Nosalis]

I`m not exactly sure, but, more textures gives you more detail (you spare more time).

For wheels, If you`re using same wheels for 10 cars, which are in memory, it`s the same. I think this depends on engine, in some it is not important to have everything on one texture, and in some it is.

I don`t know what your experince with game engines is, but I`d like to know about it, so hope you can answer this question, than just say you think different.

And about cloning vertices .... haven`t heard about it .... yeah, I`m not a programmer, .. I`m animator/graphic artists

[Supervlieg]

I would say the car looks good overal. It can be tweaked a bit more as is mentioned above. The only thing that stands out right now is that the black windows should have a hint of reflection. If youre not using reflection maps, you will get nice results by just painting them on the texture.

[Witchy]

>>I can`t underestand, what people like you have against me....

Please save your unpleasant judgements about other 'people' for more appropriate forums. And your rather insulting personal messages demanding I send you my work for your evaluation too for that matter.

[TheWriter]

I don`t know what your experince with game engines is, but I`d like to know about it, so hope you can answer this question, than just say you think different.

And about cloning vertices .... haven`t heard about it .... yeah, I`m not a programmer, .. I`m animator/graphic artists


Nos.. every time you add a texture to a model, it has to have it's borders defined. Assume you have two textures on one mesh, what happens? One texture will meet the other, HOWEVER, at the borders those verticies have to do at least double the job since they are now controling more than one material.

That is it in average layman terms.

[CADster]

Originally posted by TheWriter
Nos.. Im not sure I agree with this. Every texture you add restricts the bus bandwidth. Also, for every texture you apply to the same object, you get extra verts that need to be cloned. both of these can severely tax the graphics card.

renderware does not seem to have issues with multi-subs , it can also handle huge ammounts of geomerty.

i think it has more to do with the engine being used.


Originally posted by Witchy
Not that sorry as you keep doing it. Can't we just take it as read that you are the definitive car maker and overall superior being and move on Nosalis? Or perhaps this thread is about you too :)


is this wrong ???? ive done it several times (just the other day as a matter of fact). i never do it to 'steal the threads sunshine'.

so if your working on something, and im working on something very simular, and i post an example of my stuff in your thread to show you something .. this is wrong ????

[Onno]

Nosalis: I think I could yeah, but it had to be done immediately. I got a mail at 5pm that it had to be done the same day. I didn't make that, but got it finished the next morning. So it was a tad rushed to say the least.
It was indeed limited to one texture, but next time I'll definately try the dual texture.
Nice Primera. Thanks for the tips.

Cadster: Yeah those tips on the wheels I will definately apply next time. Then I could indeed add more details.
I agree on the bottom, but I looked around for quite some time and couldn't fine one single image of the bottom of a jeep/suv like vehicle... Stupid, but the truth.
And that image is not a final one, they are named final, but as said: I did some final touch ups that solved that. :)

Turk: that line is there because in the end I decided to do some mirroring of certain parts. (hood, bottom, sides, mirrors) So in the end it was a bit doubly done: and the complete texture for certain parts and modeled twice.
Nicely spotted on that vert, it's true that it's in a odd position.

Pyke: It was all done with reference photo's. If I would have drawn everything myself, it would have been extremely 2D pasted on a 3D mode: I am not very good at drawing textures myself.

Witchy: The modeling took about 3 hours (that was including the two hours of thinking it had to be 400 polies), texturing 5. I 'wasted' a lot of time making stuff match at the edges. In the end I cheated a bit by making shadows at the tricky parts, this was all because of not welding the verts on the UVW Unwrap, which would have prevented that.

Supervlieg: I don't think they were going to use reflection maps, so I just painted them black (with a hint of windscreen wipers). I find it very difficult to draw reflections in 2D... realisticly of course. Maybe I should have given it a try though. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks everybody for the heads ups and tips, they are much appreciated and I'll try to apply them next time I low poly something. :thumbsup:

PS: Sorry for responding so late.

[TheWriter]

Originally posted by CADster
renderware does not seem to have issues with multi-subs , it can also handle huge ammounts of geomerty.

i think it has more to do with the engine being used.


I disagree:

Every time the material changes across a model, RenderWare Graphics has
to duplicate the vertices along the boundary since a second set of UV
coordinates are needed. This can lead to a large increase in the number of
vertices if adjacent materials change often. If you notice that there seem to
be many more vertices in RenderWare Graphics compared with your 3ds
max model, this could be one of the reasons.

[CADster]

Originally posted by TheWriter
Originally posted by CADster
renderware does not seem to have issues with multi-subs , it can also handle huge ammounts of geomerty.

i think it has more to do with the engine being used.


I disagree:

Every time the material changes across a model, RenderWare Graphics has
to duplicate the vertices along the boundary since a second set of UV
coordinates are needed. This can lead to a large increase in the number of
vertices if adjacent materials change often. If you notice that there seem to
be many more vertices in RenderWare Graphics compared with your 3ds
max model, this could be one of the reasons.

ahh, your right, the model almost always has a large number of additional verts.. i was never stating you were wrong, i was only pointing out how some engines handle multi subs (even perfer them) to a single surface.

so now the question is .. how do you get different surfaces with a single map ? if your crome, paint, glass, and rubber is on one map .. how do you get the different surface settings ??

and if your running alphas for transparency .. using a single map for the car and glass has your single map matted to a rather large alpha (lets say the map is 512x512). would it not be smoother for glass to be on a smaller 32 bit image while the rest of the car is on a 24 bit image ??

@Onno - you can make a simple map as the underside .. its all pretty much black/dark grey, and a little dirt . a few crappy bevels in PS, a few drop shadows and your set .. it will be good enough for the few seconds the car is flipped over ;)

[Nosalis]

To Onno: ... :) yes, I told you can do it better, just before I found out, that you have on whole model 8 hours, .. this is great model in such a small time (but it seem a litle bit wavy to me) .... it can be nice a clean ... but IMO not in 8 hours (with texturing)

To Cad: thanks

To Writer: As I told, I was talking about one map for body, and two for wheels. Only duplicated vertices (if it is so) will be on wheels. But If you use one texture for tire tred and side texture with alfa on a PLANE !!! you won`t get any duplicated vertices ....

As well, If you want to use a opacity map for windows, headlights, ... you cannot put it in the main texture, becouse 512x512 opacity map isn`t very suitable ... what do you think ? :)

[TheWriter]

I think yes one should ALWAYS try to use alpha maps for wheels. Reason being game engines take forever to work on fans. It would be nice if cards could be optimized to handle this well... but that may never happen this generation.

[Nosalis]

Originally posted by Witchy
>>I can`t underestand, what people like you have against me....

Please save your unpleasant judgements about other 'people' for more appropriate forums. And your rather insulting personal messages demanding I send you my work for your evaluation too for that matter.

Am I insulting someone ?!? ... I wrote that for that little time the cars looks fine ...

and Onno: yes, it gives qiute lot of detail, If you half the texture... you cannot do it in rally version of course :))

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.