Use Or Not To Use... That Is The Question

“Sup!” Below is a model I created for a 2D sprite based game about a year ago. I never finished the model, so it is incomplete.

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I was thinking I could take this model and manipulate the vertices until it’s suitable for a low polygon character instead of a CGI render. I could then add in detail on the low polygon version and make the model suitable for both, low poly game play and CGIs when coverted to a SubD form.

I was thinking about using it for the base male body for enemies that have a human male form.

Or should I just trash this model and start over from scratch. It was modeled very quickly with little effort any way. I just figured I could save some time by cleaning this one up.

Trash it?

hi,

how many polygons are we talking about here ?

I would keep it and finish off the textures. If you then decide to redo the model you can still start a new one but at least in the meantime you got something to work with.

oh and good that you’ve changed your image upload website the other was terrible

Chrys

Hard to say because I only temporarily merged the model. It’s still sitting as a half model (so I can clean it up).

I would say the overall model’s body will have roughly the same amount of vertices as my main’s body, which has 5100 vertices that make up just the body alone. That’s not counting any other part of my Main’s outfit or other parts like eyes and inner mouth.

In fact… 9465 is the total vertice count for my entire main model (low poly one). That’s not counting the weapon vertices.

Right now for the half model of the unfinished one, the vertices are 1716. Double that number for a full incomplete one.

The one thing about modeling a character I hate, and what seems like it can’t be controlled, is how quads will convert to triangles once the model is loaded into a scene.

My main character had some quads, which are two triangles, along the crotch area angling the wrong way. That is, the triangles were formed backwards (inward). I had to go in and manually set some quads to triangles early, in order to fix this issue. The change also fixed the way shading was applied to her crotch area.

I figured what the hell… Since I’m already down in my character’s lap, I might as well change her outfit in this area as well. One thing lead to the next and I found myself taking a few inches off of her waist line and upper thighs.

I gave the changes a test run and for the first time, I saw Rayne (from Blood Rayne/Blood Rayne 2). What I mean is…if you’ve played Blood Rayne 2 (PC), you know how flashy and “kewl” Rayne’s outfit looks, especially since it’s all black and red in color too.

My own main character’s outfit is more stand out flashy in the same way; elevated just by a texture change and body curvature change. It’s amazing when something that looks really good turns out to look even better.

I guess I out did myself, which is hard to do.

My Main also became more fitting to the game world’s era. Since feast of famine was the norm back then, combined with back breaking work… You can imagine how bodies were built back then. Princess’ body is more according to that way of life. She looks more skin bone, but in a healthy way.

The overall change was a win for me.

It is hard trying to balance graphics and performance both. Low polygon characters usually mean characters that appear to have a little “blockiness”, but still good looking. Completely smooth characters mean increased polygons and that equals fps drop when characters start filling the screen up.

That’s why I will most likely not create higher polygon versions for enemies and NPCs that make up the story. The main character will be the only character with a model alternate that can be chosen, if higher detail is desired.

blender can manually toggle between triangle and quads , also the triangulation order can be changed manually.
ctrl+t to triangulate the selected quad,
alt+j to join them back into a quad
ctrl+shift+f to flip the triangle edge order

what really makes or breaks the model are not the number of vertices. most important are the textures.
as modern gpu’s can handle tons of vertices, the number of verts is not so critical as it was 10 years ago. wasting gazillions of them will be bad of course, but it hardly matters if you use 3k or 12k for your main character. for characters that appear in numbers you need to be a bit less wasteful.

about your initial question: yes,trash it.
the proportions are off, and the shape looks pretty unnatural and deformed. unless this is intentional by character design you probably are better off by remaking it from scratch.

CTRL T and ALT J are what I use for altering Quads.

One thing about human bodies… None are shaped the same. In other words, there’s no wrong way to shape a human body as long as it looks human.

A nose can be big, small, short. Lips can be thin fat. Jaw bones can be sunken, extruded, etc…you get the point.

You won’t start going wrong until your character’s chin looks like a carrot, or their forehead favors a lilly pad. That’s unnatural.

That character is like I stated anyway, unfinished and not even shaped for 3D game usage. I believe I can clean it up though.

The vertex count is very low, so it won’t be too painful to go in and start manipulating. Given the enemy I’m thinking about using this unfinished mesh for, it should work after I’m done reshaping everything.

Unless I end up making the head look like a key chain… Then… All hope is lost!

I hate to break it for you, but this doesn’t. There’s really no point working on this model.

You could try MakeHuman, it gives very nice models.

I think that it looks great. Keep up the good work.

After working on the unfinished model, it’s starting to look great; given the fact it didn’t look like a tree or car before, but human. Nothing was done at all on the model before. From what I can tell, I closed the file and never went back to work on it after the basic layout was done (probably because I dumped the freeware project it was meant for).

Everything from head to toe needed work. I think the legs were the worst part of it. They gave me hell. His rear end was so small, he didn’t appear to have one at all!

Even though I could of left the nose bridge alone, I changed it to something more cute. I just need a couple of more days on this one (maybe another work day) and it’ll be ready to transform into something later. Unfortunately I’ll be busy for the next week or so and won’t get back to my project until next month.

I think it was roughed up so because of the fact it was not intended to be used for 3D games, nor was it a main character and was for a freeware application (which I don’t take a lot of time on). I can tell by the way I had the angles more suitable for SubD. What I’m going to need to do now is get it as smooth looking as possible for a low polygon model. You don’t want a lot of sharp angles; that will make a character look really “blocky” in-game.

Never use a Program like Make Human for a model! Those models have way too many polygons in them and they’re modeled more for CGI purposes, more so than gaming ones. I’ve seen others attempt to use those pre-made characters and their fps dropped to nothing! Besides, it’s not really your own work and two, the characters will have no real persona. Characters that look distinct tend to look better. I haven’t seen a character yet that looks like Kratos and that’s because Kratos was a distinct concept.

Although I feel Dante (Dante’s Inferno) is a bad “azz.” Way more “kewl” than Kratos!

Two Minute Texture Creation

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Really are a lot of neat programs out there to use now for this kind of stuff. Although this texture is nothing I could use, being able to create that kind of detail within a texture so quickly is one of the ways I save time.

It’s not a random generated texture either. That texture will also repeat with perfection (seemless tiling). I kind of kept all the good programs over the years and weeded out the bad ones. My collection is nice.

The textures I create for my current project are made from scratch (of course) and usualy take up more of my time. It’s because my game’s graphics are textured to look more real world, so I have to find the right blend for the game world.

You see realistic graphics all the time, but none of them truly looks like you’re looking through a window and into another part of the world. This is usually because textures are enhanced in color, going beyound the nature color and tone of real life elements.

That’s what I don’t want to do with this game. Instead, I want a player to see an ancient Egypt that looks life like enough to believe it’s real; versus looking realistic, but feeling unrealistic, which is what you get a lot now with commercial titles.

Every now and then I’ll play a good game that has textures based on real life color and tone and those games are usually more stunning and believable.

So far so good, my texturing is solid. The game is still too early stage though, as far as getting an overall feel for Egypt. Too much that makes Egypt, Egypt, is still missing from the graphics.

All in good time…all in good time.

Good luck for your quest for hyperrealism

In some games they change dynamically contrast and colors to put special emphasis on specific elements or convey emotions. They did this in Left for dead, there was a nice making-of of these subtles details on their blog.

I’d say that the last ten or fifteen games that I have played that were set in Egypt looked really fake. It’s nice to see someone that is trying to capture Egypt and bring it to my house.

if you replace the teeth , and get some shoes on you character the resulting mesh is below 10k verts. totaly acceptable for o main character. and even if you need low-poly models, you can still use the high-detailed as 3d-sketch. so there is absolutely nothing wrong with using makehuman.

As long as you’re not doing anything serious anyway. As I stated already…original concept characters have persona. Original as in starting from an original sketch. I can always tell a make human character when I see one… Because they all look the same, no matter how modified. No persona.

Regards

PS, that undeveloped character of mine is now looking like a Main Character (and full of persona). It’s a shame it won’t get it’s own lead role, but I’ll put him to good use…that’s for sure.

I don’t know if this is still true, but a year ago or so, if you used MakeHuman, you could export several meshes to blender (one full poly, and 2 low poly “proxies”). Those meshes provide very good base for further modeling. And also, they are good when it comes to animations, very nice topology.

I believe that is still true, or at least it was 3-5 months ago, which was the last time I used Makehuman.

Yaaayyy!!

Just pasted my “Bud Test.”

It’s a good habit to show your work to one or two people you can really trust. People who you know will not just “shoot you down”, but will give you honest truth.

I showed that old unfinished modeled that I rebuilt to my two “buds” and they gave it the green light (like that’s a real surprise. Art is my first nature anyway).

Really… The only thing that can slow me down is if I run into a “Lack of Panda API” problem. I hope I don’t. With Art in the bag and Programming in the bag…

The sky’s the limit for me.

But if I run into that “Lack of Panda API” problem, I’m hoping I can count on some of you “Panda Elders” to “share the wealth.”

Some of you are just brewing over with Panda API knowledge and I want that knowledge!!!

Question:
Will anyone of you “Panda Elders” be willing to write out (organized) all the Panda API knowledge you have for a pay check sent your way?

Cheers!

What if the honest truth is “it sucks, start from scratch”? Do you think everyone telling you that is just being negative and wants to “shoot you down” for their own satisfaction? That’s what it sounded like…

It’s also a good habit to show your work to a few people who will judge it for what it is, not for what they would like it to be. Such that are competent in the field in question and aren’t bound by friendship telling them not to hurt your feelings.

Well, unless your target audience is called “My Buds and Family”.

I personally wouldn’t ever tell anyone that their work “sucks”, even if it did in my opinion. How can you expect someone to listen to your actual criticism when you are starting off being so harsh by telling them all they have worked so hard on till now “sucks”?