Chunkbot

[ptoing]

I have to agree with Helm about the noise bit. In my last company we worked on a DS title (still being worked on) and our 3dguys had to test several model and texture sizes to get it right. Your model at is definalty too noisey. I made a simple scaledown with the canvassize being res of one DS screen and the robot as big as I would guess it should be on screen during gameplay.



On the DS you would have some arbitrary antialiasing but you can not affect that in any way, and it would not look much better, depending on the backdrop you contrast it with it might be even worse. Esp. the topsection where the head is becomes noisefest and i think you would get lots or "frying" pixels where the fine linedetail is. Detail like this would work on higher res stuff, but not on a small screen like the DS.

About the lighting approach I would go for a more Dodonpachi kinda thing. Atm you have lightrims on top AND bottom in most cases, ddp only has them on the top and on the sides and darker lines on the bottom which in that case actually helps to make stuff look more volumetric and i guess it might help here as well.

[AdamAtomic]

Cool thanks for the additional info guys!  If I have time later this week I will try doing more "production" type renders - like at game res, in different instances that I would like to be used in the game.  During normal map play the bot would probably be about that big, though maybe slightly larger since it will be shown from a more top down rather than side-on view.  However during the combat sequences the bots would be much larger so the detail would help some there.  Anyone know if you can build your own mipmaps for the DS?  That might be a good way to solve both problems.  Either that or just have low and high res sheets that can be swapped out - the low ones could have larger, blockier chunks of color and less specular noise?

I will also try dumping a couple videos if I can get some simple motion going; motion SHOULD affect the appearance of unreadable noise, but I'm curious to see if it will just make it blink and have other weird artifacts, or if the details will read a little better because the brain+eyes will kind of build it together itself?

The fact that the head pretty much disappears entirely is a little bit concerning, I'll have to do some thinking about that...

Thanks again for all the detailed feedback, that is exactly why I posted this here.  Everywhere else everybody just says "whooaaze it r teh low poly awesum!!!"  Not surprisingly that does very little to improve my work

One thing I am noticing now is that a lot of the textures may be actually TOO high resolution, which I gotta say I was not expecting to run into on this.  I'm definitely liking this idea of having a low res and a high res version of the textures that can be swapped out depending on the game mode...

[ndchristie]

looks fine to me unless the individual details are absolutely necessary.  i would assume that the details would only really be seen on a equipment/status menu, and though that small one doesnt really show individual pieces, does it really need to?  silhouette remains strong.  i dont really see an issue with it

[sevenfingers]

Nice stuff!

Listen to what Ptoing is saying; and have a look at Dodonpachi as he says.. even if you don't like the style it's an awesome game

Anyways, I did some DS stuff recently, and everything that doesn't have an extremely strong sihouette, and appropriate palette (I did a rather shitty job with that, lol) just gets lost. The arbitrary AA Ptoing is talking about is also annoying as hell, at times it helps the model, but it might as well make it worse.

I think the general level of detail is about right, but take the bottom edge highlights away. It just doesn't work, and flattens the nice volumes you have.
Since you'd be lacking realtime lighting, I'd also considering popping in some more overall lighting in there. Just hit something from the top.
If you use a general lighting combined with the nice edge-highlighting you've got going, it should help separate the different volumes you have.

[ptoing]

looks fine to me unless the individual details are absolutely necessary.  i would assume that the details would only really be seen on a equipment/status menu, and though that small one doesnt really show individual pieces, does it really need to?  silhouette remains strong.  i dont really see an issue with it

you have to take movement into consideration. once it would be moved by a 3d engine you would get "frying" pixels where there is too much detail in the texture. I seen it when working on DS stuff and it is not nice at all. Less detailed texture is better in that case.

Also made 2 colour edit's because I was bored.

Just some hue and contrast fudging


And one using the c64 palette because I am silly like that. Does not even use all 16 colours.

[AdamAtomic]

Cool!  Dodonpachi slipped completely under my radar, and I'm at least a LITTLE bit of a shooter geek...I just pulled down a bajillion screenshots to study later.  At first glance I think dodonpachi is a little bit clean + busy (and 80s) for my taste, but they did a great job breaking up their planes.  I tried that on some parts of my bot (i.e. a lot of the tops or front are a full shade lighter) but I don't think its quite working, since apparently it did not get noticed!  It stands out the most on the shoulders and thighs right now.  I kind of backed off it on some of the other surfaces (like the arms) since they will probably be in a lot of different positions in game, as opposed to something like the torso.

Later this week I'm going to save off this version of the textures and try a little more subdued version, with fewer shines and more plane lighting.  Thanks again for the opinions and observations!

Ooops - Ptoing thanks for the edits   I started with a color set a lot like your first edit but it ended up being a little bit McDonald's-y for my taste.  The second edit is VERY interesting...ultimately I don't think it would work, its important that the reds and yellows have separate ramps for the customization stuff to work properly.  The amount of purple you've gotten away with is really inspiring though!

Not sure if you guys have THAT strong an opinion but should I move on to a second bot and put this knowledge to use on that or should I definitely revisit the chunkbot?

[Helm]

I keep wanting to edit this, but I have no way to. I want to edit the texture and have the result show up on the bot, but that's impossible and it's infuriating me. I will have to learn wings 3d for this. Curse you.

Definately move on to the next bot.

[AdamAtomic]

haha - wings3d is nice, but for texturing/previewing i use blender, wings can't do unfiltered/unlit images internally.  but blender is easily the hardest app i have ever tried to learn; its interface was designed to kill baby angels.  What wings lacks in rendering/animation though it makes up for in being incredibly fast and easy to use, i've used it on a number of pro contracts now and it has saved me a lot of time (and thus money)!

EDIT - If I have time later this week I will put together a little Blender SDK and instruction manual for this model.  It would include the model file, the .png textures, and some little instructions for how to refresh individual textures without reloading the model.  Would that be of interest to anyone?

[Feron]

@helm - why not edit the textures and send it to adam and he can try 'em out.

[Helm]

Yes it would be of interest to me.

Feron: because then a) I'd inconvinience Adam b) have to predict which part of the texture edits which part of the wrapped model c) learn nothing myself.