Development initially started out by Modeling The Camera Drone as a Proof of concept. My initial thoughts going in to the Production stage was just to model as I normally would and keep an eye on the Tri count as I had a budget of 10,000 tri’s
Once I had modeled my camera drone to a Satisfactory level, at this point it is the base mesh for the model and if I would to continue at this stage I would next start to turbo smooth and add support loops etc to get it to a finished high poly Model. but I saw no point in Creating a Super high poly version as this was a proof of concept as an introduction to low poly and working with a tri budget. at this point my model had a tri count of 12,744, 2,744 over the tri budget.
I then began to look at my objects and see what was taking up most of the Tri budget. I found that the Rectangular Decals that go over the arms of the Drone Combined used 8,240 of the 10,000 Tri budget.
I then Began to Experiment With the Arm Decals Reducing the Tri budget and I ended up creating 3 levels of detail
the First one is the Arm decal that was originally created for the Camera Drone it has 1,228 Tris, this has all Quads geometry
The Second version Keeps the Exact silhouette of the First version but Optimises all the geometry as simple as possible without losing its silhouette it has 640 Tris almost half of the its original Tri count
The third Version is As simple and as low tri count as possible and has 92 Tris
In the End I replaced 6/8 of the arm decals With the Third version of Geometry to Bring it under budget and it had a total of 7,820 Tri’s in the End
If I had Replaced all 8 Arm decals with a the Optimal Geometry of the Second version I would of been able to keep my model under budget and still have the satisfactory level of detailed silhouette.
As a note This model was Created Before the Second Year even started in the half time in preparation for this low poly unit it is only when I started was i informed that it is required to create normal maps for the models even tho it doesnt mention it anywhere in the brief that you need to so I decided to use this First Game asset as a Proof of Concept for Low poly modeling
For my Second low Polly Asset I will make Normal maps for my Model
for my Second Low Polly game Asset I decided to make a Bionic Arm
The base mesh of my Bionic Arm came in at 4,768 way below my tri budget just less then Half of my 10,000 tri Budget
the High Poly mesh of my Bionic Arm came in at 645.918 Tris
at first I was hesitant About baking the normal maps Because in order to bake the normal maps you need to Uvw Unwrap all of your geometry in my first year I stayed away from using Uvw Unwrap because I didn’t quite understand properly it when we covered it in class the first time around then didn’t use it for an extended period of time and forgot what limited knowledge I had and all of my unwrap experience prior to this was boxes. after a short refresher of Uvw unwrapping in class I still wasnt sure what I was doing when it came to unwrapping objects So once I had completed the High poly mesh I looked at Arimus 3D’s tutorials on Uvw unwrapping and normal map baking on YouTube and now I feel I am quite competent in unwrapping and Baking Normal maps I learned how to use the Pelt tools and plannar mapping and the relax tool etc. my General work flow when unwrapping was: Select appropriate faces or Select Edges and planner map or Create seems Depending on the object > break the selected faces > Pelt map> relax tool > pack Uvw’s i found the Pack Uvw tool to be unreliable most of the time then used it to get close then manualy adjusted it it maximise the texture space
Example of Uvw and Normal map used for the shoulder.
as my first attempts at baking normal maps I would say it went Alright. I need to be more consious of my modeling when i intend to bake normals as some of the details like the indents didnt show up as clear as i would of likes im not sure weather i should of make the Extrusions deeper or beveled the bottems more so that there was better normals details for the bake to pick up I also could of improved the quality of my on some of my objects if i had used some more geometry particualry the shoulder connectors for example it wouldent look so blocky and the normal map would be much better as I had almost half of my budget to use on extra geometry but the brief dosent specify what the intentions are for the 10,000 Tri budget. weather to keep it as low as possible or to maximise the benefit of the budget.
Rory Gardner 