Competition #11 - Vamediah

[Vamediah]

What I'm working on right now is a redesign of a Industrial Age Livestock Pen from Age of Empires 3. I wanted to do that building since its a building you pretty much NEVER use and it is kinda useless and boring so i wanted to make it look more interesting.
so Ive got the surroundings done, the house and a pen, the house is about 600 polygons now and the pen is about 710 i believe. also some decorative items like crates and hay.

Now I'm working on a very low-poly sheep and that what id like some critique on . when i was done with the mesh initially it was 299 polygons, now i have managed to reduce it to 165. but id like to know how i can make the topology better or what to change about it (some paint-overs would be amazing).

I can fit two sheep int he scene, maybe two and a half, id love to have two with one male, so id have to add horns.. that might be about 20-30 more poly's just there... so any help is very appreciated

[requiem2d]

Looks cool, delete belly, make the legs 3-sided, cut down on the "shoulders/hips". RTS is really birds-eye view imo. Not to mention, everything is "mini" in a way so it should work out fine

[Vamediah]

Originally Posted by requiem2d

Looks cool, delete belly, make the legs 3-sided, cut down on the "shoulders/hips". RTS is really birds-eye view imo. Not to mention, everything is "mini" in a way so it should work out fine

i guess i got a bit caught up in having as much detail as possible with the least amount of polygons... i never considered taking the belly off at all, but now that i did it looks a bit more like a sheep to be honest, more fluffy and all. thanks requiem

[requiem2d]

Looks cool man, I'd still eliminate the knees, you can give them a lot of diversity by changing their sizes and head poses (eating grass or looking up) later on

[Vamediah]

Originally Posted by requiem2d

Looks cool man, I'd still eliminate the knees, you can give them a lot of diversity by changing their sizes and head poses (eating grass or looking up) later on

i noticed that just as i posted the reply and i did take away the front legs knees .
I'm thinking the same ting actually. just them standing there like puppets will kill the entire scene. so i think ill UV and then pose em'. i also created a male version with big horns and my total poly-count right now is 1496 for the scene, and that's with three sheep!

ill post the full scene here when its time for texturing i think.

[Addi]

Your sheep look fat

Also, you've teased your idea very well, I'm dying to see the whole scene now.

[Vamediah]

The building I'm remaking I'm an English, Industrial Age, Livestock Pen, one of the more under-appreciated buildings that i barely use so i wanted to give it some attention. Plus, i like the idea of it. Its function is to "train" sheep and then station them there to fatten up and give you more food, it can also upgrade to fattening them quicker.

What i really didn't like about Age of Empires 3 is how they scale wise landed om some middle ground between AoE 1 and AoE 2, age of empires one was very off in scale, a villager would be the size of a house, very odd. But in AoE 2 they fixed it and it looked really cool, the scale was very good, small units and big houses. Then in AoE 3 it got all cartoony and i didn't really like it that much, plus you cant zoom out allot, i sill love the game though.
SO with this model I'm going back to the mind-set of AoE 2 with some neat "next-gen" like functionality.
basically, instead of the sheep just standing around a building fattening up, they go into a pen outside of the house, and when they are fully fattened they walk out to be slaughtered for food by the villagers.

here is a low-poly render of 1499 polygons


And my High Poly version (WIP)


And finally, the UV placement preview thing with checkers.

my first version of this was really badly proportioned, but this one seems perfect to me. I've never really textured/UV'd anything seriously and this time i am really going to give this my best.

and let me know what you think of the idea

[ae.]

Wow man thats really nice i have no crits, maybe just add a few more livestock to the pen.

[Pacer]

wow i´m loving that style! the sheep look cute

the highpoly looks quite promising too, though i´m not sure wether you´d get better results with some beveled edges or with those current sharp edges.

btw... can we see some wires and your uv layout, please?

[requiem2d]

I'd add a plane on the bottom, as a ground. You would then alpha it and add a dirt patch due to abnormal activity on that ground which results in dirt / mud. The result? Anywhere the asset is placed, the mud goes with Cheers