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Low poly models without the low poly style (programming.dev)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello, I'm building an RTS game and need to find some models for the environment. However all models that I can find usually have too many faces for the scale of my game.

I would like to find for example tree models with max 100 faces that's not in the classic cartoony low poly style, but a realistic style. Preferably even with lower quality LOD models.

Could someone point me in the right direction or give me some good search terms?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is it possible for you to modify models? It might be worthwhile to try looking into assets that can be billboarded or are baked down from higher fidelity models.

I don't know which engine you're using but many of them have solutions for generating their own LODs (with varying levels of effectiveness) too.

But if finding them fully finished like this is absolutely necessary then I'm afraid I don't have any helpful information.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I've found using the "decimate" function in blender good at lowering faces, but it only takes me so far (got maybe 250 faces to 100, but no lower). But I'll probably go for the oblivion style billboarding since I'm just prototyping anyway.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

It's a million dollar question, isn't it. I'd think you'll need to consider having baked textures as an option.

What engine are you using? That makes a big difference.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

JMonkeyEngine, a very bare engine built in Java. I was thinking of creating a billboarded model for the last LOD level, but I need to find some models that fit first.

If format is relevant then preferably .gltf, but anything that blender handles works.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I don't know it, but if it supports transparent textures, you could try something like this: https://animium.com/2008/08/lowpoly-trees. The basic idea (not exactly what's in the link) is that each branch is a texture on a plane facing your camera - clearly works only if camera angle doesn't change. Depending on engine performance and distance from objects, you could simplify down to having 3-4 layers per tree. I'd call this something along the lines of "lowpoly parallax trees". I've seen it working very neatly in a top-down third-person demo of Blender Game Engine a while ago.

A neat way of producing these could be getting a hipoly model of a tree and culling sliced renders of its branches.

Of course, if you don't have things behind the tree, or the tree moving, you don't need parallax at all and could bake the whole tree on a small surface.

A lot of decisions depend on the exact affordances of the game.