Realtime Ranchers 3D model Pack

A free 3D model pack including Horse and Cow models are available for download from http://download.lyndondaniels.com/ranchers/

The pack includes both models in .blend and .obj format so you should be able to get the models into just about any 3D application! The geometry of each model is extremely light, with both models equating to a total poly count of approximately 10K (incl hair, teeth and accessories), which makes the digital characters perfect for realtime applications. The models also come with lossless, high resolution 2K Texture maps including:

Color Maps
Normal Maps
Ambient Occlusion Maps

And best of all, the models and textures are licensed under CC0, so you are free to use them in commercial, educational and any other project you can dream up without attributing the author, lyndondaniels.com!

For you folks out there that love animated gifs here’s a little gif depicting the steps taken to model and texture the horse.

The process for creating both models is quite similar and methodical,

First the characters are modelled with edges, vertices and quadrangles that are added and pushed into position.
The modelled character is then given a multires modifier in order to prepare it for digital sculpting.
Once the digital sculpting is completed the higher level sculpt data is applied to the base level model (the original modelled character).
With the base character more closely representing the form of the highest sculpt level, a UV map is created using the base model.
The UV map is then tweaked to reduce stretching and improve texture space distribution.
With the UV map completed the high resolution sculpt data can then be baked into the realtime model’s associated texture channels in the form of Normal and Ambient Occlusion Maps.
The Color/Diffuse/Beauty Map is then created with reference photographic imagery, 3D painting, 2D painting and AO blending.

You can also download the horse from turbosquid and a texture-less version of the cow from blendswap or just head on over to http://download.lyndondaniels.com/ranchers to download the entire pack for free.