Michigan Central Station V2

[JMChristopher]

Hello! I have decided to take my high poly Michigan Central station and make it into a low poly, game ready version.

There are about 34 million triangles in this version. I am going to attempt to reduce it to about 500,000. I have already taken a few props and reduced them down a bit:

I know there is not much to critique yet, but I figured I would start a thread to track my progress. As always any tips, thoughts, critiques, ideas and bacon sandwiches are appreciated.

Thank you

[Schaefft]

Well, I dont have a bacon sandwich but I cant tell you that I really like your idea. I saw your portfolio before and I love your high poly work up there, cant wait to see how itll turn out as game environment.

[JMChristopher]

Its not much, but this is what I have done over the weekend:

As you can see I have reduced the poly count quite a bit, but there are still alot of things I need to add.

Also note that the cameras are at opposite ends of the room.

Upon further evaluation, i can get rid of the tiny pieces of rubble and convert a lot of things to normal mapped textures. I think I have a good grasp on what I need to do, but any advice is appreciated. Also, im at 300k polys for the entire scene so far.

[snake85027]

DAMN YOU haha your skills are good!

[mr_flibble]

looking forward to this one.

i still think you can lose some tris from the roof and arches, as it's up high and you've be wanting to spend all your money down at ground level.

textures are looking ace though dude, keep it up!

[JMChristopher]

Originally Posted by mr_flibble

looking forward to this one.

i still think you can lose some tris from the roof and arches, as it's up high and you've be wanting to spend all your money down at ground level.

textures are looking ace though dude, keep it up!

I reduced the ceiling from 578 tris to 368. Here is a close up shot that shows some of the optimization. I think I can still reduce things a bit, but I am still within my budget and I am still tweaking some things.
Here is the old super highpoly:

Here is the low poly update. It is a bit meaningless without textures, but I have been able to maintain the silhouette of most things while reducing their poly count by up to 10x

[ChrisSchweiger]

Simply amazing work.

One quick question: Could you explain how you go about reducing that many polygons and what your thought process is when deciding what edges to remove. For example, are you just randomly selecting certain edges and removing them, or is their some other trick of the trade.

[pantsburgh]

Geometry is looking ace.

My only small crit is the textures on your palette and crate. The palette wood doesn't quite look like oak/hardwood, which takes away from the believability a bit. I think it's mostly the deep grain in the NM. Hardwoods, especially rough cut, typically get what little surface texture they have from the saw blade & cracks/checks than from a wood grain > picture. Maybe this is too nit-picky...

Also, seeing them side by side with the nicely worn barrel and columns, they look too clean. I know it's renovation, so they'd technically be new-ish, but a bit more wear could be nice in my opinion.

Overall it's looking seriously awesome. Can't wait to see progress.

[midduke]

This looks amazing. You sir, have some serious skill.

[mr_flibble]

as long as you're sticking to a budget then all is good.

not sure if you've thought about doing stuff in a slightly different method to help save some tris. you can keep the shape in your arches by turning them into a cap that covers a low poly plane behind it. below is a pic of what I mean. At the mo i think you're true meshing everything in, which is completely valid, but if it's costing you lots of tris to do that then it becomes quite inefficient.




making your arches like above means you can save tris, but keep a smooth curve. just a little trick that might help