Mid Poly Modelling

You should have used Max before and know your way around a fair bit. You will need to know how to move around inside of your view port and were most of the tools for low-poly modelling are found.

For This Tutorial:

3DS Max 4.2 (Should be able to do most of the tutorial in 3DS Max 3-4)

The Reason:

This is the first tutorial I have written, I also didn’t think I would be writing one at this point in my artist career. The reason behind this tutorial is that of the last few mouths I have been looking at many models in the ranged of 3000-3500 polys and a large number of artists are getting lazy. They haven’t been optimizing their models and using these extra faces to add detail we couldn’t before.

This tutorial is aimed to show you what new elements you can add with these extra faces, the techniques I use and also to remind you about optimizing your models. Also I will add my opinions on a few things about modelling and art for real-time games.

I have only been doing 3D art for about 18 mouths and been studying game art for the last 12 mouths. A lot of this time I have being studying game engines, and this is where this tutorial will be starting.

Know Your Weapon:

One of the most important things you should know before making a model for a game is to know want you are able to do in the game that the model is for. Ever game I have made a model for has had different pros and cons (some even have cons that can be turned into pros.) When you find out what a game engine can do, try and think outside of what other artist have done with the engine.

This model is for UT 2003 and I have made a list of things you should know about this game engine before you start designing a character for it. Also I have added what these things mean to us as artists.

UT 2003 will feature Karma Physics which is basically the nice rag doll effects you've probably seen in demos. (When your character dies in-game the physics system in UT 2003 should be able to do the animation for that.)

Textures can be very insane sizes now. Up to 2048x2048. (The texture size for your character, 2048x2048 is a bit higher and different than what I would use. But it is there if that is the way you wish to go. Also this map size may not be able to work on some video cards.)

It looks like there might be an extra tool that allows skinners to paint on characters in 3D! (This would be very helpful for skinners. But I will not be going into this in this tutorial.)

The new UnrealEd will feature an Animator Browser which allows animators to import models and animations into .ukx package files. Additionally, you can adjust the LOD and many other settings in the editor. (All models can have their own animations, and also you will be able to make your own set of LODs for your character.)

UT 2003 supports a nice bone attachment system. You can attach any Actor to any bone in the character's skeleton. (The animation system in UT 2003 is skeletal animation only. You can also attach any actor; this includes things like the particle system, like the one I will be adding to my character.)

These are the some thing I know about the UT 2003, and there maybe things will changed and added to this list. But these are the design specks I will be keeping with in for the tutorial.

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Brendan George BrendanDoord@hotmail.com

Mid-Poly Modelling

09/2002