[mtmckinley]

December - January Challenge!

Game Art!

In huge, self-promotional egotistic fashion, this next challenge will focus on game art in celebration of my book's release. Read on for the rules and guidelines!

1) Show concepts! Show progress!

2) The goal is to create a piece of game art. Characters are very popular obviously, but you're not limited to just characters/creatures. However, keep your triangle (tri) polycount at or below 7000!

3) Texturing IS required and it is also required that you show your finished texture sheets. Feel free to watermark them to prevent stealing.

Keep texture resolutions at powers of 2 (256x256, 512x512, 1024x1024). Try to keep total texture usage down to fit on a 2048x2048. That doesn't mean 1 big texture, but if you were to total all your textures, they wouldn't go bigger than this.

Keep in mind that four 256x256 = 1 512x512, four 512x = 1 1024x, etc.

The kinds of maps that are available:

Color/Diffuse (obviously)
Alpha/Opacity/Transparancy
Specular
Reflectivity
Normal (Bump Mapping, sorta)
Emissive

Don't forget these add up as you accumulate them, so pace yourself.

Look forward to a Normal Map creating tutorial I'll be making soon.

UPDATE: you can find it here - http://www.simplymaya.com/movie_page...tml?tut_id=102

4) BONUS goal(s): If you really want to challenge yourself, keep your polycount below 3500! Also, whether you go for the lower polycount or not, pose your entry in a cool way for the final thread.

5) Label your thread thusly:

Dec/Jan - Norm or Noob - Your name

Choose to classify yourself as a Normal or Noobie class entry. Whichever class you choose is the class your final submitted entry will compete against! A winner will be chosen from both classes.

6) Mods and Admins can enter, but are inelligible to win and do not count toward the Grand Prize consideration of 8 or 5 entries mentioned below. If a mod chooses to participate, choose "Mod" class rather than Norm or Noob.

7) If 8+ Normal entries and/or 5+ Newbie entries finish among the 3 Simply sites participating, a Grand Prize will be rewarded to BOTH classes! Regular VIP point prizes will be awarded to both a Normal and Newbie winner, if the Grand Prize criteria of entries is not met!

8) Final entries must be posted into a Final Entry thread that a mod will create in the last couple weeks of the challenge.

The due date of the challenge is February 28th!

Normal Grand Prize:

A signed copy of my book "The Game Artist's Guide to Maya" and 14 points.

Newbie Grand Prize:

A signed copy of my book "The Game Artist's Guide to Maya" and 14 points.

Both winners have the option of waiving the book in favor of:

Normal - a different book
Newbie - additional 14 points
--------------------------------------------

PRIZE UPDATE!

Hey, guys, I think I'm going to make a special case this time, since I'm the one providing the book part of the Grand Prize and nix the minimum number of entries...

Yep! 2 signed books WILL be given out no matter what!

HOWEVER

This only applies if the winners accept the book that I'm providing (ie. MY book ). If they would rather have another book (understandable for SL and SMax's case since it's a Maya book) I'm going to have to go back to the minimum entries (8 norm or 5 noob) because then it would the Simply3DWorld site paying for it.

So, yes, even if only 1 person finishes in each category, they'll get the prize... but c'mon... don't let them have it that easily, will ya!? :p

Sound fair? Let me know what you think.

[puppet]

wow! cool idea, i might enter this one.

does it have to be a made up piece of game art or could we use real characters/creatures etc?

[mtmckinley]

just so long as you model/texture it yourself without any outside models/texturs and you're fine.

[Zeeman]

Nice one! Could we make characters from already existing games?

[mtmckinley]

I'd prefer if you did, to put your own spin on it and make certain that it is all your work and not pulled off of pre-existing work.

[Hiraghm]

Need to sticky this thread, mtmckinley?

[mtmckinley]

Indeed. Thanks!

[Sharp]

yay game art

id love to enter but ill probably end up leaving it again. mayb if i get a tablet before finish date i might enter to try it out.

[Zeeman]

I've got 2 questions for u Mike:

If i complete my model within a month and start another model to go along with it, can they each have eg. 5000 polys each=10000 polys in the whole scene etc., or does it have to be total 7000 for everything included?

Also:

Can we use quads instead of triangles???

[puppet]

i think we have to use tri's not sure about the other part but i was thinkin the same

[mtmckinley]

You can use quads, but you have to count the triangles for your final count.

If you finish an entire project in a month and it's :tup: then you can start another one. Both would be entered together as one entry, though.

[Zeeman]

triangles??? I dont know much about this stuff! How can you count triangles when you've got a whole bunch of quad polys?

[mtmckinley]

I don't know about Lightwave so much so maybe some of the guys here will be able to say, but in Maya (for example), there is a Triangulate command as well as a triangle poly counter in the polycount HUD.

If Lightwave has no such options, then figure that however many quads you have, you have double that number of triangles. So, 1000 quad faces is approximately 2000 triangles.

[mtmckinley]

Hey, guys, just wanted to show an image of the character that my book goes over how to make as an example! He's 3500 tris using 3 textures - 1 512x for the body, 1 256x for the head, and 1 256x for the sword.

http://www.mtmckinley.net/book/silenus4.jpg
http://www.mtmckinley.net/book/silenus_steps.jpg
http://www.mtmckinley.net/book/silenus_texture.jpg

And an animation clip:

http://www.mtmckinley.net/book/animation1.zip

No, animation is not required, nor wanted for this challenge.

[Mark]

Originally posted by Zeeman triangles??? I dont know much about this stuff! How can you count triangles when you've got a whole bunch of quad polys?

Just to add to Mike's comment on this one, there's a number of ways you can get LW to work with tris.

First, you can force Modeller to work with triangles only by opening up the Options panel (o) and selecting 'Triangles' as your polygon type.

If you prefer to work with quads, then simply use the 'Triple' command (Multiply\Triple).

In order to work out your polygon counts, if working in quads, simply double the number of polygons to convert this to a Triangle count. (General rule of thumb is that any regular polygon having n vertices can be split into n-2 number of triangles).

Hope this helps...