Shempoo said:
I love the droid (first image)
The first object is actually not a droid, but is the mineral survey device.
Shempoo said:
If I used my creative license I'd probably try to add a little flavor of my own to models, based on realism, or maybe practicality, for example with the last image (radar looking thing), I'd possibly try to add some wires/cables connecting to the antenna part at the top, even if they "are in the shaft" to give it more realism, plus maybe make the top rotate, give it a lil spice while keeping the design traditional.
I'm open to making modifications when I think it is necessary, but I will try to stay true to the original look as much as I possibly can. That being said, I do make some changes here and there. You can see that for the mineral survey device there was some stuff in the texture that was so low-res that I couldn't tell what it was supposed to be, so I changed it to the mineral resource survey screen instead.
Shempoo said:
Can you describe your software setup for this? and the process you go through to achieve the final result?
I used 3ds Max to model the props. I create a high-poly and a low-poly version of the model, and then bake the details of the high-poly onto the low-poly. SWG can't support most modern material effects (as far as I know, but people like Timbab and Sytner know more about this than me), but the texture bake still allows me to do some cool things with the albedo (the color map). I use Photoshop CS3 for texturing. I use XNormal to generate cavity maps from the normal maps I bake.
Shempoo said:
By the way, are you taking into consideration the poly counts? Did you do any research as to how many polygons the engine can push at once on screen? How are you determining the poly counts?
This is a constant concern when doing game art. I'm trying to keep the poly counts reasonable, and I have to keep reminding myself that this is the SWG engine, not Unreal Engine 4 like I've been used to lately. Then again, most of my experience comes from the Source engine, so I'm certainly no stranger to being aware of poly counts (Source is pretty dated now).
I'm basically learning as I go. If I start to encounter performance issues I will need to lower the poly count later, but I don't think anyone really knows how much is too much before SWG loses its mind. I think character models and such are more of an issue than static props, which is what I'm focusing on, since my background is in environment art.
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Valkyra said:
These are awesome, we've been needing a revamp like this of the graphics (that the engine can still withstand) for some time, and not just textures but models as well...
Hoping this project takes off, and would you be looking into terrain textures and terrain flora models anytime soon?
Hard surface is what I'm good at. I've always been very bad at doing plants, but it's something I can look into later. For now, I'm going to concentrate on the things I know I can do. Props that are encountered throughout the game world is what I'm focusing on first. Then I will work on things found in more unique locations that you run into less often after.
I already have a lot of other stuff done that I will showcase later. This includes the moisture harvester, which I'm quite proud of. After I finish and release this, I will probably do harvesters next.
