I use 3dmax 8 for 3d as the name says (soon upgraded to 9 on my school) and adobe photoshop cs2 and illustrator for 2d stuff like textures. You can get a trial of 3d max 9 here and download a trial of photoshop and illustrator here

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Are they pretty easy to use? Is it difficult to teach yourself? The only experience I have with making games is with flash, and I have got to say all my projects are exceptionally good. But I want to get involved in the gaming business and I want to get a head start on all the things im gonna have to learn in college.

I feel compelled to have my puny efforts mocked.... But first I want to get my excuses in early. I've just finished my first semester studying Computer Games Design at Uni, and one of my assignments was to make a model of my room and make 5 renders from cameras. I it was all going nicely, and I'd spend some time doing a little bit here and a little bit there... Concentrating on one or two bits (Mostly my PC). Then suddenly the assignment is due in 2 days time and I can't spend that long on it on the last day since I have to make it to heathrow, so I have to work VERY quickly, and by the time I set up my cameras I've got to leave in 30 minutes and I haven't slept at all that night. There are some things the are really bad >.< . Any way, here is the results:

 Quoting: UknownXL

Are they pretty easy to use? Is it difficult to teach yourself?

It is difficult to learn 3dmax but you could look at some tutorial pages and so and learn a little yourself, it's damm funny to learn so just go start

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This is my first time posting outside of the movies forums :P but this thread caught my interest. Heres a link to one of my first renderings (this was done for my 3d class, before we were taught how to do textures properly) http://ic3.deviantart.com/fs12/f/2006/318/7/0/bob.jpg Sorry the image is really big here (hence why I'm linking the image rather than directly showing it)... I'm not on my computer atm so I'm just linking this image from my deviantart site. And later for that class we got to animate the character on a stage (which we also had to make and texture) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PImo4TaWTOM its short and pretty low res... But its all I can show from this computer. I'm curious... Even though I've now taken a course in 3d, I still don't understand if there is a standard amount of tri's (or polygons) that 3d designers should aim for. I suspect the lower the better but... Is there an average number that can help define a model as being 'a good model' ?

Nice charicter that is wiked

Just made this from a school project, i'm gonna make a room that is complete destroyed after some wild party or something like that Only used today and yesterday and i have 4 weeks to complete it I really think this will be nice. The smokes looks ****ed up here when using transparent background as i do here . Oh yeah and nice pictures IISharperII and _Gremlin. (click the first image to enlarge)

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Ok, Neuray has some aswell. I know this is stupid, but at least it is 3D

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Champions '07/08.

Uh huh just a small update on my project, still got lots of things to add like table (to place the objects on surprise) , chairs, windows, door, lots of empty bottles, better walls with better texture, a shelve, another roof (i just copied the floor hehe) and maybe some blood on the wall after a fight.

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Poly count question: For games, you want as low as possible... For Next Gen I think the count is around 7000/8000 for a character. Btw nice work everyone =). I'll post some more Assyria (http://www.assyria-game.com) work once we get some more models done =).

 Quoting: Hilm

Poly count question: For games, you want as low as possible... For Next Gen I think the count is around 7000/8000 for a character.

Just to put that estimate in perspective for a second - While Gears of War uses an estimated 10,000 polys per model, Lair on PS3 apparently has somewhere between 100,000 and 170,000 polys per model, and in Metal Gear Soild 4, Snake's hair alone uses at least 20,000 polys (60,000 verticies, to be precise). Makes you think, huh?

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Yeah ok with LOD you can have alot more obviousally but without LOD features you want about those polycounts (LOD is where you have the same model is several levels of detail and the model is re loaded the closer or fartheraway it gets from the camera) Most next gen games use LOD, I assume your stating the polygon counts at the closest level (like if the model is 1 meter away from the camera or something)

I'm just reciting the polygon counts for the in-game models, to be honest. There's another game (who's name temporarliy escapes me) for the PS3 out at the end of the year where the complexity and physics of the hair on the main character alone is so great that they're assigning the entirety of one of the Processing Units to exclusively handle that and nothing else. A lot of the ground rules about games are changing now that multicore/threading techniques that use more than two cores are needed at the home computing level, and the levels of detail possible could also change quite drastically because of this, or so I'm told (well, from recent interviews with Valve and a few others, at any rate)

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From What I've heard in the Gears of War Cut scenes each character had 5 million poly's They of course used the Unreal Engine 3 so they have the power anyway here is a Couple of things I've done: The Castle was made by following a tutorial on enjoycg.com

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 Quoting: TempleoftheGods

From What I've heard in the Gears of War Cut scenes each character had 5 million poly's

Well the cutscenes doesnt have anything to do with the game ? Isnt it just a video rendered from a computer ?

 Quoting: matneee

Just to put that estimate in perspective for a second - While Gears of War uses an estimated 10,000 polys per model, Lair on PS3 apparently has somewhere between 100,000 and 170,000 polys per model, and in Metal Gear Soild 4, Snake's hair alone uses at least 20,000 polys (60,000 verticies, to be precise). Makes you think, huh?

The joy of good hardware.

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I'd assume that 5 million polys is everything in the whole scene, though, not 1 model. One model of 5 million polys running at even 30fps would involve throwing about 150 million polys about per second, so a few models and scenery on top, well... In theory, the x360s Xenos chip can do about 500 million polys/sec flat out, and the PS3s RSX should be able to do about 800 million on average. Mind you, those figures are from Wikipedia, which is never the most, er, reliable of sources, and they are only theoretical maximum rates (i.e, probably way more than can really be usefully done) Unless, of course, the article meant the models used to design the shaders were about 5 million polys - the ones in the cutscenes or game itself would ony be a tiny fraction of that, though...

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Mmm getting closer to end this project... But I have to work much if I need to have it done this friday !

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Here's some (sorta) new stuff I've done. I've animated my character again here without motion capture, all key frames in 3dsmax for my character animation class. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8BYVHwz9oU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOdQzjdb_F4 Oh and I've started modelling a couple new characters /o.o\ but for some reason they are not rendering properly atm... So I'll have to post them later. Whoa, that last picture is awesome maggot. Nice work.

Sorry for the double posting :P finally got my latest character to render properly though. And there hasn't been much activity in this thread lately so I have an excuse to bump it. Still need to do its eyes, but I think it's turning out.

 Quoting: IISharperII

Sorry for the double posting :P finally got my latest character to render properly though. And there hasn't been much activity in this thread lately so I have an excuse to bump it. Still need to do its eyes, but I think it's turning out. [qimg]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v146/123sharper/3d3.jpg[/qimg]

Looks cool What Program you using? I just brought Vue 6 Xstream That is just a quick thing i did with it (it is such an easy program to learn) I'm not happy with the lilly pads in that render though

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I'm still trying to persuade the art & design department at work to get a trial copy. What with it costing over $1000 an all...

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Took me ages to get enough for it (I'm broke now but it was worth it)

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I might accidentally order them one anyway. I'm sure nobody will notice £180 for a 'test upgrade' on one of the Uni PCs

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 Quoting: TempleoftheGods

Looks cool What Program you using? I just brought Vue 6 Xstream [qimg]http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l312/TempleoftheGods/otherjunk/lake.jpg[/qimg] That is just a quick thing i did with it (it is such an easy program to learn) I'm not happy with the lilly pads in that render though

Whoa O_O that is a sweet "quick thing" you did there. Or at least from my viewpoint :P since I'm still new at this. To answer your question, just using 3dsmax 8. As of currently it's the only 3d program I understand the basics of :P I went back and changed his face abit after this image and then rigged him with a biped so I can animate him later.. But this guy is only version one of this character design, might do more with him later.

Hey all. New here (registered for fable2). Anyway, Here´s some of my latest stuff. Currently all work in progress. Got some normalmap tweaking left. A bit outdated, Haven´t put a new screenshot online. Currently working on an entry for a competition. My girlfriend is the concept artist and texture artist. I do all the normalmaps, 3d, specular etc etc etc. Concept: http://pigged.net/domwar2-xisk/xisk_1.jpg 3D (older version to the left): http://pigged.net/domwar2-xisk/newprorps.jpg