Julius {l Wrote}:the low-poly has the problem that is is made up from lots of overlapping small parts
It definitively works well like this.
I used this type of low-poly for the pistol and the flamer and it ended way better than when i used the 1 mesh stuff (old shotgun, old pistol, sword...).
1 you save tons on tris not trying to link all vertex
2 Alow better animation of each part
3 Baking works perfectly, the way to do it is different, you have to bake it part by part (or by group of mesh that don't cause trouble).
4
A weapon is made of assembled parts with alot of bevel and cylinders.
Doing it 1 single mesh force you to link all the vertex, which make no sens and is a total waist of tris. It's absolutely logic to make each separated part of the weapon a separated "mesh".
At the end the model is 1 mesh, you just have to join everything (ctrl+J in blender)
If you can see any z-floating and overlapping corner on the new pistol and flamer let me know, because for me it just looks less distort and clumsy than the old pistol and shotgun.
Geartrooper used this kind of modeling
for all the new Sauerbraten weapons. I actually started to do it that way, after I looked at how he can get such clean looking weapons.
Also,
it's not the first model I make for Cube2 engine, so I start to know what render the best for this kind of object.
At the end, this low poly
only need an tris optimization (remove invisible faces, useless vertex, etc...)
You can watch the screen of the cube2 rifle, each separated part is a separated mesh (linked file)
I understand doing a single mesh for a character, organic shapes etc... but for a weapon, it seems to work better with separated part
About doing more concept and such, i don't feel like contributing anymore, sorry
I'll just look at forum sometimes and watch svn log. a few because I'll certainly be too curious to see how it evolve.
Let's just say that a game can't please anyone, and I started to whine/complain a bit too much lately, and it's usually saner (but harder) to leave than become a troll dick.That's why I recommended eihrul, fleeky, or even geartropper on the sauerbraten chan for any modeling related questions. (I will never thanks them enough for what they learned me generously)
As a general advice, don't be to arrogant while doing stuff
(which I kind of did with this post), but try to keep a learning mood
(which goes off with motivation, unfortunately). Formation is the best reward you can get for the time you can spend on the project.