Unnamed RPG/Dungeon Crawler 3D Art

[MemoNick]

I'm a freeware game developer, and I've just started working on this small project. This will be a dungeon crawler with a lot of influence from the RPG genre. I only have some engines ready, and have only started working on the 3D art. Any critique is appreciated. One of my aims is to create a nice-looking game while using the least possible resources. You can visit my site (http://nyphoon.tk/) or our Facebook Page (http://facebook.com/NyphoonGames) for more information.

(If this post shouldn't be here, please re/move it)

All the dungeons will be procedurally generated. That means that once you enter the dungeon, the paths will be generated and the models will be loaded.

This is the first thing I did. The wall only has 6 vertices - one in each corner, and two in the middle of the of the longer part. In theory, I could have done without these, but they make collisions much better.

The following screenshots shows two walls side-by-side. They both have the same material - a diffuse map and a noise map. The maps are 512 x 512 pixels. Any critique is greatly appreciated.

Without Normal Map:
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/NicholasMamo/RPG/Wall3.jpg

With Normal Map:
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/NicholasMamo/RPG/Wall1.jpg

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/NicholasMamo/RPG/Wall2.jpg

In case I want it to look wet:
http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/NicholasMamo/RPG/Wall4.jpg

[setschaos]

Be very detailed with the texture. If you want the wall to look great and not just good, play with subtle variations with the bricks. Since its a 'dungeon crawler' make it look like its been there a while. Scuff marks, variations in the color, some slight cracks, evidence of past paint jobs, etc. Really sell the texture and the player will love it all the more.

[MemoNick]

Will certainly take a look at your suggestions. Maybe one foul I've done so far is the lack of reference material. Will try to improve on that. I'll also be using parallax mapping to make the stone look more like stone. So, for example, cracks would look more like cracks.

Thanks :)

[MemoNick]

Continued working on the wall. Would appreciate your input. Parallax Mapping (Displacement) makes walls look much better.

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/NicholasMamo/RPG/Wall10.jpg

[setschaos]

Good progress. Make the cracks more subtle, add another subtle layer of bump under your main bump (this will break up the patterns you put in and make it look more irregular, perfect for old dungeons) darken the bottom of the wall, light doesn't get there as easily, add some water stains coming from the ceiling and places where bricks are missing, add some mold on the bottom and you have my paint over.

It's certainly not perfect by any means, but this is what I was suggesting.

Keep up the good work!

[MemoNick]

Great suggestions. Will implement them.

[MemoNick]

I've continued working on the wall, and I'm quite pleased with the result:

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/NicholasMamo/RPG/Wall12.jpg

@setschaos, regarding light: "light doesn't get there as easily" - the lights will be torches, and therefore that will be taken care of automatically.

[setschaos]

Ok, that's fine, just keep in mind that lights and reactive textures take up a lot more memory than static textures. It's often a better use of RAM for the user if you take something like a torch, place it where you want it and bake the light into the static texture.

But if that's something you have budgeted for and have it set in your mind, it's often the most appealing option aesthetically.

Looking forward to more progress.

[MemoNick]

It does take up space, unfortunately. However, the dungeons will be procedurally generated and thus it would be simpler to do this. On the other hand, I have a set of rules I made up myself to free up RAM. One of the most important things is:

- Rooms will only be attached to the scene when you enter in them, and removed from the scene once you exit. jME (the engine) renders everything in front of the camera even if it is hidden from view. Thus, this will remove a lot of unneeded things.

Also, one wall only has two quads. Parallax mapping will only be used for walls to make them as realistic as possible.

[MemoNick]

After a lot of time working, I've finally finished texturing walls - and I'm quite pleased with the result. That is, considering the performance I get. In fact, as you can see from the new screenshot, the Frame Rate is over 2000 with about 200 walls being displayed! Tomorrow, I will work on the floor, which should take less time to complete.

http://i295.photobucket.com/albums/mm153/NicholasMamo/RPG/Wall14.jpg

[setschaos]

Looks great!

[MemoNick]

I created the first model - the lectern.

Lectern Wireframe Render:
http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/Nyphoon/LecternWireFrameRender.png

Lectern Beauty Render (Fire Light Effect):
http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u438/Nyphoon/LecternFireBeautyRender.png

Modeling Time: ~7 hrs
Texturing Time: ~3 hrs

Tris: 414

[Perversonality]

Rendered wireframes make it really hard to see the poly flow but it does look as if you have a lot of unnecessary triangles in there as it could easily be done in less than 100 triangles fully modelled, or in 68 triangles with a little bit of two-sided texture cheating on the front cloth as follows

- 10 triangles for the base (no face on the bottom)
- 8 for each of the legs (no top or bottom faces)
- 12 triangles for the top
- 10 triangles each for boxes on top of the top
- 2 triangles for the front cloth using a double-sided texture

10+8+8+8+12+10+10+2 = 68 triangles

The paper on top of the lectern would be texture mapped

If your engine needs everything to be solid then you would add 14 triangles to close off the base and legs, plus another 10 for the front cloth to turn it back into a box, so 92 triangles in total

And just to finish things off, as you would have a collection of meshes making up a single object you would also need a bounding box for your collision detection :)

[MemoNick]

The cloth alone has a lot of triangles since it has a cloth modifier to make it more realistic.

Also, what do you mean by two-sided texture cheating?

Regarding your last sentence: "And just to finish things off, as you would have a collection of meshes making up a single object you would also need a bounding box for your collision detection"

The bounding box would be done in the Game Engine itself, no?

Edit: I brought it down to 266 traingles, 133 polygons, but I can't see much more I can reduce.

Were you talking about triangles or polygons? I'm using quads to model, and I can't see how I can reduce the model to 34 polygons :O

[Perversonality]

If the cloth is going to deform then keeping a higher poly count is fine

I was talking about triangles the whole way through as it's a more accurate count than polygons and any number of triangles can make up a polygon (1 for a triangle, 2 for a quad and so on)

Two-sided textures means that you have, for example, a face made up of two triangles and a texture applied to it which can be seen on both sides of the face, regardless of the fact that the normals would only normally point in one direction for a single-sided face

Yep, the bounding box would be done in the game engine so I didn't include it in the triangle counts :)

I'll knock up a quick model to show you how this could be made from 68 triangles :)

[Perversonality]

Ok, here we go...

The first one shows the model made out of separate objects, each of which is water-tight, except for the cloth piece which is a simple 2-triangle plane

The second one shows the model made out of the same objects but with any face that will not ever be visible having been removed

I'll create a one piece model next to see what count can be attained

[Perversonality]

This is a completely water-tight version of the base model as a single mesh which is 116 triangles, plus the two for the cloth. The final count for the cloth will depend on whether you will be animating/deforming it or not. Some of the edges are possibly a little poorly turned but it should give you the general idea of what's possible. Of course this will depend on your engine as to how well it will render :)

[MemoNick]

First of all thanks for the trouble you went through to help me. However, I can see a number of triangles. I was advised by the creators of the engine to use just quads and let the engine itself create the triangles due to some lighting issues.

I 'could' create the lectern using 8 different boxes, but then that would increase the number of objects in the game. And from experience, having more vertices slows down the fps less than having a lot of objects.

[Perversonality]

Fair enough :)

[MemoNick]

Thanks again for your help, and sorry if I didn't explain myself well in the first place...

[MemoNick]

I don't want to spam this page. I'm creating a model every day, so if you want to check out all the models I've finished, you can check out my Facebook Page (http://www.facebook.com/NyphoonGames). I'm trying to upload one every day.

Thanks.

[MemoNick]

Full Size Image: http://i49.tinypic.com/312hd3b.jpg

http://i49.tinypic.com/14kk12h.jpg

^A beauty render of the throne room - one of the rooms which will feature in the first dungeon of the game.

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