Barrel

[mucsiattila]

thx!
only one thing I have to disagree: the curly thing is the texture of a single triangle with opacity map (marked with red), so i can have less faces to render. unfortunately this is not an efficent use of the texture place i have. this is why I mirrored or duplicated some of the polys, so they have the same uvs (marked with green) and texture.
is this good, or do I realy f***ed it?


all other things I agree

[The Prime]

I would make the curls using polys.

Though people are always going on about polycount, textures are what eats memory.

If it's a chain fence, recreating that in polys would be very expensive, so in that case you would use an alpha texture.

For this situation I would use polys. They will hold up better once the viewer starts to go around the model. Once that happens, planes become very obvious.

[MemoNick]

Thanks for the lesson Prime. Never thought about it

[Buzzy]

Here's another simple rule of thumb for performance when using alpha (does not consider memory):

Adding alpha to a model makes it draw twice. Therefore, if you can model holes (instead of using alpha) without doubling the total vert count, then do so. If modeling holes will more than double the vert count, you should use alpha instead.

For example. Lets say this lamp has 200 verts. By using alpha for the curly parts, it is actually drawing 400 verts because the computer has to draw it twice. If you model the curly bits and lose the alpha, it will only draw once. So, if you can model the curly bits and keep the vert count under 400, it will still perform better than if you used alpha.


However, memory considerations can change this. Adding alpha to a compressed image (like DDS or PVR) will always double its size in memory. And obviously, adding more verts to a model will increase its size in memory. You don't want complex models to have to draw twice, but you also may not be able to afford the memory cost of a lot of new verts. And conversely, you may not be concerned about a simple model being drawn twice, but if it has a hi-res texture, you may not be able to afford twice the texture memory.

[mucsiattila]

Hi guys!
I'm working on a .303 ammo box as the final piece as I mentioned before.
I'm using max 2009 and having problem with straightening edges and some more.
I have seen an additional floating tool box in a tutorial video some days ago, but the name of the tool/script wasnt written. So if anybody could help me finding a working stuff for this problem, I would be so glad.
Thx in advance.

[mucsiattila]

Hi!

Here is the last piece of the portfolio pack (for now). If there is nothing special I will take a little coffee break to get rested before I start the retouche of all.
C&C are welcome as always.



outgoing links:
beauty shot
maps and wire

[astroAJ]

could add a few more poly's or a normal map to the box because the metal looks like its part of the wood. U could also change the colour of the wood or metal a bit because its hard to separate them as different materials.
Keep it up

[poopipe]

I'm late but... if i may jump in on the UVs from the lamp-post

angled UV edges = bad seams under mip-mapping/filtering. this is a particular issue on lower spec hardware and on engines that don't support more advanced texture filtering algorithms. it's also a bugger with normal maps on proper engines.

eg.
That big chunk of geometry thats been tipped over 20/30 degrees is asking for trouble, the outer edges of the main lampost section will also potentially give you a nasty seam.


it's best practice to align UV verts along the edges of UV shells wherever it won't give you horrible distortion and use pixel snapping to ensure they're on pixel boundaries - if you must angle something, 45 degrees is the best option as it minimises the spread of artefacts. what happens inside the shell isn't important, just the boundaries.