quadtree quarterpounders

April 13, 2021 2:38 PM

Low Poly Videogame Foods is a twitter account that aggregates images of low polygon-count food objects in videogames.
posted by cortex (14 comments total)

So, the soda cans from Half-Life are seven sided, which I'd never noticed before. I wonder if this is a shader thing that the faces need to be less than 60 degrees apart to avoid a sharp edge in render?

Still, it's curious that someone decided eight sides would be just too many and to abandon symmetry for having one fewer side. Or maybe having a shape without point connected symmetry lines looks more round?

So many questions.
posted by meinvt at 3:01 PM on April 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

I submit for your appreciation: Sims 3 Lobster Thermidor
posted by phunniemee at 3:04 PM on April 13, 2021 [5 favorites]

So they're only doing food objects, and not the Tesla Cybertruck?
posted by Huffy Puffy at 3:10 PM on April 13, 2021

In France it's referred to as a Royale with polys.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:50 PM on April 13, 2021 [7 favorites]

Some how I thought this would be loaded with PaRappa the Rapper. Did I not scroll far enough?
posted by bdc34 at 4:13 PM on April 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is perfect as my doctor said I should reduce my polygon intake.

In a similar vein, Low-Poly Animals.
posted by subocoyne at 4:28 PM on April 13, 2021 [3 favorites]

And when you get a new graphics card and move the Food Quality slider all the way to the other side, you get this montage of every meal you can cook in Final Fantasy XV.
posted by straight at 4:43 PM on April 13, 2021 [6 favorites]

Kinda love this one for its "eh, good enough" nature.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:04 PM on April 13, 2021 [3 favorites]

Katamari Damacy achieves the remarkable feat of having low-poly foods that still look tasty.
posted by zompist at 6:04 PM on April 13, 2021 [5 favorites]

Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Nothing like a quick stop to eat half a summer sausage after fighting an Übersoldat or leather-clad SS assassin.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:12 PM on April 13, 2021

A senior light artist For Destiny2 is also a mycologist, and did a remarkably subtle series of voxelled species a couple of years ago, start from here. (Not all of these are food objects, no.)
posted by progosk at 11:18 PM on April 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

Posting pizza from GTA: San Andreas and then following it up with pizza from Cyberpunk 2077 is, in the words of Nathan Explosion, brutal.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:32 AM on April 14, 2021

Would the Giant Banana from Mario Cart be suitable for vegans to eat? On the one hand, it's a banana. On the other, it has a face.
posted by at by at 6:54 AM on April 14, 2021

So, the soda cans from Half-Life are seven sided, which I'd never noticed before. I wonder if this is a shader thing that the faces need to be less than 60 degrees apart to avoid a sharp edge in render?

I remember an extremely old .plan post from Paul Steed (the 3D artist for Quake) where he mentioned the psychology of choices like this for "round" objects. This was the early days of 3D games, so you had to optimize every single polygon (IIRC the models in Quake were just a few hundred polygons each).

Quarter-century-old memories here, but it was something like:

- 4 facets around: A block. You're not fooling anybody.
- 5 facets: A pentagon. Better because the facets aren't uniform but still a bit too blocky for non-detail work.
- 6 facets: Too uniform, looks unnatural.
- 7 facets: Ideal because the extra facet breaks up the uniformity without adding too many polys.

It wouldn't be a smoothing thing, since even Quake had smoothing groups implemented, on the player/enemy models at least (world geometry was a different matter).
posted by neckro23 at 8:11 AM on April 14, 2021 [7 favorites]