Controlling the Poly Count
To control a character’s poly count precisely you can split the com-
plete body into parts and set limits for each part according to the
needs of the character. For example, let’s say you have a limit of
3,800 triangles for a character. Start by asking yourself a few ques-
tions: What are the needs of the character? How much of it will be
displayed? What are the circumstances? How can mesh details be
increased where necessary and simplified where they are not? What
can the texture represent and what must be modeled?
Based on the answers to these questions you can set the
desired proportions of the character. You have 3,800 triangles to be
distributed among the head, body, hands, feet, and accessories.
Focus on what is most important for representing the character as
the player will actually see it inside the game.
General Tips
Limbs
If you start modeling a character’s limbs from a primitive like a cyl-
inder that closely matches the shape of a leg or an arm, be sure to
tweak all the vertices in order to reduce the cylindrical regularity.
Do the same for any primitive you use.
Folds
Depending on the polygonal count budget you can increase the
modeling detail by adding folds that will be enhanced by the
Gouraud shading.
332
Chapter 13 – Modeling for Games
Figure 13-15: The three-span scheme for joints works in most cases and
gives cleaner results.
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