Low-Poly House

#1 Why are you making a low poly house as a mesh? you know it would probably be much easier, and better if you built a house out of a brushes, unless it going to have more then basic shapes.

#2 The last thing you said is the reason. The inside is gonna have some strange architecture if I ever finish it. IT will be kinda like one of those weird possesed house from those cheesy 80's horror movies :D.

-Okashira

PS : It is not for any specific project, just so ya know.

#3 You could actually achieve a surprising amount of weird shapes on the inside without having to use meshes... While you cannot have concave hulls in DIFs, you can have multiple bits that together act concave, achieving the same results.

DIFs are going to be much faster for a lot of stuff in the TGE.

#4 I think it would be really cool if you animated it, the top floor being like blinking eyes and maybe slightly rotating or bending to follow a person walking by. That could only be done with a DTS, correct? You're off to a great start getting that tall and foreboding horror building look. What modeling program are you using? (My turn to ask!) My only critique so far would be to harden a couple edges around the windows (if you're using Maya) so the light hits it a little differently.

#5 @Cliff
Read Sarah's post to see the type of stuff I want to do that DIFs can't.

@Sarah
Thanks for the comments. I like the blinking eyes idea. Maybe I will lean towards a cartoony, cheesy horror movie look? And I am using Blender. Once I got used to the interface, I got hooked. Though I am planning on using Milkshape 3D for the texturing, simply because I like it's texturing system.

Thanks,
Okashira

#6 Yeah, the eye thing would definitely require DTS... though you could always make the eyes DTS and the main building DIF...

What it looks like to me, though I do not know what modeller is being used, is an object in 3D Studio Max that has had Optimize added to its modifier stack and then had the options turned up too high in an effort to reduce polys.

#7 @Cliff
Nope, it is made in Blender through hand-done vertex placement.

Anways, I was messing around on where to put the eyes and figured this would look best:

Also, what do you think of the texture of the eyes? I found it on my computer, but is just a placeholder because I don't know about the copyrights for it. If you want it for anything that isn't comercial, here ya go:
But as I said I don't know the copyrights, so use at your own risk :)!

-Okashira

#8 Great house!

Now all you need is some arms and legs, and of course, a bit of personality.
Then you could use him as the main character for a new videogame franchise... for example, "Lowpoly the Magical House".

As for signature moves, well, a good one would be.... Tornado Stomp!

On a more serious note, your shading seems a bit sketchy - try playing around with the "Set Smooth" and "Set Solid" options, as well as "Recalculate Normals" (in the menu that pops up when you press 'W'). Happy blending, and keep practicing!

#9 James - Now I have the tornado theme from Wizard of Oz running through my head.

#10 @James
Thanks! I am planing on adding some arms with big stylised claws, like something a Treant of LOTR might have and then some legs similar to that. Then I'm gonna finish it up with some cartoonish texturing.

@Cliff
lol

Well, now I just need TGE :).

-Okashira

#11 Out of curiousity, how many polys are you up to with the eyes in place?

Oh, also... I think you need to take a look at the texture application for the eyes, because the black part of the pupils doesn't appear to be showing but if seems to exist in the texture you linked above, so I'm thinking the texture is misapplied.

#12 Unfortunantly, here are the statistics:

House - 85 Triangles
Each eye - 320 Triangles
Both eyes together - 640 Triangles
All in all - 725 Triangles

I tried making the eyes lower-poly but it didn't look right. I am going to try and make the arms and legs lower, since the market my game is aiming at is casual gaming.

And thanks for letting me know about the texture, I will fix that right away.

Thanks,
Okashira

#13 What's your target for poly size? In my opinion, though your mileage may vary, you've still got some wiggle room left to add in the arms and legs and still keep your poly count low enough to be able to run on most casual machines.

That said, the eyes are just clipped spheres, right? I'd think you should be able to reduce that a LOT and still have it look good.

I'd say you should be able to get the eyes down to a fraction of what they are now. When you clipped them, did you remove the back-polys before you placed them in your object?

#14 The spheres are full spheres for one reason : The complicated eye animations that I will be doing. They acts will do things like spin 360 degrees, rotate up and down, and a bunch of other stuff.

For a casual game, what do you think the suggested polycount would be for a monster model?

Thanks,
Okashira

#15 For a casual game, I'd think 1000-1500 should be a decent target, depending on whether the monster is one that the player will be fighting from a distance or up close.

Regarding animating the eyes, I have an idea... instead of animating the model, reduce the polys on your model and animate your texture.

#16 Animating the texture my be more trouble then it is worth. I'll look into it though.