In this short tutorial I will try to cover the basic steps in making a low poly object for use in gaming. The subject of today's lesson will be an umbrella made for the "serious" modification for Serious Sam entitled HiT-SQUAD.

To begin we'll use the disc tool to create the basic shape of our umbrella. You can find the disc tool under the Create Menu. In the top viewport stretch out a disc centered on the axis with a radius of 1 meter and no height. Or you can use the numeric window (n key) to put in the exact values.

Next we're going to bevel out the top to give our umbrella top some volume. Three bevels should be enough to get the job done. Select the face of the disc and turn on the bevel tool (b key). Make the first bevel with a shift of 140mm and an inset of 140mm.

Now make two more bevels with the following settings:
Bevel 2 - Shift 100mm, Inset 210mm
Bevel 3 - Shift 70mm, Inset 600mm

You might notice that the top of our umbrella is looking a little squared off. That can be easily fixed by selecting all the points in the middle of the umbrella and using the Weld Average tool found under the Detail tab.

Now we can add a little realism to our model. Start by selecting every other row of points in the top view of the model.

Using the stretch tool scale down these set of point by 90% on both the X and Z axis.

And scale the same points down by 90% on the Y axis as well.

Before we move on the the next part make sure and give this chunk of your model a surface. Use the q key to bring up the change surface window. I called my surface umbrella_top. Later you might also want to go into the surface editor (ctrl+ F3) and set this surface to double-sided.

All that is left now is to make the pole for our umbrella. In a new layer we'll make another disc. This time it will be centered on the x and z axis with a radius of 40mm, a height of 1.8 meters and only six sides.

Since the top and bottom of the pole most likely won't be seen by the player we can delete them to save some polygons.

Now all that's left is to give the pole a surface - I called mine umbrella_pole - and turn all our faces into triangle. To accomplish this last step make sure you have both of your layers selected and the use the Triple tool found under the Construct tab or using the shift + t shortcut.

There you have it! Our beach umbrella is ready to go.

To learn more about HiT-SQUAD or Serious Sam visit their websites: www.hit-squad.net and www.serioussam.com,or you can find out more about Trey Terrell at his website www.littadpole.com - © 2001-2002 Trey Terrell