Potential breeder model

[andreipmbcn]

Amateur modeller here. Over the last eight hours, I've made a 3,416 poly model of the 2x2-sized breeder unit. A few screenshots and the blend file are in the attachments section.

I am thinking of narrowing the inner side of the horns a bit and bumping the rest of the model upwards, so as to give it more depth. If you would like to see other changes, or if you think the model is unsatisfactory overall, please let me know and I will do what I can to improve it.

[DarkRain]

I'll check this as soon as I can, although I can comment mostly about technical details as I'm not really an art/design person, but will try my best to give feedback.

[DarkRain]

Well, I checked it out, it actually works better as a 2x2 unit than I thought it would, although it is indeed a bit flat, how is it supposed to move around? Hovering?

The major problem is that it has too much polys for our engine, while our preferred model format (md2) supports up to 4096 triangles, for some reason our engine seems to choke and die on anything that has more than 2730 triangles (it seems to affect all model formats supported, not yet sure if it is a bug or intentional) so it cannot be added to the game

[andreipmbcn]

That's okay. I will trim it down to 2500 polys tomorrow and show you the results.

[andreipmbcn]

The model is now down to 2,386 and looks less flat. It is fully UV-mapped and just needs texturing as well as simple rigid animations and particle effects. I have added a multires sculpt of it that features plates (I may have gone overboard on these plates, especially the ones on the front-mounted cannon) and a more leathery-looking organic dome. All sides apart from the bottom are fully sculpted. The vehicle is meant to hover via mechanisms inside its "horns", while its two engines provide forward thrust. Its heavy armor plating and leathery skin are both meant to help it withstand damage as it comes in close to its targets and spews a cloud of virus particles from its central cannon. To be honest, for the sake of defense, it should be fully encased in armor, but the description of the breeder on the website said it should look partly biological.

Tell me what you think.

[Noordung]

lots of details that are modeled should be made with textures. and when you say it only needs textures - textures are harder than modeling. and maybe some animation...

i also suggest using low and high poly models and baking textures. i know you can do that in blender and since you are using it you could do it (lots of guides on youtube). would use less trits for models and would look great in end.

[andreipmbcn]

That's exactly why I made the multiresolution sculpt of the mesh - so I could bake it into a normal map and AO map. I tested the 2048x2048 textures and they look reasonably good, though I would recommend using 4096x4096.

In any case, as you don't object to the model so far, I will continue using it as it is when I start texturing on Sunday.

[Noordung]

1024x1024 is quite enough. not even sure is game supports bigger textures. im pretty sure none of them in game are bigger.