Grim Fandango Deluxe - Original Thread [Locked]

Blacksad · Post by **Blacksad** » Mon Feb 13, 2012 8:58 pm

Hello everybody.

I've wondered if i could join in to your project to help 3dmodeling. Im not a professional 3d-artist, so I have tried a little with mannys head to see, if i can handle it. The original model is very simple. Improofing poly count should be no problem, but the meshes are all made with triangles, so i built the whole head from scratch, using quads. makes further improvements easier.

At this point, the Head has 136 faces. The mesh is still very simple. With a sub surf modifier 2x applied on it, it makes about 2200 faces. Extrapolated to the whole model, it makes up to 10k-20k faces. maybe more, i don't know. how much detail would be needed for the main characters. Is 20k ok, or already to much? or maybe we could get much higher? I have no idea.

Here is a quick render. The shape needs a little bit more tweaking. overall, i tried to stay as close to the original as possible. i think it would change the mood to much if there are added details wich aren't in the original model. of course its a matter of taste

uv-mapping needs adjustment too, but its no problem so far.

Jackyboy · Post by **Jackyboy** » Tue Feb 14, 2012 5:46 pm

Blacksad wrote:Hello everybody.

I've wondered if i could join in to your project to help 3dmodeling. Im not a professional 3d-artist, so I have tried a little with mannys head to see, if i can handle it. The original model is very simple. Improofing poly count should be no problem, but the meshes are all made with triangles, so i built the whole head from scratch, using quads. makes further improvements easier.

At this point, the Head has 136 faces. The mesh is still very simple. With a sub surf modifier 2x applied on it, it makes about 2200 faces. Extrapolated to the whole model, it makes up to 10k-20k faces. maybe more, i don't know. how much detail would be needed for the main characters. Is 20k ok, or already to much? or maybe we could get much higher? I have no idea.

Here is a quick render. The shape needs a little bit more tweaking. overall, i tried to stay as close to the original as possible. i think it would change the mood to much if there are added details wich aren't in the original model. of course its a matter of taste uv-mapping needs adjustment too, but its no problem so far.

That does look quite good, but it looks like you have just put a "mesh smooth" on the mesh, 2200 for such a simple model is overkill, you would need to optimise more. Also most in game engines run with triangles, so if you don't export it with triangles the engine will do it for you (and not always as optimally as you could do it yourself)

I thought people might be interested in seeing what I have so far with Manny's office. I know it's not finished, but a little teasing never hurt anybody!

Pirateguybrush · Post by **Pirateguybrush** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 3:43 pm

Looks good blacks, but you should take Jacky's comments on board. Have a look at what Darxen's been doing, it's not just smoothing. Still, happy to have you on board, and I'm sure you can help with other characters (Darxen has almost finished Manny).

Jacky, that looks great. Are those details on the walls polys, or displacement maps? Either way, nice start. I'm not sure what we'd use that for (proof of concept if we tried to make a 3d version of Grim, or re-render backgrounds?), but great work either way.

JohnnyWalker2001 · Post by **JohnnyWalker2001** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 4:40 pm

Pirateguybrush wrote:Johnny:
The essense of the original characters is really important, and I agree we don't need to change his design at all. I'd like to stick closer to in-game Manny than concept-art Manny. The main point of remodelling should really be to make it so you can't count the giant polygons on the characters, but we should aim to keep their paper cutout, angular look.

There's some confusion here. Manny's square arms are a result of the technical limitations of the time, they're not an attempt to make him look like his outfit it made of paper.

Just to cover this, too: Manny is NOT made out of papier mache. I think some people have taken the "Calavera" inspiration too literally. There's several references in the game that make it clear that everyone is made of BONE.

I personally think these original sketches from Peter Chan are what we should be aiming for:

JohnnyWalker2001 · Post by **JohnnyWalker2001** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 4:41 pm

I think BlackSad's might be my favourite so far... How feasible it is to have that in the game, I don't know.

cplhenshaw · Post by **cplhenshaw** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 6:43 pm

I'm not familiar with the residual engine, but it's safe to say that 20k polygons would be excessive. For some context I think even modern games keep within 5k polygons.

I've tried models with ~2k polygons and there doesn't seem to be any performance issues so I think this could be a reasonable ballpark figure to aim for. The original Manny model has 323 faces, so with 6 times the polygons it should be enough to knock out any corners and reshape as desired. Also when it is ingame, and on a portion of the screen it will most likely appear just as smooth

Can you display the frames per second in residual? If so I can try various polygon counts a bit more scientifically and see how they perform.

Jackyboy · Post by **Jackyboy** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 6:44 pm

Pirateguybrush wrote:Jacky, that looks great. Are those details on the walls polys, or displacement maps? Either way, nice start. I'm not sure what we'd use that for (proof of concept if we tried to make a 3d version of Grim, or re-render backgrounds?), but great work either way.

All polys, by the time I would have figured out how to do the displacement map properly, I may as well have just modelled it! But thanks, yeah I didn't know exactly how it would be used, if at all, rendering out higher res backgrounds was what I had in mind though. If not, I'll put in in the Unreal engine as just something to have a look about

ezekiel000 · Post by **ezekiel000** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 7:49 pm

cplhenshaw wrote:Can you display the frames per second in residual? If so I can try various polygon counts a bit more scientifically and see how they perform.

Add show_fps=true to the [grim] section of your .residualvmrc

cplhenshaw · Post by **cplhenshaw** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:07 pm

Ah, knew it would be nice and easy like that. Thanks.

Blacksad · Post by **Blacksad** » Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:26 pm

Tried a new one. This time without subdivision.

Smoothness looks quite good, i think. Except areas like the outline of the upper head, but as far as i know, this is usual for low poly models. The Head-Mesh has now 228 quads. Converted to triangles would result in 456 faces. Is this amount ok, or should i reduce more geometry. I think there are a few more loops i could delete. But if there should be more detail (cheeks for example), i think its hard to reduce geometry.

Here is a screenie of the wireframe.

Of course i don't want to model another Manny. Would be a waste of time when there is already one in work. I like the one from Draxen by the way

Im looking forward to do one of the other caracters.

Pirateguybrush · Post by **Pirateguybrush** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:03 pm

The problem with round arms is deformations. As the models are made of components and don't actually bend, a rounded arm will give convex elbow-pits, which looks weirder than the flat ones a rectangular ones give. That's why I'd suggest we keep a more "paper" look for the bendy parts, and go for a smoother, more bony look with the actual bones. It also helps maintain some connection to the original models, while at the same time allowing for a smoother look. The exception for this would be the organic characters (Glottis, bees, demons). For them we probably do need to stick to more rounded shapes, but try and design them in a way that will look okay in motion.

ultraneonoirantihero · Mon Feb 20, 2012 8:28 pm

Has anyone made any kind of successful import with new high-poly 3D model and new textures? Some proof that re-modeling and re-implementation works?

Pirateguybrush · Post by **Pirateguybrush** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:03 am

Look through the thread. Yes, we have. We've not tested how far we can push the polycount yet though.

cplhenshaw · Post by **cplhenshaw** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:46 pm

OK, so I mocked up some Manny's of various polygon counts just by subdividing various pieces of his body, then observed the frame rate in game.

The frame rate is capped and seems to hover around 33.33 with the original model and the smaller polygon counts. The first hit to performance is at 3k polygons when it dropped ever so slightly from that rate, and from there upwards it drops off pretty quickly.

So the sweet spot would be somewhere between 2k and 3k where we have enough polygons to do some reasonable modelling, and the engine can still keep above the frame rate cap.

Jackyboy · Post by **Jackyboy** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:51 pm

That is fantastic info you have got! Well done!

The only problem is it depends how many polygons total are on screen. It's all well and good saying we can have a 3k poly manny. But what if there is manny, domino, glotis and the car on screen all at 3k polys each. 12k will mean that the engine will take a real hit. Need to figure out which scene has most real time models in and take it from there really.