Model Gears

[Tapp]

Well, I dropped the poly count to 738, fixed the design (somewhat) but I still can't be bothered to find out how to texture/export it.
Download

 

[Sel]

get rid of the groove in the middle, and the ends of the teeth, they're unnecessary and unnoticeable for such a small model.

You also really should consider having less sides.

 

[Tydax]

Looks nice

 

[Pocket]

Selentic is quite right. You can and should reproduce that groove with bump mapping. I'm not sure why most (but not all) of the teeth have slits across them, either. Still, impressive work for someone who claims to be "extremely new" to Blender; I'm not sure I could have pulled off a figure like that in Hammer yet.

 

[Tapp]

get rid of the groove in the middle, and the ends of the teeth, they're unnecessary and unnoticeable for such a small model.

You also really should consider having less sides.

I could make some LOD models, the request did say it was for a windmill so the gears could be pretty big. (ie. 128x128)

 

[Sel]

I could make some LOD models, the request did say it was for a windmill so the gears could be pretty big. (ie. 128x128)

Assuming the triangle count is double the poly count, that's a ridiculous amount for the game to render for this object :\

 

[Tapp]

Assuming the triangle count is double the poly count, that's a ridiculous amount for the game to render for this object :\

I kind of imagined that without the groove the gear would look boring, and remember that at least half of those polys are already triangles, so it's somewhere more like 1000 triangles. I guess the standards for model optimisation are a lot higher than I though.

 

[Acumen]

just look at some models from tf2. you'll wonder how many triangles they use in rather tiny objects. so its that heavy in the end, if it's a unique objects.
just do some research, it's a part of their design choice. they model out much detail and don't rely on normal maps in the end on most models. you'd be surprised how many polygons some models have - made my jaw drop in the beginning of my research
the end of the teeth, i'd put in question too, but the general roundness you should leave as it is.

i'm having more trouble with your uvmaps, btw

edit:
heavy normal maps usage wouldn't fit the world of tf2 - period. it's a design choice right from the start. they know their shader stuff, if they'd wanted to have nicey normal maps, they'd improved the engine...

valve rarely uses baked in AO detail. they mostly model out the details and use the AO bake as texture starting point. just study some models...the wheels of the welding machine alone have 1200 triangles and they are suuuupertiny ingame.
one shouldn't give tips like that and present them as obvious facts if it's clearly not the way valve does its stuff.
just study some models, Tapp, you'll get a feeling of valve's way of doing things

 

[Sel]

I kind of imagined that without the groove the gear would look boring, and remember that at least half of those polys are already triangles, so it's somewhere more like 1000 triangles. I guess the standards for model optimisation are a lot higher than I though.

You should consider baking the groove into a lower poly mesh's AO map, using what you have right now as the high res.

just look at some models from tf2. you'll wonder how many triangles they use in rather tiny objects. so its that heavy in the end, if it's a unique objects.
just do some research, it's a part of their design choice. they model out much detail and don't rely on normal maps in the end on most models.

They don't rely on normal maps for anything because they can't.

Source isn't capable of rendering them properly, and relies on ancient bump mapping (which looks like absolutely awful). It's not a design choice, it's a lack of engine capability.

 

[Tapp]

just look at some models from tf2. you'll wonder how many triangles they use in rather tiny objects. so its that heavy in the end, if it's a unique objects.
just do some research, it's a part of their design choice. they model out much detail and don't rely on normal maps in the end on most models. you'd be surprised how many polygons some models have - made my jaw drop in the beginning of my research
the end of the teeth, i'd put in question too, but the general roundness you should leave as it is.

i'm having more trouble with your uvmaps, btw

edit:
heavy normal maps usage wouldn't fit the world of tf2 - period. it's a design choice right from the start. they know their shader stuff, if they'd wanted to have nicey normal maps, they'd improved the engine...

valve rarely uses baked in AO detail. they mostly model out the details and use the AO bake as texture starting point. just study some models...the wheels of the welding machine alone have 1200 triangles and they are suuuupertiny ingame.
one shouldn't give tips like that and present them as obvious facts if it's clearly not the way valve does its stuff.
just study some models, Tapp, you'll get a feeling of valve's way of doing things

Ok, once I've done a bit more research into blender (and worked out how to export models) I'll study the tf2 models. I see I have a fair way to go, but for now can someone please just finish off this model? The original topic seems to have been skipped in favour of educating me.

 

[JoshuaC]

Source isn't capable of rendering them properly, and relies on ancient bump mapping (which looks like absolutely awful). It's not a design choice, it's a lack of engine capability.

Don't listen to old man Selentic. He gets grouchy and starts spouting out non facts when he hasn't had his pills and played his weekly bingo game.


I took Tapp's gear model and cleaned it up a bit, re uv'd it, and added some possible detail if you wanted it.

Please let me know what sort of detail you'd like on it. Currently it's very basic looking if it were to be based on the pic posted earlier in the thread.

 

[Sel]

get out jc you dont know shit blenderboy!!!

 

[Tydax]

This one looks good, I don't want super detailled models. Thank you.

 

[Tapp]

Sooo... Can you release it now?

 

[Tydax]

pls pls pls pls pls pls

 

[nik]

I'm just imagining how awesome a clocktower map would be

 

[JoshuaC]

I forgot to ask, but what sizes are you looking for?

 

[Tydax]

128, 64 and 32 if you can make them fit together.

 

[Pooluke41]

I'm just imagining how awesome a clocktower map would be

it needs a bell at the top so when you cap something, DING DONG!

 

[honorum646]

I call CP_Clocktower

Make that koth_clocktower.