Alrighty, figured this should probably be a good thing to put up quick, hopefully it'll be informative.
now, what we have here is a wireframe shot of my tarsus. i've posted this because i wanted to do a little 'how to' deal for modeling. some might argue my conventions are outmoded, but for the most part their pretty standard, please keep all 'they're outmoded' comments to yourself please.
alrighty, as you can see for starters, the model is triangulated. this is a key thing for most game engines, and when you're modeling your ship you want to make sure that your Triangle (tri) count is what is under 8000, not just your Polygon (poly) count. remember, one qaud polygon is eqaul to two tris. your polygon count will always be doubled when you go to tri.
typically when i'm modeling i'm looking for the least amount of faces to use to acheive the best result. you can use a 6 sided cylinder for your engines if you want, i don't advise it, but you can do it because you have this nifty thing called smoothing groups. what these do, for all practical purposes, is smooth the normals of your faces and faces having tons of polys to make your object appear round. usually, 12 sided cylinders is what i use for engines, gun barrels or small pipes tucked away somewhere, no more that 6-8 sided cylinders. also, instead of having this ugly flat face on the end of your engines, if you look at the example i have merged all points to center and moved them back in space. it looks a helluva lot nicer and adds a lot of visual appeal as well. flat faces are bad in general, avoid them at all costs!
also, AVOID BOOLEAN OPERATIONS AT ALL COST! DO NOT, i repeat, DO NOT boolean your whole model so that it is one solid, contiguous mesh. this will cause your poly/tri count to skyrocket. its a REALLY bad thing to do. as you can see from the pic, my ship is composed of a bunch of small objects which appear to be connected, but are really just resting on top of one another. works a helluva lot better, and saves a boat load of polys/tris.
so, i guess what i'm trying to get at...think logically and think efficiently when modeling. also, think of where best to spend your polygons. if you sink all your polys into super rounded engines, you'll have none left over for pipes, or other small greeble type things. remember, smoothing groups are your friend! they do a lot of work so for your polys so they don't have to.
Brad McKinstry
now, what we have here is a wireframe shot of my tarsus. i've posted this because i wanted to do a little 'how to' deal for modeling. some might argue my conventions are outmoded, but for the most part their pretty standard, please keep all 'they're outmoded' comments to yourself please.
alrighty, as you can see for starters, the model is triangulated. this is a key thing for most game engines, and when you're modeling your ship you want to make sure that your Triangle (tri) count is what is under 8000, not just your Polygon (poly) count. remember, one qaud polygon is eqaul to two tris. your polygon count will always be doubled when you go to tri.
typically when i'm modeling i'm looking for the least amount of faces to use to acheive the best result. you can use a 6 sided cylinder for your engines if you want, i don't advise it, but you can do it because you have this nifty thing called smoothing groups. what these do, for all practical purposes, is smooth the normals of your faces and faces having tons of polys to make your object appear round. usually, 12 sided cylinders is what i use for engines, gun barrels or small pipes tucked away somewhere, no more that 6-8 sided cylinders. also, instead of having this ugly flat face on the end of your engines, if you look at the example i have merged all points to center and moved them back in space. it looks a helluva lot nicer and adds a lot of visual appeal as well. flat faces are bad in general, avoid them at all costs!
also, AVOID BOOLEAN OPERATIONS AT ALL COST! DO NOT, i repeat, DO NOT boolean your whole model so that it is one solid, contiguous mesh. this will cause your poly/tri count to skyrocket. its a REALLY bad thing to do. as you can see from the pic, my ship is composed of a bunch of small objects which appear to be connected, but are really just resting on top of one another. works a helluva lot better, and saves a boat load of polys/tris.
so, i guess what i'm trying to get at...think logically and think efficiently when modeling. also, think of where best to spend your polygons. if you sink all your polys into super rounded engines, you'll have none left over for pipes, or other small greeble type things. remember, smoothing groups are your friend! they do a lot of work so for your polys so they don't have to.
Brad McKinstry