WIP, help, suggestions, critique Thread

Hey guys,
I'm pretty new to 3d modelling and just need a few comments to keep me going in the right direction on my model - any you like or don't like, or anything wrong with the modelling, its a work in progress fighter/shuttle, designed to hold 10-12 people, so far it has a bridge exterior and and 360 degree view, fire control platform, a weapons platform at the middle and engines and small med bay and engine room area at the back.

Images:

Thanks hugo1005

Edited by: hugo1005

Looks like a good start. You could optimize the polycount quite a lot. Some of the polygons look they're there just so it's all quad polygons.

As far as i know its an all quad mesh, thanks for the feedback, but u think your right about optimising the mesh, I kinda made this model up on the fly so it didn't get a lot of planning on poly density.

Looks cool Hugo, it's a nice design. As J_C_A said you could optimise the polycount a bit, those edge loops running around the top of the wings could be reduced quite a bit. Don't be afraid to nip unnecessary edge loops into a triangle here and there if you have to (obviously you should be trying to model using quads as much as possible, but when you're optimising a model for a game engine it's perfectly fine to us triangles here and there). Things are also very dense around the windows, detail like that would be safer being baked into a normal map (and not having the extra faces for the edges of the window). But it's a nice design, I'd recommend duplicating this model and reducing the polycount as much as you could then use your original (maybe add more detail to it and perhaps smooth it out) and use that to bake a normal map with all the small details. Hope that helps.

Thanks for that, didn't think of baking it to a normal map. I'm making some concept art for a new model I may intend to make, so i'll take what your saying on board for the next model, probably will post it on the forums or on my page.

Thanks for your comments!
Hugo

The good thing about games that use models like that is the fact you can usually just apply transforms to them and not worry about skinning/rigging. Cool model.

If you are modelling with realism in mind, you should use references - just simply blocks really. Create a block representing a person and one represting something like a small european car - then scale the model accordingly.

Also, next time you post pics make them larger - and give us shots from multiple angles.
As for the polycount it is hard to say whenever you are too low or too high atm - but it's definetly a good start what you have there.

Edited by: Nightshade

Nice start, dont be afraid of using triagles or ngons, at longers Polys, it helps; and the model dont need to be all one continuous model, you can keep some faces close but separetad so you can keep the poly count low. specialy on sharp edges.