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Heavy Crate
This is my latest model taken around 5 hours to complete. The idea is that someone or something has tried to pry open the top without success, presumably kids or a creature of some kind not knowing how to loosen the cargo straps.
I am thinking of maybe having somethings hanging out like wires or maybe you can see the lid of a ammo crate through the hole with a nice spec map, let me know what you think.
Oh and I used the presentation tutorial here on eat3D 
its great thanks
Mark
- 1245 reads
That's a strong kid.
The detail on the cargo straps, the depth of the geometry created by the straps and the diagonal wood supports and the bent top part really make this a unique "hey this is my crate" model. I like it (although 2k polys is a bit high if it's a non-important game asset).
hey thanks for the feedback , i may try reduce the tri count by 300 or so by removing a few nails and editing out some verts on the straps but i have already removed all back faces.
oh and dont underestimate the strength of kids, i used to build huge tree houses when i was 14 -15 haha 
Nice job!
Can you post a shot of some wires with some close ups please?
I think you could prob. get away with much less than 2k tris for an asset like this...prob. even less than 1k.
Cant wait to see more!
Nice piece. Like everyone has stated, 2k tri is extremely high. I would say 800k (Maybe) 550k would be ideal. Nuts and bolts can be achieved through Normal maps, and so can a lot of the detail on that buckle.
This looks pretty good for something to look at, but in terms of in-game, it would be a nightmare lol
Keep up the good work though! Can't wait to see some wires.
-Jeremy-
Hi guys thanks for the replys, much appriciated. 
I have been working on reducing the tri count and at the moment its at 1325,
I have removed most of the nails in the top and ill replace them with textures and normal maps.
I reduced the face count on the strap its self and left no back faces at all.
I have left 7 nails (9tris each) in the wood on the busted side of the model but i have removed the heads so they can be textured in to give the effect the nails are hammered rite in and sticking out of the bottom.
I know it looks like the handles on the buckle have the same amount of faces but i totally removed the back faces so each handle only has 4 faces as per the old one with each having 9 faces each. I also removed the extra piece of wood the crate sat at the bottom and I will replace it when texturing.
The only area i think i can reduce the poly count is on the strap as it has sides to give it thickness?? should i leave it as a flat plane?
check the images below
sorry it wouldnt let me attach my images but here they are
Good to see some reduction. Another thing you have to ask is, (Is this gonna be seen that close up?)
Based on that and its roll in the game or world you are creating, ask yourself (What is the importance of this asset)
One thing I Highly recommend you doing, is remove the nails and put planes there. Just create an alpha channel for the nail body. Actually creating the nails in 3d would be too much for an in-game asset. You really need to rely on those normal maps for a ton of your work. They are extremely powerful, and most people underestimate their capabilities.
The same thing applies to objects such as fences. Just like the nails, you don't want to model the actual 3d geometry. Instead, you want to project the texture and normal map onto a plane with an alpha channel. It will react to light and give you the illusion that the geometry actually exists. And it saves a lot of polycount. "More or less"
Keep reducing though. try to shoot for 150-300 polygons.
-Jeremy-
hi thanks for the feed back, yeah i was thinking the model would be seen up close, just an asset you would pass in game from time to time.
Can I just ask, do you mean try and reduce the poly count to 300 in total or reduce it by 300?
I will try make some more reductions and make my high poly version for texturing and post some more images soon
thanks again
mark
Hmm
@Jeremy,
I have to disagree with you there mate :/
The cost of the nails is nothing when compared to the cost of an alpha channel which would double the texture memory.
The main bottle neck of the current gen is materials and textures and for a fence an alpha would be worth the cost but for something as small as nails you would prob. get shot by your lead.
@Mark,
I would prob. just remove the LP nails completely and pull up the verts of the plank below so it intersects with the top...the normal map would handle the nails and the inside of the crate fine with just a plane.
I have done a few paint overs to show you what i would change. (Dont forget to remove all the faces that you will never see too )
I would shoot for a tri count of around 600 if you can...though if its for a portfolio shot you could prob. add a little more.
Hope that helps!
@andy: 1 plane that projects all the nails on it? that would cost more than all the nail geometry? I don't mean separate planes for each nail with separate textures and separate alpha channels. I thought it would be less costly to have 1 plane and one alpha channel that took care of all the nails.
Anyway. the more important matter I wanted to cover is polycount.
I do disagree with you on 600tris (Maybe for portfolio) but I don't think it would be good for ingame crate that is extremely close to the shape of a box. There is a ton of optimizing you can do because of its overall basic shape. Below I have shown some examples: and I took the liberty of Quickly re-modeling his model in low poly and achieved 452 tris and I ended up running out of time (Got lots to of work to do) I am positive I could reduce it even to 395 tris and still make it look 100% good when the normals were applied. Please don't critique the model I made though. It is meerly an example of reduction, and it was made in about 10 minutes.
-Jeremy-
For some reason it is uploading the wrong images and I can't get it to fix it. Here is the model with 452 polys after triangulation. I am confident I could get it lower than 400 though. Once again, please to do not critique. Its just a quick demonstration.
-Jeremy-
@Jeremy,
As for the nails with an alpha, yes it would cost much more to have an alpha channel than the very few polys it would take to model the nails.
As soon as you add an alpha channel you are basically adding another texture which would double your texture memory plus the cost of drawing the transparency, so the shader would cost much more to render than adding a few polys.
As i said before, the bottle necks for this gen are materials and shader complexity which are much more expensive than geo. because you each material now has at least 3 textures (Diffuse, Normal and Specular) plus any additional cost that you add for reflection and transparency passes.
Whenever you render a mesh in UE you basically get the first 600 tris. for free and then you get sliding scale of diminishing returns by removing polys vs performance gain.
Often its cheaper to just add more geo. to get the result you want, than to have a a ton of smoothing groups (and all the extra verts that go with them) as they are the main cost of mesh rendering and what should really be counted for the final cost of the asset.
For example, if you create a cube with SGs and then a bevelled cube, the vert. count is identical in both cases even though the bevelled cube has more faces.
Obviously you dont want to go crazy and have a 2k barrel or something but if you have the first 600 tris for zero cost, you might as well use them right?
Kevin Johnstone stated on PC that he spent a few months removing 2 million tris from a UT3 level, only gained 2 or 3 fps after all that work...not really worth the time considering all the time spent which could have been used on something else.
Hmmm... interesting. The shader info makes sense. I will look into that more because I have heard differently from other people. Thanks for the feedback though. If that is the way it goes, then Its good news to my ears I would love to have that extra ability to create much higher res (Low Poly) models.
-Jeremy-
On another topic, I like your composition. (First image) I see you watched the Rendering and Presentation Tutorial. Having a comp like the one you created is much better than just a plain render. Good job on that Sorry I didn't comment on that sooner.
-Jeremy-
Yea i was happy when i learnt the info too 
It would be intersting to hear what the "other people" say...Keep me posted!
hi guys thanks for this feedback
I have done some more reductions although i couldn't get rid of some detail as I i felt i was sucking the life from the model, so i kept some nails and the full strap as i think it might be hard to get a plain to blend into a normal map on a flat surface.
The whole strap is only like 16 tris anyway and all 6 nails total around 44 tris
I managed to get the whole crate down to 636 which i think is pretty respectable. I was talking to a friend in industry and he said they would usually shoot for around 700 - 800 for a close up LOD model like this depending on the environment. as this is only for my folio i think i will settle for 636 and begin a new model after i finish texturing.
check my reduction images below
UPDATE: I decided to add 10tris back in by reintroducing the wood the crate sat upon. The silhouette just looks so boring without that piece above the palate
This gets a thumbs up from me. I love the texturing job on the second image. 
Great Piece. Id like to see some of your other ones!
Nice job on the reduction
Keep it up mate!
That's a strong kid.
The detail on the cargo straps, the depth of the geometry created by the straps and the diagonal wood supports and the bent top part really make this a unique "hey this is my crate" model. I like it (although 2k polys is a bit high if it's a non-important game asset).