Thought I'd post this cause I'm pretty pleased so far. Here's some renderings of a creature I'm creating for a game I'm working on. I'm a programmer who got tired of trying to get virtual team member artists to create artwork and decided to do it myself.

http://129.219.219.96/SampleArt/ren0.jpg
http://129.219.219.96/SampleArt/render0.jpg

Still not done yet, but it's coming along. The real-time model looks a lot like this (except really simple hands) and breaks down to less than 4000 triangles. I could reduce it more, but my goal is to have GeForce3 as the minimum specs, so 5000 triangles shouldn't be a problem. This model will help me find the optimum number I can handle.

Wow, that's very nice. I especially like the detail around the hands and fingers. One critique though, and this may be intentional, but his arms if place by his sides would touch his knees giving him somewhat ape like proportions. It also has the effect of making his legs look too stubby (even though they are behind a cloak). Overall very nice work though. Much better then I could do.

I may extend his torso/or shorten his arms. I haven't decided yet if I want to. It looks kind of freaky like that, and I kind of like it.

We'll see how he animates, and if it looks good with the extended arms then I'll keep it.

And no it wasn't on purpose. It was proportional, but then I reduced his complexity by chopping off part of his robe, and forgot to drag the other splines down to keep him the same length. Oops, but the result is kind of interesting.

But here's the cool point I was making, this was really easy to create, and a lot of fun. We programmers CAN create artwork for our games. We don't need artists, especially in the development phase of indie projects. I've had nothing but problems trying to get artists to create some artwork to test different aspects of the graphics code, and it's like pulling teeth. Now I know I can do it myself.

Wow! Have you used creature studio or any other prefab collection?

You should be an artist! :)

"5000 triangles shouldn't be a problem" unless you want to have 2 characters on screen, 5k polys is too damn much. Add 10-20k for level and you have a 40k polygons with just two characters. Then you need to account for texturing/lighitng time, etc. 1000k is stretched already, trust me :)

The model looks nice, except the part on the rinses, they look a bit artificial (specially around waist legs). Apart from that, nice work.

Actuallly my game takes place on a table. Not in a fully 3D world. Creatures are probably 90% of the geometry in the game.

And remember I'm setting Geforce3 as the minimum (By the time I finish GeForce 7 will probably be the standard :( ).

Besides I'm using this artwork as a test for what I can handle graphically. If it's too much, I'll reduce it.

GeForce3 is able to render thousands of triangles just for nothing. An example? DOOM3's demo at E3 were previewed in a GeForce3. DOOM3's models are about 6-7K triangles. But they need to be rendered three times (one for the model, and two for the shadows). Also they contain other GPU intensive things, like bump mapping, lighting, programmable pixel shading, etc. And they are not alone, there are other models and the background. However, the game wasn't going too bad in E3's computer. But it had to render lots of triangles.

However note that the rendering speed depends a lot in the method that you use to do the rendering. For example using a display list in OpenGL is a lot faster than doing glVertex(blah)...

I'll definately be using vertex lists not glVertex3f(..)

I'm also hoping to play around with vertex shaders. Since creatures are the main focus, I want animate along a spline curve rather than linear interpolation.

We'll see as we progress.

But my intial point still stands. We programmers can create quality art during the early development phase. It's much easier than trying to get a virtual team artists to do what you need. When we get farther along we'll bring in some artists, but not until we more of the graphics engine nailed down. And really, taking a break and doing artwork is really fun!!