During the end half of the second semester of 2012 everyone in my class group was tasked with creating playable games of some description. I had created numerous art assets for other projects during the first half of the semester among those was a crossbow.

Without the bolts the crossbow alone came in at 2250 polygon tris which was the original target budget I’d set myself at the beginning. As the project grew in scope, and the crossbow’s purpose was slightly abstracted I knew I’d have to model a lower polygon version, or at least reduce the polygon count of the existing one.

The lower polygon version was only 1000 polygon tris including one bolt (888 with no bolt), it was created using the original crossbow as a template, removing polygons in a way as not to impact greatly on the UV mapping of the model. In the end parts of the UV map were redone and laid out differently which required me to create a new diffuse map (though a lot of texture elements were pulled from the original diffuse map and recycled).