I’ve modeled a game (unity 3d) character in blender and was wondering if I should separate the arms, legs, head, torso all as a separate mesh? I also want to add some armor. Should I add it to the body or as a separate mesh? Also, I was planning on creating normal & ambient occlusion maps from their high poly mesh, but when I bake onto the low poly, the mesh shrinks a bit. (ex: there is now a gap between the head and the body after baking) Is this the correct workflow?
first of all, about the arms and legs being separate from the body, it all depends on your game… if, for example you want your character to be customizable (player able to choose new boots/greaves and gloves/sleeves) then it would be preferable to use separate meshes. if, however, your character is locked to a single appearance, you would get a much cleaner finish having a single mesh. as for your second question, i would use the armour mesh in place of a body mesh… this way you eliminate problems with one mesh sticking through the other. as for the baking, i don’t quite understand your question…
For now, I’m planning on only a single appearance for my character. Thanks for the help. I’ll go with the armor mesh.
The other question I was asking about was related to creating a high poly and low poly version of your character. In the high poly you would: sculpt in details, create normal and ao maps, and map those onto the low poly version of your character. (tutorial - search google for: sculpt, model and texture a low poly skull in blender)
The problem is I had my character in pieces (separate head, legs, arms, torso). I went ahead with the tutorial and my low poly head actually shrunk.
i am assuming by ‘mapping’ you simply mean applying the texture through uv coordinates, in which case i don’t see how it could possibly affect the mesh… another thing is that you shouldn’t have gaps in your mesh, as you will only be able to see the normal of your face…
well if you send me the model i can get a better idea of what exactly is happening. scottydog(dot)93@hotmail(dot)com
I don’t purposely have gaps in my mesh. My character was a single mesh, then I decided to separate the head, legs, and arms using the ‘p’ command. There was no gap then.
The gap was introduced when I decided to add multires only to the head mesh to create a high and low poly from it.
My blend file is 6.5MB. Did you still want to take a look at it?
try to turn off the multires for a second… see if that help =\
Well I need multires for the high poly version of the mesh.
I don’t have permission to post links yet, but if you search: sculpt, model and texture a low-poly skull in blender that’s the tutorial I went through [it’s the cg (dot) tutsplus (dot) com link].
by gaps, i was not referring to the gap between the body and the head, but rather the resultant holes in the two meshes. remember, only one side of your face reflects light. about the miltires, what it does, in effect, is subdivide and then smooth your mesh. when you smooth a mesh, all the vertices gain regularity so if an entire model is smoothed it will shrink. what i would do is join the meshes, enter edit mode, select the corresponding vertices of each portion, scale down to zero, remove doubles and then, if necessary, separate the meshes. if you do decide to separate them, then i would advise filling the resultant gaps. another thing is that most game engines will automatically triangulate your mesh, so don’t worry about triangles messing with your topology.
btw, 6.5MB shouldn’t be a problem so, if you’re still having trouble, fire away.
did you get the file?
You need not separate the head, legs, arms or torso into different objects (mesh) to create bump/normal maps. I guess, you are very close to what you want to achieve. Just follow these steps (if you have missed something or other)…
- Make a duplicate [Shift + D] of the original mesh (low res/low ploy).
- Make sure that you do not move/displace the object center of the duplicate mess (because, that’s how the difference in tangents between the low res and high res will be calculated later), however you can move it to different layer [M] to simplify the things.
- Add Multiresolution modifier to sculpt.
- Enter Object Mode.
- Select the high res mesh > [Shift] select the low res mesh.
- Select Render > Bake > Bake Mode: Normals > Normal Space: Tangent > check the box next to ‘Selected to Active’ > increase the ‘Margin’ by few levels.
- Finally click on Bake button (with the camera icon).
NB: I presume, you are working on the Blender 2.5x
Thanks! That’s the same procedure I went through, but I had separate meshes.
Then I guess, you will have to follow the steps for each of the separate meshes you want to create a normal map for.
And yes creating a normal may wouldn’t deform the geometry of the mesh (be it the low res or high res) in any case, it only create an bump image.
Post your .blend file at http://www.pasteall.org/blend/, I may give a try if time permits.