Sensei Challenge No. 5 - Greebles!

[Tinukedaya]

Originally Posted by Sphynx

We did not set a cap as such, but remember that as part of the judging we are looking at the skill you have at building the geometry.

As a greeble is traditionally meant for multiple use, personally, I'd say don't breach 20,000 faces (thats NOT an official limit), but also remember that you need to use them well. If it takes you 8,000 polygons to make a hemi-sphere in the middle of greeble, then that's probably not a great statement to make to the judges.

Might be wise to ask for wireframes as part of final submition, for you to see the geometry maybe, uh?

[Pyrocitor]

How big and complex can the greeble be?
What I mean by that is can it be a similar compexity to the two left greebles (in the image) or more like the two right greebles - and yes those are Jedilaws greebles

If we did have a Poly limit then you wouldn't have to wory about the complexity as you would have to make a trade off between quality and complexity.
And that would to a degree help you judge the contest, as someone who's really efficient at modelling would be able to make a super complex quality greeble.

Ok, that was alot shorter in my head
Oh yea, and I'm guessing it's this rendering style your refering to

[Enterprise-E]

i think this would be more interesting if we would be given a basic hull shape that we must cover in greebles. Sorta like pimp my ship, just this would be "detail my ship to hell". Making just one greeble is meh... and will end up with greebles actually unusable because the huge polycounts. Every one will try to add more details than the others. a single greeble, irrelevant how complex would never be even close to 20k polies, because it would kill every model where it is repeatedly used.
Also, judging a single greeble is VERY subjective IMO, while judging the end effect of what we made from a predefined hull shape would be something more objective.

just my 2c

[Sphynx]

Nope - the contest is running (in theory) with people thinking about what they are doing ready for offical start on Monday. Its really up to you guys to get the best value for your polys - impressing us does not just mean giving us a great greeble remember, but also making it class as a greeble - as you've said E, too many polys and it becomes useless as a 'greeble'.

Impress us.

[Jedilaw]

Originally Posted by Enterprise-E

i think this would be more interesting if we would be given a basic hull shape that we must cover in greebles. Sorta like pimp my ship, just this would be "detail my ship to hell". Making just one greeble is meh... and will end up with greebles actually unusable because the huge polycounts. Every one will try to add more details than the others. a single greeble, irrelevant how complex would never be even close to 20k polies, because it would kill every model where it is repeatedly used.
Also, judging a single greeble is VERY subjective IMO, while judging the end effect of what we made from a predefined hull shape would be something more objective.

just my 2c

That same idea has occurred to me, but I am keeping it in mind as a possible later challenge. It might consist of something like "here's a basic box shape, here's a set of greebles, show us what you can do." There are other related challenges under consideration, which we think the members will enjoy.

As for poly counts and repeatability, not every greeble shows up dozens or hundreds of times. Some have only a handful of instances. Think of the more complex greebles on the Millenium Falcon: the really involved ones show up a lot less frequently than the more basic ones. Or think of the dome-shaped apparatus on the bottom of a Star Destroyer: it's definitely a greeble, as it has no known or apparent function (some say tractor beam, others say different) but it looks damned cool. And modeling it properly would be massively poly-intense, I would expect in the range of 100k or more. It wouldn't necessarily nuke a project, though, because it only shows up once on the ship.

Originally Posted by pyrocitor

How big and complex can the greeble be?
What I mean by that is can it be a similar compexity to the two left greebles (in the image) or more like the two right greebles - and yes those are Jedilaws greebles

If we did have a Poly limit then you wouldn't have to wory about the complexity as you would have to make a trade off between quality and complexity.
And that would to a degree help you judge the contest, as someone who's really efficient at modelling would be able to make a super complex quality greeble.

Ok, that was alot shorter in my head
Oh yea, and I'm guessing it's this rendering style your refering to

Yes, that's the "clay render" style we are referring to.

As for complexity, go wild. Speaking as the creator of those four greebles, I take more pride in the ones on the left than the ones on the right. In fact, the ones on the left are among what I consider to be a handful of my best publicly-released greebles. That is only my opinion of course, and it's not meant to suggest that a more streamlined greeble couldn't win if it looked striking enough.

You may have noticed that the more complex greebles are in fact combinations of other greebles that were also included in the released sets. I tend to create high-poly greebles by mixing and matching components until I have something that looks complex and interesting to the eye.

BTW, if you're looking for more inspiration, try entering terms like "porsche transmission" "Ferrari transmission" "automobile parts" or "engine parts" into Google Images. Some interesting stuff comes up.

[gonk droid]

wondering if sunken greebles are allowed? where some details start below and work up/out.

[TheMightySpud]

I like this idea, I'm not gonna win by a long shot, but I'm gonna have a go, hopefully learn something in the process :-D

TheMightySpud

[Jedilaw]

Originally Posted by gonk droid

wondering if sunken greebles are allowed? where some details start below and work up/out.

Sure. The structural criteria are wide open.

[gonk droid]

Originally Posted by Jedilaw

Sure. The structural criteria are wide open.

thanks.

[farcry]

Im in