Help modelling tube-like limbs

[Hungry_Moogle]

Recently, I’ve been trying to model & rig a tail for the raccoon (yes, the creature shown above is supposed to be a raccoon) enemy I’m planning on adding to the game I’m working on but so far I’ve had nothing but trouble in trying to do so.

As shown in the above screenshots, I’ve been having trouble with trying to get the tail’s geometry to work in a way that would allow the tail to be able to bend smoothly, as well as dealing with the surrounding geometry around the tail as it tends to distort when the tail moves which is not desirable in the slightest.

As a alternative I tried to instead extrude the tail at a downwards angle instead of perfectly horizontal, but I couldn’t figure out how to extrude the geometry at a angle instead of along the global axis.

Not that it matters as I feel that simply extruding the a tail outwards probably wouldn’t help the issue of the surrounding geometry distorting when the tail moves. I feel like the geometry around where the tail is suppose to go needs to be modified so it doesn’t distort, but I’m not sure how to go about doing this while maintaining the general smoothness of the geometry around the tail.

I previously managed to accomplish something similar with my main character model’s arm but the difference is that the geometry from which the arm was extruded was more-or-less flat, whereas with the tail, the geometry is instead rounded, making it considerably more difficult to extrude or inset faces.

This problem for me also goes well beyond just making a tail for this particular model. Due to the artstyle of the game I’m working on, almost every creature with limbs has bendy, tube-like appendages such as my character’s arm shown above, along with some type of rounded body kinda like this:

The exact body type might vary from spherical to eggshaped to being more cylindrical in shape, but the vast majority of creatures I intend to make have rounded bodies that make it a lot harder to model the aforementioned tube-like limbs.

So what I need is some method of being able to consistently create a circle in a rounded mesh without it being a huge hassle, and then being able to extrude from that circle to create a cylindrical limb that would be able to bend smoothingly without distorting the geometry of the area around the limb.

Does anyone have any idea on how I can go about accomplishing this?

I also included the Blend file of the raccoon enemy I’m currently working down below, if that helps in any matter.

Any help with this matter would be greatly appreciated!

Blend File:
tail_help.blend (592.1 KB)

[NiklasWerth]

Not sure there’s anything you can do for smoothing the tail, save for more bones and more geometry unfortunately.
If you dont want the geometry around the tail to distort, just assign the bone weights on it to 0.

As for modeling out your limbs easier, you should try the looptools addon that comes packaged with blender, just enable it in preferences and then you can use the circle function to take this

to this

I see you’re using 2.79. I think looptools was also around for 2.79

[Hungry_Moogle]

So I finally managed to figure out how to extrude at an angle in order to make the necessary geometry for the tail and molded it into the desired shape.

Unfortunately though, I’m still having problems with the geometry of the tail not bending smoothly.

I even tried increasing the amount of geometry through subdividing the mesh and increasing the number of bones in the tail.

It helped a little bit but not enough to justify doubling the amount of tris in the model; for reference, my main character’s model has about 13000 tris while this particular model had about 30000 tris after subdividing. What makes this especially ridiculous is that my main character’s model is able to bend its limbs smoothly unlike the other model, despite having over half the number of tris.

For the life of me, I just can’t seem to understand how I was able to get the arms & tail of my main character’s model to bend properly but the not the tail of this particular model.

I also replaced the Blend File linked in my initial post with a new one that includes the newly modeled tail. Feel free to download & take a look at it if you’re willing to take the time to help me out.

[Stan_Pancakes (Stanislav Blinov)]

Perhaps use Corrective Smooth after the Armature?

[Hungry_Moogle]

Perhaps use Corrective Smooth after the Armature?

That’s helps a little bit but my concern is that this model is going to be imported into my game project I’m currently working in Unreal Engine 4 and Unreal doesn’t have any support for Blender’s modifiers.

I tried applying the modifier and I just as I feared, the mesh reverted back its previous state which almost definitely means that if I try to import the model into Unreal, the Corrective Smooth modifier isn’t going to carry over.

Unfortunately as a result of this, I probably can’t rely on the use any modifiers to fix this issue except for ones that can have their effects directly applied to the mesh such as the Subdivision or Mirror modifiers.

[Hungry_Moogle]

So after playing around with the Repeat option of the Corrective Smooth modifier, I managed to considerably improve the way that the tail bends:

However, upon attempting to re-import the model into Unreal Engine 4, my concerns about whether or not the Corrective Smooth modifier would be carried over were confirmed when the modifier’s effect failed to transfer over:

Unfortunately, as I said before, Blender’s modifiers are currently incompatible with Unreal Engine 4 and the only modifier effects that can be transferred over are ones that can be permanently applied to the model such as the Subdivision and Mirror modifiers, otherwise the modifier’s effect will vanish upon the model being imported into Unreal.

So what can I do now? I can’t use modifiers that cannot be applied to the model, weight painting doesn’t help, and changing the bones & geometry hasn’t helped either. I just don’t know what to do, as I don’t seem to have any other options available for dealing with this frustrating situation.

[Janneman (Jan van den Hemel)]

Hmm. Not sure about Unreal engine, but do Bendy Bones carry over from Blender to Unreal?

I made a number of 1-minute video tutorials about making these kind of smooth rubbery limbs, but they may not help with your situation as I don’t have experience with Unreal. However, here goes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oOV3bQU98I (Bendy Bones, pt 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl1J4wCo8N8 (Bendy Bones, pt 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q8lfiI4B3M (corrective smooth modifier)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw5lDK7iYRY (better rigging of limbs)

Good luck!