Game assets

I was looking around different 3d models here on 3docean and I see a lot of low poly 3d models for games, and with good amount of sales. I am used to creating very high poly models for architectural scenes, and most often I start modeling with low poly and then turbosmooth it and collapse it so it stays high poly forever. So anyway, my question:

Is it worth saving both low poly and high poly versions of 3d model and then sell them both?

This is new to me, because I never did any game assets and just curious if anybody would buy my coffee machine for example if it was low poly? And can you recommend what is the basics of lowpoly, what is the maximum poly for the game to function properly, and what is best way creating texture for low poly models (unwrapping?)?

Thanks for your advice!

Art

Hey Art,

Low-polygonal modeling is a whole new field if you are a high-detail designer.

So, where to start… First of all, with low poly modeling, forget about the turbosmooth modifier it adds too much polygons for a game ready model.

I advice you, only in rare cases (ex. modeling low poly faces), to use a meshsmooth modifier; it goes easier on polycount, and is easier to control with your mesh topology… usually 1 level of meshsmooth is enough for most game models.

The basics, i advice you to start with a box usually. to end up having a clean squared topology…

It really depends on your game and its game engine to say how many polygons should your models have. but generally, 1000 – 4000 polygons is for main character in an average game, it could go up to 10k -15k… But games for iphone for example have averages of ~500 – 800 polys or so. So it is really up to the game itself.

Saving the low-poly and the high-poly… basically, this is doable, but the high-poly model will suffer loss of detail and precision, so it is better to model one low-poly model, then model a high-poly model from scratch.

unwrapping the textures… it gets tricky here, the easiest way is to use unwrap UVWs modifier, select roughly half of the model using face selection of the UVW unwrap. Open the ’’render to texture’’ dialogue (hotkey 0) then render the the texture… Voila ! but there are various techniques to select from, many techniques are more flexible and could give you way more texture detail than others… Google up some tutorials to have a better idea.

Hope this was helpful

PS. Have you tried chamfering the edges to avoid the collapsing of your low-poly model with turbosmooth ?

Cheers

Hi Ali,

Firstable, thank you for such detailed explanation to my questions, I really appreciate you taking time to answer all of my questions.

I agree with you, after doing some research, hi-poly and low-poly are indeed two completely different things, one is for show and the other one is for efficiency and there is very little in between. I also agree with you that hi-poly model can suffer if I start modeling it for low-poly first. Chamfering edges sometimes helps but sometimes it is necessary to do turbosmooth to make the model more realistic, I don’t do more than 2 turbosmooth levels, otherwise it just too many polygons.

My first priority and what I am trained to do is hi-poly models, but I still want to somehow end up with two versions, 1 high and 1 low. What I am trying to figure out is an easier way to do this, and not start two models from scratch but instead somehow reuse one to create another. My first idea, as you said, was to start with low-poly and move on to high-poly, but high-poly can suffer at the end and may need to be rebuilt from scratch.

I am thinking that instead of starting with low-poly and building high-poly, I will instead start with high-poly model, very detailed and with nice materials. Later I will bake it and will do unwrap and will do a very basic low-poly model and apply baked texture from high-poly on top. This way I hope to end up with a nice high-poly model and a very nice textured low-poly.

I will experiment with that idea and will post my progress on this forum.

Thanks again for responding to my post!

I am thinking that instead of starting with low-poly and building high-poly, I will instead start with high-poly model, very detailed and with nice materials. Later I will bake it and will do unwrap and will do a very basic low-poly model and apply baked texture from high-poly on top. This way I hope to end up with a nice high-poly model and a very nice textured low-poly.

I will experiment with that idea and will post my progress on this forum.

There is another good way, i say great way. Ever heard of polygon cruncher? Take a look: http://www.mootools.com/plugins/us/polygoncruncher/index.asp

I tried it with organic models like characters, and it works just amazing.

Cheers, and good luck

wow, this is nice! But don’t have $129 at the moment to buy it, as soon as I get the money I will definitely give this a try! thanks for sharing!

wow, this is nice! But don’t have $129 at the moment to buy it, as soon as I get the money I will definitely give this a try! thanks for sharing!

Download the trial version give it a try