My team and I are currently creating an UE4 game, and we wanted to ask you if you could give us some details about low poly modelisation.
We are in third year in a computing science school, and as we have practiced a lot, programming is not a problem, but modelization, texturing and baking are!
I am the only one who knows how to use 3D modelization software, as it has always been a passion for me and I have used Maya and 3DS Max for several years, to switch to Blender 1 year ago.
Unfortunately, I was only making rendering and I never really tried to create low poly assets, I am now completely lost to find a way to create good assets.
I do not really understand what kind of scheme I should follow :
Is it a good idea to always create a high poly asset, in order to project its details to a low poly one ?
What should I use in order to avoid giving a “clean” texture to my meshes ? (A wooden chair for example, which appear basically too clean, it should be a bit deteriorate)
When creating assets composed by smaller parts (such as stairs), should I always merge all the sub meshes and to bake the texture to it ?
I do not know if I am clear, but if you have any “process” that you follow at each time you create an asset that you can share to me, it would be very nice to help me to improve my skills in low poly creation.
I hope my post is understandable and that my english is ok.
No, not always. Sometimes you just don’t care when something’s going to be on-screen for a short time, or seen only at a distance. Most of the time though, yes. Much of the time the high poly doesn’t have to be very elaborate though, you can add a lot of detail in the texturing stage.
Paint dirty/damaged textures on it, obviously. You may also want to batter up your hipoly a little with sculpt tools. If you want an automated solution, look into some Allegorithmic products.
No, that would quickly expend your texture memory budget. In cases like that, you should isolate unique pieces, leave only those in the lowpoly mesh, then unwrap, then bake, then rebuild the lowpoly model by duplicating/mirroring/modifying the unique pieces. Make sure you have enough variation so it doesn’t seem repetitive (like two or three different steps in a staircase). After you’re done remember to create a separate UV map for the lightmap which has unique texture space for all of the mesh (unless your game only uses dynamic lighting).
Not really sure what you’re asking here. Once you’re done with the modelling, it’s standard fare - retopo, unwrap, bake, texture, rig/weight, animate, export. If you’re asking how to come up with the models, well, that’s for every artist to discover for himself.
Thank you for your answer.
I did not really get the part with the stairs actually. The goal would be to modelize one step, to texture it and to duplicate it to create another object ?
Do you have any tutorial that I can follow in order to really see how to do it step by step ? I’ll watch the fire hydrant tutorial from CGcookie which seems to be a really good approach for the beginning.
Unique pieces isolated. This model was unwrapped and baked onto. Then after the baking, the full lowpoly in the previous picture was rebuilt using the pieces from this one.
Like I said, I made the high poly first. The lowpoly in this case was created by stripping out unneeded geometry from the highpoly, but that doesn’t always work. Often you just model it a second time, around the highpoly.
Well… you could, in theory, but the mesh you got would be utter crap. So, no. Human intelligence is required for this
I heard that people who are modelling for games use ZBrush or MeshLab’s mesh optimization algorithms which reduce number of polygons but retain geometry.
But I didn’t try it.
