My first 3D model by Myke-P aged 27 and one quarter.

So, I finally took the plunge into the world of 3D.

As I'm just practicing and don't particularly care about the model format, I'm using GMAX, discreet's freeware baby brother to 3DSMax.

Following through their beginner tutorials, here's my first real model, a "P38 Fighter plane" according to the tut. ;)



Next up, I'm going to attempt something of my own creation using the techniques I've learnt thus far. Tis a good day. :)

Btw, people keep talking about the number of "tris" and "polygons". It's all greek to me, so if anyone could explain (and perhaps tell me how to find out), that'd be great.

Nice! (although with a touch of the marital aid about it) - it's a brave new world of 3d for you Myke, how exciting!

Dunno how to find out how many triangles is in your model with the package you're using, but in blitz3d, you use the handy little command trisrendered()

A polygon is 2 tris. I think.

Marital aid? Well, I know that big noisey machines are generally regarded as over-compensation, but.. ;)

Is a "face" the same as a "tri" do you think. Gmax hints that the model has "400 faces"?! If it is what I'm after, is that any good or is it too much for a model such as this (pretended I'd want to use it as a realtime model in a Blitz project)?

If you're using GMax then Face is the same as Tri. Polygons are collections of 1 or more triangles or faces. Normally when speaking about polygon counts, one refers to the amount of faces/triangles. So in general terms face=triangle=polygon.

400 polygons/faces/triangles is fine, as long as you're not going to have hundreds of them flying around at the same time. If it's the players plane you can go up to ~2000-3000 polygons, without worrying too much.

Ohhh, and very nice for a first try :)

Fredborg

What Fred said!

Looks great for a first attempt, Gmax is a slippery bugger though as you can't use it in commercial games.

>Marital aid?

Or are they engines?

Sorry.

Welcome to 3D Mr Pea :)

I haven't used Gmax but in 3ds max to find out the polycount you go to the tools menu (the little hammer whatsit... the last tab after the create and modify doobries) and select the polygon counter... you may have to press the more button to find it.

And the model... it looks alright I spose :)

The polygon counter on the utilities tab should be present in G-Max, but you need to ensure it's counting triangles and not polys. Luckily this is simple in 3dsMax, and it's probably the same in G-Max.

If you have an editable poly object, it will count polygons. And polygons can vary from one triangle to dozens of triangles, so that doesn't tell you much.

If your object is an editable mesh object, it will count triangles. Simple as that.

It's normal workflow for most Max modellers to do all their modelling in E-Poly, convert to E-Mesh to get an accurate polycount and then go back to E-Poly to continue modelling.