wireframes of professional 3D models

Reznik

So this is kind of an odd request I guess, but I'm wondering if there's anyplace I can see wireframes from models from videogames. I read somewhere that the model for Snake in MGS3 is just 4k polys, and I'm nowhere near that economical yet, so I'd like to see how the pros do it.

The portfolios I've browsed don't really have wireframes at all, they just have the finished models, and I keep running in to a lot of super high-poly stuff but that's not what I want. I'm aiming to find models that look really good with as little geometry as possible.

Also if there are any simple model extracting tools for PC games, I'll give those a shot too. I tried seeing if there was anything like that for Mass Effect but so far nobody's been able to do it.

Birudojin

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the 3D models used in games these days have more than one version; there is a high res version (which is what it sounds like you are finding), that is used to generate a normal map of the character. This is the model which has lots of small details painted on, such as creases in fabric, skin pores, and other details that used to be done purely through the model's texture. The second model is a lower resolution version, built off of the normal map model, which will be in the 4k range. The normal map from the higher resolution model is applied to this lower resolution one, allowing those small details to appear in the appearance of the lower resolution model without needing to actually render them in-game.

Mind you, I'm not an artist by trade, and I've not done anything semi-serious with it since the quake 3 days, so take that with a grain of salt

As far as resources go, you could try the following sites. They're public sites, so they may have some images available to download, although I've not looked at them in detail in a while. A number of the people who have posted on these sites in the past have been either professionals or people working at a comparable skill level, however.

http://boards.polycount.net/
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/
http://forums.cgsociety.org/index.php?

flatlinegraphics

yeah, there is a lot of texture and light baking going on with newer game models. and a whole lot of it is in the texture, rather than the model. a little displacement and bump maps, and you get the impression of lots of geometry without alot of poly's.

you might want to look at the modding community for something like half life or quake/doom. there are alot of modded charecters out there for those games, not just new skins. and atleast with that you don;t have to crack mgs4 and extract the models, which would be difficult and possibly illegal.

http://www.turbosquid.com/gmax
might be a good place to start. link to the gmax download and to a huge library of mods.

Reznik

Awesome, thanks for the links.

I figured a lot of the detail came from the textures. I'm never really sure where I should stop modeling and leave it up to the textures, since we haven't really worked on creating our own textures yet at school, so my Ink n' Painted barbarian model came in at around 8k polys with mesh smooth