Week #6 - Tom's Bike - Low Poly

[Tom-3DT]

Hi All,

Didn't have to travel to far to photograph this one, and I hope we have a detailed set as possible for you guys.

Just the bike is required, not 'set' is necessary but you can put it on a flat plane for presentation if you want to cast shadows etc

The limits for this week are 1,000 tris and 512 texture sheet, so its going to be a real challenge with such tight limits and such details to cover, where are you going to spend those valuable polys? ;) - any textures are cool, normals, specs etc to make it look as near to the photo as possible! As this is how they will be judged

Here is the photo set (http://freetextures.3dtotal.com/index.php?iset=1509&pp=)

Please post your wire, clay, texture sheets and final render in this thread, wip and on topic chat is also fine here too, these challenges are supposed to be fun and we are not too strict on the rules. The only prizes are a gold, silver and bronze awards handed out each week. http://forums.3dtotal.com/picture.php?albumid=1291&pictureid=10526http://forums.3dtotal.com/picture.php?albumid=1291&pictureid=10525http://forums.3dtotal.com/picture.php?albumid=1291&pictureid=10524

Deadlines as always Midday GMT 1 week away, so this will be Thursday 22nd July

Also please note that one of the reasons for these challenges is to help grow our free resource libraries, so the model donations at some point in the future when our system is ready would make us very happy and give a new dimension to the free image library we are building up every week.

[Tom-3DT]

Maybe the final renders could be a bit of a montage too, showing some close up sections of your model, this will help us judge them.

Thanks

[Hairyburger]

Oh this will be a hard one i will finally get to present my stuff i always miss out on the challenge but not this time. Has anyone got any tips on how they might do their wheel's as iv never done low poly wheel's before. Iv seen low poly images were a cyliner is used and then a plane in front is that a good way to do this? and do i cutout the cylinder outer faces and texture the outer plan that was added?

Thx guys best of luck in advance.

[Ojah]

@ hairyburger: I used a 5 sided torus myself. Cylinder + planes will give you some problems with normal maps, shading and it will take up a lot of texturespace. If you're going for an unshaded look with diffuse only you might be able to shave a few polies that way.

Heres my model in progress, 950 tris at the moment. Made a tiling normalmap + ao as diffuse for the wheels, atm at 64x128.

[Tom-3DT]

that's a great start

[Hairyburger]

Wicked Ojah thanks for the tip your bike i cool, for the wheels here i used a pipe ant the collapsed the inner edges but also addes another edge to give it more roundness. Full mesh only 805 at monent few bits to add but 200 tri's im sure there is loads i can do with it :P


http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3968/scr42108974244971.jpg

[Hairyburger]

Well here is the bike before texturing just hit 997 tri's but i think i used the extra tri's to put in some extra detail's hope you like it so far now to start the texturing :P

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/2622/lpbike.jpg

[Tom-3DT]

great job so far, texturing sure is gonna be a challenge for this one! Maybe the tubes could be a little bit fatter? and slightly more of a curve on the top tube?

[timberwo7ves]

nice start guys :]

this'll be my first challenge, I'm doing it in max though and it's reached 500 already and noway near half complete :(

what are those planes splitting the wheels for? are they there for a technical reason?

[Ojah]

Thanks for the kind words!
Looks great hairy, like tom said the tubes may be a bit bigger but apart from that Im just curious to your texturejob.

@ timber, those planes are for the spokes, if you would model them all it would take up quite a lot of tri's, this way its only 4 (or 2 in hairyburgers case).

And heres my little update, made the tubes fatter (its a common thing i guess) and made normal maps for the saddle and the pedals. Also some slight optimizing, at 900 tris now, time to add detail again :)

[Ojah]

Another update, normal maps on almost everything except the tubes now. Also added some basic colours. 977 tris btw, so still some left to play with

[timberwo7ves]

thanks for the reply Ojah :)

bringin' up the rear.. :P

[Ojah]

Hey timber, heres some optimization suggestions, they might help you finish the bike in 1000 tri's.

First, try to turn the bars 45 degrees, that way they will look more round tube-like.
Second, dont create all the bars as 1 object, just use intersecting geometry and delete the ends.
And third, as shown at the handle picture, detaching the wider part and collapsing the ends to save triangles.

[timberwo7ves]

whoa thanks dude! for the bars are they four-sided or more? and when I intersect the geometry, do I not join them to one another at the end (or is this the opposite to the point of not doing it as one object?)

what's the benefit of detaching to element instead of detaching to a separate object, or is it a matter of preference?

I tried detaching and stuff, and it messed up (e.g. selecting multiple verts and translating them in X direction, and they all went in different directions :S) so I'm going to start again later.. even if I don't finish in time, it's all learning I guess; hopefully by the 10th challenge I'll be able to complete :D

[Ojah]

Glad it helped!

well, i made the bars 4 sided myself, more would cost too much i guess (personal preference though of course, if you have the tri's to spare, more-sided is always prettier).
The whole idea of detaching and intersecting is to not join them to save the geometry used to fuse them(element or separate object is a personal choice, in case of bars separate may be easier for unwrapping later)
When you moved the verts the coordinate system was problably set as local (top of the screen, next to the move/rotate/scale buttons, usually it says view)

Heres another update from me, still some normals to create and some geometry to add but getting there :)

[timberwo7ves]

argh! I just spent like 20-30 min on the pivot thing haha.. thanks :( Does it not matter if everything's not a quad, or would that only be useful if you were to apply smoothing?

Say you were to rig it later, would it be okay that it's made up of several objects?

Will you post your texture sheet later? It's well cool how you can make something that looks more detailed than it really is, I <3 modelling

[Ojah]

Only quads is not really a rule, its more of a guideline for objects that are smoothed or animated. Just remember; If it looks good, it is good.
Apart from that, having tri's in there can screw your smooth groups, but at this low poly its probably better to optimize as much as you can.

For your rigging question, in this case i would most certainly use several objects, just as few as possible (1 for the frame, 2 for the wheels + back cog, 3 for the pedals + front cog and 1 for the fork). I would animate the chain with its texture.
Link the back wheel to the frame, the front wheel to the fork and the fork to the frame etc.
Using bones for this would be overkill.

Ill post the textures when im done, which should be in a few hours and since Tom talked about model donations in the first post, i wouldnt mind posting the model too.

[timberwo7ves]

Nice one, man, I think I'll download it when you've posted and have a closer gander :)

[timberwo7ves]

I twisted the bars 45degrees, and I'm using more intersecting geometry; it's cut down on the polys loads thanks Ojah :)

[Ojah]

Nice! Good to see you're improving , makes me all warm and fuzzy :).

And also from me another update, had some problems that made me have to unwrap again and that screwed up my normal map, so its taking a bit longer then expected. Still need to create the spec map, paint some diffuse stuff and remove some tiny errors but im almost done :D. Exactly 1000 tris btw

[Ojah]

Done :)

[timberwo7ves]

haha 1k on the dot, very efficient :) good job dude, looks well cool :)

[Ojah]

Thanks!
Nice start, looks a lot better now, some of the bars seem a bit too thin, might want to use the push modifier on those.

Edited my previous post with a picture that uses the spec map instead of having it turned off and here are some closeups. Now im really done :)

[Tom-3DT]

That is cool!!

[timberwo7ves]

freakin' awesome dude! hopefully after a few more months practice, I'll be able to work as quickly and intuitively as you :)

this is as much as I'll be able to do by the deadline lol, I'll probably work on it after it too though :D thanks for the tips and help, I'll try the push modifier on the thinner bars :]

[jakeydoo]

Here my submission

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4072/bikefinished.jpg

I thought this was very challenging, but i think time got the better of me on this one,

[Ojah]

Cool, nice to see im not the only one finishing :). Model looks nice, i see a lot of details i had to skip on because of the poly limit (dice on the wheels, kickstand) but the renders are a bit dark.

[jakeydoo]

Yeah the renders were abit dark as didnt put any lights in and I didnt colour correct the textures. I really like your one as you seem to have got things spot on :D

[Tom-3DT]

Everyone did really well here considering what a tough subject it was and tight limits but in a way I think it added to the challenge.

Especially well done to the 2 finishers who we will award

1st Place - Ojah
2nd Place - jakeydoo

Please request you award icons - very deserved indeed.

Going to have a short break, Siggraph next week and I'm a bit frantic getting stuff ready for our trip out there and running the 3DTotal stand.

When Im back we will pick things up again :)

Well done again, and thanks for joining in

Tom

[Ojah]

Thanks Tom!

It was a fun ride :)

Ill post the model in the "obj store" thread in the game art section of the forum
http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=74088 so if anyone wants to play with it, be my guest.

[jakeydoo]

Thanks Tom. :)

Well done to Ojah.

[timberwo7ves]

Well done Ojah and Jakeydoo, great entries!

Good luck with Siggraph, guys :)

[ganymedegraphic]

*sob* i wish i could attend the los angeles siggraph

cursed australia

i'll be sure to check out the next poly comp too