Model Tractor 2015-08-30

[Acumen]

whaaaaaaat ?
took me so long to do them - oh boy

just a quick explanation of my workflow for the LOD's. studied the dumptruck and oriented on the general polycount.
then i put my 4 models in max next to each other. moved them so i have 4 different distances and then i just looked at what details to lose and which to keep.
so my argumention would be just that i didn't know how the LOD would function ingame. i guess i had different distances in mind when getting rid of detail
and i never experienced how the model lod's pop up ingame. laziness you are my friend

i'll be sure to check over this again since you did such a long explanation ! that's the kind of feedback one can only get when someone tries the model ingame. thanks a ton for that ! i pinned your table on the screen and make my way through it

edit: ok i just counterchecked ingame. that was really my misconception. i didn't think that the model will pop out so quickly - i really thought that it would be like 10²px wide until it collapses so much. learned another thing from that !

 

[Rexy]

I've found that if you're manually editing the mesh to create LOD models, it can be quite imperfect. If you're going to make them, I would strongly recommend an automatic poly reduction application. That way you're not picking out little details to omit to lower the polycount--most polygon reduction tools don't omit details, but rather re-create the mesh at a lower polygon count. This is much more efficient and looks much better. My LOD meshes don't take me any time whatsoever to create, because the tool is automatic.

EDIT: After looking at the model, I also agree with YM that it's really high polycount to begin with. Hopefully not more than 1 of these will be placed in an area at a time, but even if you used the reduction tool to bring it down to about 75% of the original polycount, it would be a tremendous advantage to performance.

 

[Acumen]

i don't think it's "stupidly high" - higher then the other vehicles for sure, but also more on the detailled side of life.
also i found such automatic tools to not give the cleanest result, so i tried it but wasn't too satisfied.

and and and....and your camper had 13809 polys too !!!!!
for me the model wasn't designed to be put in a map 3 times or so. it was just to pay tribute to the awesome concept and build in some more details as i went along. i know it's not too low in the end but still reasonable for the amount of detail you can find, in my opinion. if this was made as a request for someones map specifically i'd leave out quite some detail, that's for sure ! not trying to defend myself, i know the polycount is rather high and could be way lower - that's for sure

in other news, i redid the LOD stuff again and stuck quite rigidly to YM's suggestions
hope this is better now ! tried it ingame and well, what can i say, i still don't know if it's improved and suits anyone. What i'd like to know:
1) Can people tell hammer to start with LOD 2 right from the start ?
2) Or do you think it would be wise to compile a lod-step and call it tractor_low so people can start with the 7000 polygon version as a starting point ?

UPDATED LOD Levels below

 

[YM]

i'll be sure to check over this again since you did such a long explanation ! that's the kind of feedback one can only get when someone tries the model ingame.

hehe, actually I got it into the model browser and used the "auto LOD" checkbox. as far as I'm aware it accurately represents the scale a model will appear on your screen at the LOD metric. But from experimenting with my own LOD models and valve's LOD models I've learnt to spot reductions.

Also @rexy I don't trust automatic tools to do a good job, I'll admit in places my method, of merging points and altering the UVmap along with a little coordinate modification, isn't the best and leaves me stuggling to cut polys from certain places. But I recon I could do a good job on this without any automation.

Do your automated tools do things like the planes I suggested for the ladder rungs, bolts and steering wheel? If it won't do stuff like that I'd definitely go for doing it by hand.

 

[ethankarnopp]

this is why I refuse to do 3d o.o looks sweet though

 

[Rexy]

and and and....and your camper had 13809 polys too !!!!!

...but I reduced it from 30,000 polygons to begin with. And at the smallest LOD is has 2694 polygons. That's extremely reasonable.

And what's here is worse...the older LODs were better. This version is just no good.

Granted, so much of this detail isn't seen from far away, but if you're paying attention you can see the bad changes.

I still suggest an automatic plugin--the tool I use keeps the UV mesh absolutely intact.

EDIT: BTW, nice lightwarp!

 

[MadMax]

damn good work i say, loving the custom content and help you guys/girls provide extremely awesome

 

[YM]

aha you ninja'd me

ooh dear, maybe I should have said your original poly reductions are great and that you should have stuck to them, the new ones aren't enough. Your final LOD is more poly heavy than the highest of the hydro dumptruck.

I fear to do this but I'm going to suggest you take a third bash at it. You had some good reductions in the original ones that I didn't comment on, and now they're gone D:

Good reductions you should have kept:

• floating headlights
• removal of the headlight brackets
• removal of the slight indent in the headlight
• removal of the mann co. logo on the side and the strips under it. both of those should go and have their texture transfered on to whatever is underneath of them. THIS IS IMPORTANT. you can remove a LOT of polys by making sure the surface under them has the same texture, you missed the texture of the hinges on the back too.
• reduction in curvature in the profile of the front wheels, these can go to completely flat by the final LOD
• removal of the bars holding the box inplace underneath. These are minor and won't be missed at >100 LOD metric, also you didn't make the box an actualy box, it still has redundant polys at the final LOD
• removal of the floor plate of the chair. Like I said, this should be removed all together with it's texture applied to the surface below, the same with all bolts, in one LOD if you make a bolt just the top surface, in the next LOD or two it should dissapear entirely
• removal of the speedometers, make them a disk like the bolts, then in the next LOD just remove them entirely and use the texture method, doesn't matter how low res the texture below is, you're over X meters from the thing, you can't see that much detail.
• You had reduction in the number of segments that made up both wheels, at the furthest LOD you might want to consider this again.
• Rear tires - the central set of polys (forming a cylinder) were stretched out to meet the next set (like the attached image) Try to keep the shape of the tire, whilst cutting as many polys from it as you can.

Lastly, in LOD 3 you have an issue with one of the rear tires, the centre hub dissapears, leaving the model lop sided and exposing that nasty black circle

(did you get the message about being able to remove mesh as long as the surface under neath it has the same texture as what's above it yet? since you didn't do any of that yet )

EDIT: lastly I'm not sure I was right about leaving the grip as floating strips, but their shape can definitely be simplified before their complete removal.
Also, I tear you down, because this model is so bloody brilliant I don't want to see it gimped by the LOD models You'll get the hang of them don't worry.

EDIT 2: I agree with Rexy, if you're to give up with the LOD models, at very least let us at the previous version which has the better LOD models of the two attempts.

 

[Dr. ROCKZO]

Acumen, you've done some mighty amazing work here, and I know you've probably learned a lot from all of this which is great for us, because it means you'll continue to make more amazing models!

 

[Rexy]

Yeah, try again, use the best of both attempts and I'm sure you'll have a good result this time.

The transitional nature of the second attempt was better, but had lots of flaws the original did not.

Besides all this, this is a very impressive model, props to ethankarnopp and Acumen.

 

[Acumen]

WORSE ??? man you guys suck
you could have said "oh boy acumen these lod's look lovely compared to the others, still the polycount is faaaar too high, man you suck"

concerning the texture moving to the mesh below - how do you think i shall pull that off when much of the mentioned details have unique uv space that i just can't apply to a single plane ? I can either use the texture of the deleted floor plate on the entire cabin floor, or leave the cabin floor as it is with a dark spot on it - which i prefer since i guess that will be the less noticable.

so my plan now would be, get that missing hubcap going on again and then continue working on the LOD with the second try and delete the details from there on. good plan ?
i think what should be clear is that i can't get low to the 3000 mark

UPDATE
www.acumen-design.de/temp/modelfiles_tractor.rar
So the LOD3 is 5962 and LOD4 is 3794. so that's quite a reduction, imo. i just uploaded the model files, this time
Better ? Done ? Cookies ?....or....do it again ?

 

[Rexy]

That's pretty good. I checked it out myself and I have to say that's pretty solid. Props.

Now everyone can start downloading like crazy.

 

[YM]

I know that the underneath part have their own UV space, there are several tricks you can try, simply cut+paste+resize the texture from it's original place into the gap, totally remake the texture in the gap or even taking a screenshot from the model viewer of the area (can be useful to make not-flat shapes flat so that they can go in the UV space of the other surface. let me download the new one and see what it's like.

EDIT: yup these ones are definitely best. It would be nice to see the poly count go down a little bit steeper, but what you've got is absolutely fine.

This model now gets my seal of approval in all aspects. Cookies, definitely cookies!

Great work!!

 

[Acumen]

yay, then i reupload the entire model to the database, call this one done and eat my brownies
And once again, thanks a ton to all of the feedback especially lately for all the LOD-Help. I wouldn't even know about these issues hadn't you brought it up, YM and also Rexy. That really helped a ton - also something to heavily keep in mind for future model projects
What an awesome learning experience from start to finish that has been - although a bit bumpy ride
Again, thank you guys !

FINAL RELEASE




Question:
would it maybe possible for a moderator or admin to add this download link to the opening post, since i'm not the thread creator i can't edit the first post, of course


ANOTHER THANK YOU
haha, A Boojum Snark is just over the top !!

 

[A Boojum Snark]

Question:
would it maybe possible for a moderator or admin to add this download link to the opening post, since i'm not the thread creator i can't edit the first post, of course

Done. The original author had attempted to change the thread title awhile ago to mention your model in process, so I took that to mean he would be ok with me editing the post.

 

[zpqrei]

That's pretty good. I checked it out myself and I have to say that's pretty solid. Props.

Now everyone can start downloading like crazy.

THE PUN IT BURNS.

In other news, <3

 

[The Political Gamer]

THE PUN IT BURNS.

In other news, <3

Its very punny.

Also love the finished model!

 

[Boylee]

Lush. Really nice job Acumen, and sick design ethankarnopp.

A top prop.

 

[ethankarnopp]

This is the first time I've ever had a drawing of mine go from concept to fully functional model and props to Acumen for doing a kickass job while doing so. It's cool to see the process and humbling to realize how much more work goes in, I hope to see this model in some maps in the future and am way too stoked about how the results look. Thanks to everyone for the compliments and high fives to Acumen for being a rad individual! I hope to collaborate some more in the future .

 

[Mr. P. Kiwi]

This looks amazing!
Keep up the good work and model some more things!