Candle Model

[Zaxim]

I\'m a very amaturish 3D artist.  I\'ve been using 3ds max less than a year.  And I know some people become expert amazing geniuses in that amount of time, I am not very talented in the art department.

Anyway, I\'ve never thought about limiting the number of polygons for games and such.  Due to my experience with \"unlimited\" smoothing (Smoothing can really erase crummy vertices,) I though I would try my hand at low poly editing.

So I made a candle stick holder with candles.  And If I do say so myself, it sucks.  First of all it\'s REALLY hard to stay withen the 200 poly threshold.  But I managed, leaving me with a horrendusly blocky object.  I also thought that I would be able to texture it well using my favorite texturing program, ZBrush.  Turns out that having a texture smaller than 256 x 256 looks like crap.  I don\'t think a useless candle shoudl use such large image.

In the end I basically made a multi-sub texture.  So prepare to be blown away! By FLAT COLORS!

Let\'s see if Tripod lets me do remote linking.
http://zaxim.tripod.com/low_poly_candle.JPG

edit: I forgot to mention the poly count is 174 according to the 3dsmax poly counter


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You have to copy and paste the URL into your address bar.

I have some questions also.  I know how to weld vertices in the max, but say for example there are three vertices in a row, can you remove the center one only?

Also does anyone know what target weld does?

I realize these are questions that could easily be anwered by tutorials and 3ds max sites, which I will go to, but I was just wondering if anyone knew.

Last question and this is in regards to CS.  In ZBrush I can use something called GUVs, which I find to be the best UV coordinates.  Does CS support them? Or do they have to be normal UV tiles?

Also, I haven\'t seen any links to viewmesh, or whatever that CS previewer thing was called.

Man I have a lot of alsos in this post.



Posts merged- Moogie

[ArcaneFalcon]

Don\'t worry about being a slow learner Zaxim.  So long as you keep on keepin\' on you\'re bound to become awesome.

I counted the polys in that model and there should only be 102.  Can we see a wireframe?  I would recommend making everything (the holder and candles) with 6 sides instead of 4.  This would bring your poly count to ~160.  The important thing, though, is that you get up a wireframe (check \"force wireframe\" in the 2nd tab in the render control window) so we can figure out where these extra polys are.

The texture would probably end up being shrunk to 128 if it were to be used, but you should make it in 256 methinks.

Weld vertices takes all the vertices you have selected and mathematically calculates a center and uses that as the new vertex.  Target weld enables you to select 1 vertice and drag on top of another.  That will merge both verts, but it will keep the location of the 2nd.  I really only use this in the uv editor when weld selected doesn\'t work (which happens).  This probably also answers your 3 verts in a row question.

ZBrush doesn\'t have an exporter for CS.  Unless you can export your model to a standard 3d format with a standard uv then I don\'t think you can use it.  I\'m not really familiar with zbrush so I\'m not sure what its capabilities are in that area.

I think the CS viewer you\'re referring to is called walktest.  I think it comes with CS, and if not you can get it off their sourceforge page.  I find it kind of boring to play around with that stuff so I\'m probably not the best person to give you a straight answer.

Overall not bad.  Keep at it.

Edit: Also, remember to use the edit button instead of double posting.  Some people don\'t like that.

:emerald:

[Zaxim]

Well, it appears I forgot to save the file.  But good riddance to bad rubbish.

I\'ll try a new candle, and make it better, with lower polys too! Just watch me!
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I made a new candle.  Faces are at 106, which is very strange.  I started with 54, but when I exported it I checked triangles, because I read somewhere that CS needs triangle faces, is that true?

Anyway, the wireframes and the render can be seen here.  

http://zaxim.tripod.com/wirecandle1.jpg

http://zaxim.tripod.com/wircandle2.jpg

http://zaxim.tripod.com/cande_low_poly2.jpg

Believe it or not, (probably due to the quality you would believe it,) the texture is 64 x 64.

[Zaxim]

EDIT: Some mod please delete this.

[ArcaneFalcon]

Yes, you are committing a faux pa by posting another reply.  If you are the last post in a thread you should edit it.

This model is better, but it\'s pretty dirty.  Your base has 8 sides, but you only use 4 of them.  Pull those verts to make it a circle rather than a square.

You have the same problem with the verticle parts of your arms.  You have 6 sides there, but you are really only utilizing 4 of them.  Make them more hexagonal and less square.

You also have an orientation problem on one of your polys there in your 3rd picture.  Remember, for a square poly there are 2 ways to arrange triangles to make it:
|\\| and |/|.  If you are twisting a poly then one orientation will bulge out, and the other will cave in.  On the left arm in the 3rd picture you see that the front poly there is caved in.  You need to delete that poly and remake it so that it bulges out (like a proper circle).  Demarthl had the same problem on the \"big sword\".  Taking a look at my replies in that thread might help.

It looks like you applied the texture per face.  Not a bad way to make a 64 texture look better, but you\'re going to need to put much more effort into textures in the future.

Keep on keepin\' on!

Edit: spelling

:emerald: