Some more benchmarks

I found some more benchmarks to work from. This time it's games characters and their level of detail. I'm only using two for this, one is age of empire 3 and the other if UFO afterlight.

This shot is from UFO Afterlight and I am using this as a benchmark for knowing what I would like to do BETTER than. I Do'nt like the level of detial on this character at all. I realise that it is emant ot be colourful and cartoony (which I don't think fits the type of genre at all - but that's a different story) but the quality, in my opinion is just terrible. For a fairly modern game it is like stepping into the past.. which is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I am trying to do. Therefore, this benchmark will come in handy for knowing what to do better than.



This picture is from Age of Empires 3 and I love it! Although it doesn't really seem it, the poly count (I think) is actually pretty low. The thing about it that gives it it's great aesthetics is of course its texturing (something not focused much in UFO Afterlight). Using this as a benchmark for my low poly characters, I think, is perfect and is exactly what I will try to match or possibly do better than. (r at least try :P)

Starting modelling.

I've started modelling. I drew out the front of one of the 'anthropod' (one of the aliens chosen to remake) and have started modelling it. I'm starting on the low res and am only working from quarter of the model at the moment but I have duplicated it to show what the entire thing 'roughly' look like at the moment..

LOW RES

..and this is the model so far



This is what I've been working from. It isn't much but I think it is enough to create a model from. The only problems or fears from modelling this character is that its legs are short and the arms are exceptionally long. Also, shoulders are barely visible. Though this is obviously intentional and is what makes the character look unique, it does make me wonder if it will look odd in Maya. Hopefully this will not be the case.



This is the drawing used as a reference to work from in Maya. I know it isn't perfect but it's good for a start. Ideally a side view would be used but I'm choosing not to use one as there isn't too much to show what the side looks like anyway. So, for now at least, I will be making it from scratch.

Benchmarks!

For this brief I need a set of benchmarks to know how to work and what to aim for. For this I have looked at polycounts, UV texture sizes and the whole game character aesthetics in general.

So far, I found that the high res character model should be a maximum of around 12,000 polygons. For the low res character model it should be around 2000 poly. I based these from the website here . Stating these polycounts..

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Characters
As we are using attachments we have to split the triangle numbers in the separate parts:
* Heads 3k triangles
* Body 5k triangles
* Attachments 1 k triangles
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(making a character being around 12,000 poly)

It is a Q&A with a group of people creating a mod for the game Crysis. I wanted to find the polycounts for the characters in crysis as this is a brand new game and has the most modern of graphic quality. I couldn't find it, but I think the polycounts I got from that website are good estimations.

As for texture sizes I used this from the same website..

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Character head: 512 x 512 to 1024 x 1024; Character body: 1024 x 1024; Attachments: 1024 x 1024.
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Of course I will probably not be making my model in the same fashion (sepearate head/arms etc) but it's still good to use as a baseline.

This forum post also shows that in the Unreal engine it changes the LOD (level of detail) in the game. For example a character will change texture sizes when the character is far away, compared to when it is up close. This means that it may be a good idea to make a few seperate different textures for the characters.

In other words, i'll have to make texture files for the characters starting from 256x256 resoloution up to the possible maximum of 1024x1024.