Competition #14 - dangermouse

[dangermouse]

Here's my dragonfly assassin.

My reasoning is that assassins are all about sneakiness and agility. Dragonflies are fast, and so maneuverable, they can even fly backwards.

Plus they look cool.

Yep, this is my first post here, and it's also my first ever low poly attempt. I'm a 2nd year 3D animation student, and I've decided games are where my heart is.

I am so intimidated looking around at all the FANTASTIC entries so far *embarrassed*

Currently sitting at 896 tri's, haven't converted my quads yet, and i'm planning some kind of utility belt sash thing just to liven things up.

[dangermouse]

Spent quite a bit of time just tidying things up and adding a few details, but more importantly I spent HOURS last night sifting through the forums learning more about this low poly stuff, I'm starting to get a handle on it (I think!), but any C&C would be vital to me!

Just one question, are backfaces mandatory? On the wings obviously I'll need them for top and bottom, but on the belt around his chest, if I turn of backfaces in Maya, you can tell that there are gaps where it goes around him if you look closely, but it's not REALLY noticeable.

Another thing I read about was UV's, and reusing UV space. I'll obviously reuse space for the wings, left and right, top and bottom, but how about legs? left and right for sure, but would I get away with reusing middle and rear leg space? Front would have to be seperate, I added a tiny bit more topology.

This is fun stuff, hopefully going to start UV's tonight, depending on any (if any) feedback I get. Thanks for looking!

[dangermouse]

Can anyone tell me if it's possible to have the UV's of multiple meshes in the same UV set? I can't seem to figure out how to do this, and at the moment I'm working on a combined mesh of all my pieces which just seems silly...

[Syros]

hey dude, nice start! and good shapes so far!
but answering your question: why you are working with separated meshes, make them one and do your job!
if you want to know any way, i should tell you that if i wanted to do so, i would make them one mesh, do the unwrapping, and then separate them again, (i use max), but that's for only special cases where the model has multi shaders and so requires multi material, even that can be handled by multi-subobject material in max, so make it clean in one mesh and there will be more control!
keep it up!

[reeke]

If he welded the utility belt into the main mesh to keep it all as one it would make the mesh pretty unclean, and a higher tri count to boot. Better to keep them unweleded imo.

To have the two pieces on the same uv map - uv each object, then attach them together and move the uv chunks around as you want, then simply detach one of the objects again.

[dangermouse]

Thanks Reeke, that's what I was after

I'm making slow but steady progress, but can I please ask for a critique on my UV's? I have to confess, I've never actually laid a set out properly like this. The only time I've had to UV myself I got away with planar mapping everything.

I've started sketching some colour onto it, but I'm on holiday and am only working on my laptop, I don't have my tablet here. Bearing in mind none of my textures are close to final, critiques will be taken well.

I know I've got no chance of a good placing in the competition, but I am learning so much my head's going to explode. I'm massively enjoying myself though!

[dangermouse]

Hi guys.

I'm super demotivated right now. After some really discouraging critiques, struggling to get my normal maps looking right, and just generally getting frustrated, I'm wondering if any of you think that it's worth finishing?

I'm yet to do a proper colour map, and if I continue, Ill probably use bump maps to finish this, and practice more with normal maps in future.