Ice Posted January 14, 2016 Report Share Posted January 14, 2016 (edited) Hi everyone, Recently I've been learning how to model for the W3D engine and I just thought I'd show some of the projects I'm working on. If anyone has feedback/suggestions regarding methods or other related subjects, that is always appreciated. While I currently only have a basic knowledge of modelling, I want to expand my skills into many different aspects of modelling, including buildings, maps, people, and other complex objects. With that said, I'll start with a (very) early WIP of some city buildings I'm working on: These are intended to be used in a map which I plan to make in the near future, but I'm also using these as a learning experience to improve my skills and methods, so any feedback will be greatly appreciated! Edited January 14, 2016 by Ice 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mojoman Posted January 14, 2016 Report Share Posted January 14, 2016 I know absolutely nothing about modelling, other than modelling my rock hard 6-pack. Seriously though, I hope you keep going with this Ice, it's great to see someone improving their skills for the community. P.S.- Make sure the buildings are canonical to the CnC lore 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danpaul88 Posted January 14, 2016 Report Share Posted January 14, 2016 I'm not much of a modeller myself, but I often found that one of the hardest parts is adding detail, imperfections and "clutter" to the model to make it more realistic... this is often where my imagination let me down! You'll also have to figure out which details need modelling in and which could be added with texturing etc. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squid Empire Posted January 14, 2016 Report Share Posted January 14, 2016 Looking nice, I like the overhangs on the roofs. Danpaul's right about adding details and deciding what to texture and what to model. Personally I base that decision on the scale of the detail, if it's a downpipe say I'd model it, but a small drain or maybe a keyhole would be textured. That also depends on how good of a texturer you are and how much time you want to spend on it. If you're better at modelling it can be faster and more convincing to simply model every detail; but that's only an option if you're making something for art's sake and have no complexity constraints. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OWA Posted January 14, 2016 Report Share Posted January 14, 2016 Looks fairly solid, but it would be interesting to see what the wireframe looks like. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice Posted January 14, 2016 Author Report Share Posted January 14, 2016 (edited) Here are some initial shots of the wireframes. Each building is currently divided into 3 objects: Exterior, interior, and roof. This is early WIP so there are still a lot of n-gons and other stuff to sort out. One of my main learning goals is being able to model buildings efficiently, in the sense of poly usage and minimizing waste/redundancy, as well as being easy to work with and modify as needed. Edited January 14, 2016 by Ice 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice Posted January 17, 2016 Author Report Share Posted January 17, 2016 (edited) Took a short break from the buildings today and made an old-fashioned traffic light prop: EDIT: More detailed version: Edited January 17, 2016 by Ice 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raap Posted January 17, 2016 Report Share Posted January 17, 2016 (edited) Here are some initial shots of the wireframes. Each building is currently divided into 3 objects: Exterior, interior, and roof. This is early WIP so there are still a lot of n-gons and other stuff to sort out. One of my main learning goals is being able to model buildings efficiently, in the sense of poly usage and minimizing waste/redundancy, as well as being easy to work with and modify as needed. Please take my post with a grain of salt given how out of touch I am, but looking at your wire frame my immediate concern is with W3D lighting engine, and particularly the process of vertex solving in Level Edit. It actually often made sense back in my time on the team to ADD extra faces in areas that lacked them. I personally did this process manually in order to 'draw' where W3D would render light sources and such. Looking at your windows, it will likely result in sharp shadow edges and light 'stretching out' unrealistically across your model. Just something to consider. Good models besides that. I personally always though the biggest challenge came from texturing your 3D work - Especially when you got this picture in your mind that requires new textures for everything! Edited January 17, 2016 by Raap 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeneralCamo Posted January 17, 2016 Report Share Posted January 17, 2016 That is indeed still a concern. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raap Posted January 17, 2016 Report Share Posted January 17, 2016 That is indeed still a concern. Coincidentally, discussing this very subject with you was one of the last things I happened to be doing while on the BHP team, according to my personal message logs on their website. I also got reminded of why I left the team in great detail, but that's another story. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice Posted January 17, 2016 Author Report Share Posted January 17, 2016 (edited) Thanks for the heads-up. Do you have any suggestions for how I should set up the faces on the buildings? Considering these are specifically for W3D projects. Also I rounded out the surface of the lights a bit. I think I can consider this model finished. Now I just need to unwrap and texture it. Edited January 17, 2016 by Ice 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raap Posted January 17, 2016 Report Share Posted January 17, 2016 (edited) Thanks for the heads-up. Do you have any suggestions for how I should set up the faces on the buildings? Considering these are specifically for W3D projects. Also I rounded out the surface of the lights a bit. I think I can consider this model finished. Now I just need to unwrap and texture it. You'll have to experiment as the exact answer depends on the object's usage in your map(s) and there light sources originate. A general rule I used to apply to everything was to always draw edges in such a manner that it connects every face, this is to prevent shadow issues. A crude method of doing this is to manually draw the edges using 3DS vertices snapping... Exact wording might differ in the tools since I've not used it in 4+ years. And another thing I did was that rarely a face/polygon would be larger than about three or so meters, in order to minimize the stretching. In a really small map you can get away with simply raising the overal polygon count in your models, but in most practical cases you have to strike a realistic balance for performance reasons. The middle ground here is to make normal terrain relatively safe on the polygon count, but areas which you know are in close proximity to a light source you raise the polygon count at in a round or spherical shape in order to effectively 'draw' the light on that geometry as smooth as you can. I hope this post made sense. Edited January 17, 2016 by Raap 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice Posted March 4, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 4, 2016 (edited) Just showing a couple other things I've been working on lately; A WIP collection of old-fashioned stop signs with the traffic light from before (not quite to scale), and a Russian-style rural water tower: Edited March 4, 2016 by Ice 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice Posted March 6, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2016 (edited) The bare-metal parts of the signs now have actual textures, instead of blank blue test fill-ins Edited March 6, 2016 by Ice 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice Posted March 10, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 10, 2016 Added a few minor details to the traffic light model. Now it's officially done and ready for unwrapping. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerad2142 Posted March 17, 2016 Report Share Posted March 17, 2016 Any difference between a halt and a stop sign (we don't have halt signs around here, honestly curious if there is a difference)? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice Posted March 17, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2016 Any difference between a halt and a stop sign (we don't have halt signs around here, honestly curious if there is a difference)? They're just various old-fashioned stop signs from different countries. From left to right: America, England, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Finland 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonsense715 Posted March 17, 2016 Report Share Posted March 17, 2016 Any difference between a halt and a stop sign (we don't have halt signs around here, honestly curious if there is a difference)?Halt means stop in german. Those are basicly all stop signs. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerad2142 Posted March 19, 2016 Report Share Posted March 19, 2016 Any difference between a halt and a stop sign (we don't have halt signs around here, honestly curious if there is a difference)? They're just various old-fashioned stop signs from different countries. From left to right: America, England, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Finland Don't know why I just fixated on the Halt sign, if I'd have looked at them all I'd have gone "DERP, all stop signs" lol 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raap Posted March 23, 2016 Report Share Posted March 23, 2016 Don't know why I just fixated on the Halt sign Because it told you to stop, drop everything you were doing, and pay attention to it. And you, being the good citizen you are, did exactly what the sign asked from you. Working as intended. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ice Posted March 24, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2016 (edited) Was away all last week for an army course. Got the traffic light unwrapped yesterday and have applied test textures to make sure everything is arranged correctly (i.e. the faces aren't flipped or something): Edited March 24, 2016 by Ice 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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