BlenderCookie has just announces a new tutorial series, focused on low-poly character modeling. These guys are doing an amazing amount of work!
Wes Burke writes:
Following up our previous Vehicle Training Series, Jonathan has begun production on our next big series! This time around he is tackling low poly character creation for game environments. With a little help from Tim Von Rueden on the concept, logistical support from Wes, and game industry consultation from Chan Sarinyamas, Jonathan is locked in on production and we are now ready to start taking pre-orders!
Link
15 Comments
Maybe it will be useful for somebody. But I think that lowpoly is dying, slowly.
Look at so-called Nex-Gen games! Their main characters are 12-20k of polygons already.
In future this count will be only increased.
That why I think that low-poly modelling will not be claimed in few years.
Shader,
and what about other platforms? Mobile, and web games? Doesn't they require lowpoly characters? Or lets say strategy pc games with tiny humans. They do, and thanks for the tutorial!
Shader,
There are many games that are not using a 'next generation' engine. Those games make up a very small portion of the game market. Look at the many RTS, MMO, Indie, Retro, Platform(think Wii), Moble Device, Low Budget, and Browser Games, just to name a few. Many if not most of these have a Low-Poly structure. Low-poly modeling is and will be a very relevant topic for a while yet.
@Shader
Low poly skills are still required for game design for low powered devices like iPhone/iPad, tabletPC's, netbooks, Android devices, hand-helds (Nin. DS), etc. Not every game dev works on the next AAA title for the PC/consoles. ;)
Agree with Ran13.
Not only is lowpoly required. Traditional pencil drawing is still important. Just imagine the earthquake and tsumani did unimaginable damage to Japan. The iphone, ipad and all those electronics are useless. Pencil and pen is still core.
Sounds great, some quality low poly character tutorials would be much appreciated. Will have to preorder this one :)
@Shader
Even if a AAA game model is 12-20k, it still requires all these low poly techniques. A lot of AAA game models are based on sculpted meshes of hundreds, if not millions, of polys. Same goes for levels and objects.
Game engines these days can handle higher poly meshes than previously, but that definitely doesnt mean that you can throw a ton of unoptimized and raw models straight in and expect things to work at 60fps.
Also, as computers and consoles in general become more powerful, graphics and model resolutions continue to push the boundaries regardless. These techniques are definitely 100% valid and will continue to be into the foreseeable future.
Agree, I was not right. Low have right to live in iPads.
But in future I think it will be replaced with hi-poly meshes (or maybe something quite different - look at T-Splines technology).
I remember back in the days when I was modding Fallout 3, low-poly modeling would have been a very useful skill, along with some texturing knowledge. Looking at the topics overview, there's a broad range of knowledge to be taught. Considering th quality of BlenderCookie tutorials, I'm sure this course will be well worth the time.
All I know is that I have my crap IDE computer that groans whenever I have two programs (yes, that includes my browser) open at the same time. Low poly is essential for someone like me and after I go beg for people's pocket change I might just buy this training series.
@Shader
Learning how to make low poly meshes can still help you out a lot in making high poly meshes for games, the best way to learn poly efficiency and not to waste them is to specialize in it for a while. Like is said before, even though many characters these days run into many thousands of poly's, it doesn't mean you can waste poly's needlessly, since the poly count still is limited after all. All wasted poly's could have been poly's in a useful place on an other model for the same FPS when displayed at the same time.
So yeah, low poly modeling will always be a useful thing to learn in game mesh development, even if you only make high poly meshes.
Really, when it comes down to it, the term "low poly modeling" is completely relative. It use to be that low poly modeling meant 200-800 polys max. Nowadays it can mean 20 thousand polys, in some cases. However, they're both still low poly modeling in the sense that you must use polys wisely and not be wasteful.
-Jonathan
Low poly will always be useful for more characters in the background or armies, or whatever, regardless of the main characters.
Okay... so much for my comment...
Like JW said, it's relative. So Low poly doesn't mean the same thing it did when Metal Gear Solid and Tomb Raider came out, you still need models that are as optimized as possible to have the game look the best it can with the (poly/texture) budget you have