Spring RTS Engine

It seems that there is at least some percieved need to critique the 3D models that are becoming part of the world of Spring, as we move to the new, awesome S3O format.

I have a lot of experience giving constructive, helping critique and advice to newbie modelers/skinners, so I've decided to start a thread where you can show off your work and recieve critique from your peers.

Here are the rules:

1. If your model cannot tell its entire "story" in a screencap that's less than 600 pixels in width or height, it's crap. Sorry, this may sound harsh, but it's true- if you have some uber-detailed supermodel with 15 textures, 15000 polys, etc... it's crap. Why is it crap? Because it is utterly ridiculously overkill for gaming, is why- and professional standards are the gold standard here. Less is more, folks. Listen and learn, and I will teach ways to make more out've less. So... NO GIANT SCREENS, artists. Resist the urge to waste bandwidth. The Mona Lisa looks awesome at 600/600, and so will your best work.

2. Do not post 2D work here. I do not even slightly care about your photo-manipulations, neato filters, or other stuff. Why? Because anybody who can make good 3D art already knows how to do that stuff. 3D art includes all of the classical disciplines of painting and photography- making the very stark objects that are ideal for good performance look great is a very difficult art.

The one exception to this would be concept sketches that directly lead to production, so that we can see a sequence. That at least can show us how you thought about your piece.

3. Do not post anything here with a polycount over 5K, unless it's definately going into a Spring mod... and there's a reeeeeallly good reason it's over 5K. Just because the engine can handle lots of tris does not mean that good artists waste them.

4. Do not post raytraces. Show us screens from Spring, or from UpSpring. I do not care how your models look in Max.

5. When critiquing, be gentle and helpful to newbies. We were all newbies once. We all remember when jerks told us we sucked. Nobody here should want to be remembered as one of those.

6. If somebody asks for a complete critique, and is obviously not a novice... all bets are off. If you want to flame and tell somebody that their taste sucks and they will never be a good artist... um, I guess that's your right.

However, good critique is constructive critique. Telling somebody what's wrong with a piece of art is giving that person a problem. Giving them helpful advice on how to fix things, but stay true to their artistic vision (no matter how weird you think it is) is giving somebody a solution. Good critique is not about establishing that you know more about style than somebody else. Good critique is about helping others to create new best styles. We are not making money here, folks- so be supportive of your fellow artists!

That doesn't mean that you have to like everything that is posted. But... one technique that I make use of, that I find helpful, is to point out the good things first, and then bring up the weak spots. Very few pieces of art are completely bad.

Those are the rules. If you would like help getting going with 3D work for Spring, I'm here to help you- or provide guidance and opinion if you want.

In the interest of the community I am putting myself on the cutting board... this model was done for a LOWpoly rpg game meant to emulate the old console rpg look.

Anyway this is a simple lamp model. I am posting both the model and texture. Please tear this apart so people can learn from my mistakes also if possible point out good things to. I want people to learn from it. Also do no spare my feelings because I have no feelings for the model. It is full lit with no special lighting or editing done outside of croping the image of the render.

Question: What program did you do the UV map in?

Here would be my critique:

The good:

For the polycount and size of the texture, the overall effect is quite clean and professional looking. None of the areas look stretched or distorted, the colors are pleasing, and the lamp-light through the grill is nicely done.

Overall, this is a nice model, low in polycount but effective.

The not-quite-perfect:

Several things stand out:

1. The amount of texture space wasted on two different faces of the lamp, the cubemaps on the "concrete" areas of the model, etc, could've been much better used, in my opinion, by giving more room to the wood. As someone whose textures tend to waste a great deal of room, however, I should refrain from acting like I'm not heavily guilty of the opposite sin- I tend to increase the overall texture size to ensure I have enough room for the resolution. However, the area of the texture devoted to the tiny detail of the chain was mainly wasted- I'm not sure at what resolution players will be viewing this model, or at what angles, but I suspect that players will probably never appreciate that level of detail.

2. As a point of style (and therefore, just my opinion- there are no rules to style), I don't care for the "concrete" in what is supposed to be a medieval piece of technology. I would've used a purely wooden post design, with a couple of nailheads and a cross-beam at a 45' to show how this structure successfully resists gravity. IRL, nobody would build a lamp like this with medieval technology, and it seems a bit off. It's not unattractive, mind you, and based on those shots of houses, etc., I suspect it looks quite charmingly matched with the buildings, so players probably didn't mind.

3. The last point relates to the first, and has to do with the technical treatment of the piece. Firstly, I'd have devoted more of the available surface area to the wood. It's the largest area of surface on the model, and, along with the lamp, potentially the most interesting area. I'd have mapped all three of the faces facing away from the lamp's light on one rectangle, by stacking the faces (this is a technique I use a lot, to save on surface area), and then I would have given the surface facing the lamp's light a gentle, natural glow with some light yellow very gently applied (the Soft/Hard Light feature in Photoshop is great for this). Any surface that would recieve/reflect some light should have this treatment- in the case of this lamp, the key area that isn't quite right is up at the top, where the light from the lamp would've been most direct, and instead the wood is dark and doesn't seem to be in the same universe as the light source. This would've greatly enhanced the realism of the model, and it takes hardly any time to achieve. It's also a cheap trick to put a noticable and interesting surface detail using a grayscale and a quick filter effect- a knot, for example, to convince people that they aren't just looking at a generic chunk of "tree", but a real-live piece of wood. Lastly, if I were committed to using the gray sheaths of (metal? concrete?) as you did, I would've taken more care to weather them with a gentle application of some noise or some textures to add bumpiness. Again, these are things you can do in a minute or less, and they add a lot to a model for a very low cost in time.

For the most part, this is a good model, well textured. It's not perfect, but I suspect that it was made fairly quickly, and that you were mainly trying to get the lamp-light right, which is convincingly illustrative, if not lifelike. Overall, I'd rate this model about a 7 out've 10, because it is above average for amateur work (and, if I'm being honest here, better than I do when I'm being sloppy) but it really falls short of the detail-oriented levels one sees in professional models.

For those who don't know stacking is a term used when you have two areas that can use the same surface it saves space on the texture map and generaly will help you devote more texture space to other parts of the model.

For example a leg only needs to be mapped once then flip the other leg and place it ontop of the already laid out area where it will overlay onto the texture as well. Some modelers will even stack half a face ontop of another half to save space.

To answer the question earlier this model was uvwmapped in 3ds. Not my copy though and I no longer have acess to it. I am looking for a free alternative for all of us.

My suggestions for free alternatives:

1. UVMapper Classic. It's what I learned with. I now use Pro, which is a considerable improvement, but Classic definately doesn't suck, and it's totally free. http://www.uvmapper.com

2. Lithunwrap. This was the old, freeware Lith, which has now become a shareware-only thing. Among other sites, my "other home", Lancer's Reactor, hosts the installer, which has become rather rare (the author, despite putting it out as freeware for several years, has tried to get people to take it down- it was a little too nice to be freeware, apparantly). Those of you who've used Max's uvmapping will probably be more comfortable with Lith. Visit http://www.lancersreactor.com and use the Search feature (on the upper-right of the main page) to find it there.

3. GMAX! It has a uvmapping feature built in that is comparable to the one in Max6, it's totally free, and with the Quake SMD Export plugin (which I, ahem, dug up by finding the author- it practically disappeared from the web... you can now get it at Lancer's Reactor) you can export your finished model through Milkshape3D. Available from http://www.turbosquid.com ... the most awesomest place on the planet, so far as cool free (or nearly-free) 3D content goes.

4. And, last but not least, the good ol' boy in the "free or close enough" category, Milkshape3D. I paid for a copy of it last year, and y'know... as much stuff as it can do (for example, it's the only freeware 3D app I know of that supports all DDS variants) it's an awesome buy- it's cheap and pretty powerful. http://www.milkshape3d.com

There is no shortage of good, free tools for making textures, either- GIMP is surprisingly good at this point (although, I must confess, I'm a Photoshop guy all the way- I even paid for it).

The tools for making good, low-poly models are also much better than they used to be. Wings is a surprisingly good app. at this point, for example. I don't care for Blender, myself, but some people swear by it.

If you're a student, though, and you're not totally broke (or, um, have willing parents)... get a student license of Rhino3D. It's what I use- with the Bonus Tools installed, Rhino3D 3 is, hands down, the most powerful, easy-to-use and highly accurate modeler I have ever used. Sure, Lightwave can do a few cool things, like carving, and Max has great tools for optimizing organic meshes. But for making low-low-low poly models that are sharp and clean, Rhino owns all. I've used a lot of modelers in the decade I've been making stuff in 3D, and while Rhino ain't free, the student license is cheap compared to things like Maya and Max, so it's well worth a look. http://www.rhino3D.com

... and just for the record, I don't work for any of the above, am not related to them, friends with them, etc., and have no reason to tell you about these resources, other than the fact that I'm nice

Thanks for the pointers, Argh. Especially pointing the UVmappers. And I agree, Rhino pwns for being clean, precise, exacting; alas that I only have Rhino3D 2.0.

I have a question, I know how to UVW map a model that is one solid object, but I can't seem to figure out how to UVW map a model that is made up of many objects (like a unit). I use 3ds 6, and Rhino 1.1.

Any help would be greatly welcome.

first off, get it set up in UpSpring. Then use the "Export for UV"option (or whatever it is called). It all gets exported as one object.

Thank you very much. I have been trying to figure that one out for some time now