Leech (1)

[Viech]

Ok, first of all, we don't use sub-scatter maps, so all the details have to come from diffuse, normal and specular map.

Your normal map seems very flat and the base model seems very detailed, I guess you should move many more details into the normal map. The stem should really only be a single continuous area on the texture maps, just like the head. You shouldn't be able to look through the stem, make sure the vines are really just bumps on a continuous surface. (When I said the outer layer of vines could remain in the low poly version, I meant that the stem would not be flattened to a dimple cylinder, but it should still be significantly closer to a cylinder than to the high poly model.) The same applies to the head: The convex shape of it allows you to put nearly all of the detail in the normal map and leave only very rough bumps on the model. 8.5k isn't far from what is acceptable but still I guess you can easily get down to something in the range of 2-4k without sacrificing much ingame quality. The stand should also be more prominent on the normal map.

Speaking of ingame, there's no need to paint the gills black as the lighting model will do this in most situations except when the leech is built on top of a light source (in which case the gills should be the only thing illuminated). Just give the leech a dull diffuse map and a strong normal map and the game will do the rest.

Have a look at this and this post for an example of how details should be spread across mesh and maps.

[kuntiss]

Made the renders with maya VRAY again. Regular material this time. I changed the UV set. Remade the normal and diffuse maps. I wasn't able to lower the poly count though. When lower it I just start losing vines. Changed the stem shapes as well too.

last_res.jpg (170.57 KiB) Viewed 461 times

[Viech]

Yes, this looks better! However, I wonder why your poly count didn't go down significantly when you moved more details in the normal map. Can I see a wireframe render? I'm curious whether it's really just the vines eating up all the polys or whether there's more room for local optimization.

Apart from that the model and textures look good. Can you rig/animate, too? If not we can assign it to an animator but those are rare and it could take a while to get the model ingame then. In terms of animation we would need spawning (after the strucutre has grown (read: scaled) to full size, it would for example expand the head), idle (e.g. a subtle pulsating of the head), pain (the structure got hit and will contract for a short moment) and death (the structure is about to explode and will pulsate and move in panic).

[kuntiss]

I tried couple of ways to lower the poly count, every time I do it the vines at the end either starts shattering or loses their shapes a lot so the textures don't fit on them at the end =(

wire.jpg (172.29 KiB) Viewed 439 times

I am really bad at rigging and animating stuff. I would rather If you can assign the animation to someone else. But I can check with some of my friends too for the animation/rigging.

[chris]

You might want to retopo it by hand ? Just using the decimation master or the like for the final lowpoly isn't sufficient.
There are so many polys on the head that can be saved and used on the vines instead. And the poly distribution on the head is very uneaven too.

[Viech]

Yeah, as I expected. Chris is right: Especially the head can probably be brought down to a fraction of the current tris count. I assume the stand can also be optimized further, there are a few regions with quite a high density, too.

The rigging/animation part is fine, we'll find someoneone to do it eventually. It just means you won't be able to see your model as a part of a realease anytime soon, since there are already a few finished models awaiting animation.

[kuntiss]

Manage to lower it down to 5.3k. It loses a bit from the shape and the detail when it is lowered. Leech is in the download in below. I put the maps fbx's and obj's of the 8.5k and 5.3k mesh.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o993lcu8wvq5h ... _model.rar

I am sorry about not being able to animate. I am really terrible at that. =(

[Viech]

Hey, we are currently working on getting the model ingame, please be patient. If there are further issues with the ingame model I'll send Ishq here to explain.

[Ishq]

This is our initial look. Also, it seems your 5.3k poly count was in quads? That's ₁₀.6k tris, which is still quite a lot. Perhaps some of our modelers can give you tips on how you can slash the poly count. We'll scale it down, play with the textures and then Viech will tell you additional changes to make.

[kharnov]

You can probably cut a lot of detail on the underside of the mushroom head. The gills can probably mostly be done through the normal map. Also, I feel the texture itself should be darker.