Hey guys! I’m pretty new to blender and have been experimenting with various projects. Currently, I’m working on a set of worn/rotten wood planks. My planks are hard surface and have not been sculpted in any way, though I’m seeing that my tri count is roughly 1600 tris, which is a bit high in my opinion, as I’m working on optimizing for video game assets. So my question is what is the best method for getting a low poly version of my planks? I’ve watched several tutorials on the subject, but most typically deal with highly sculpted objects, which I haven’t really gotten into learning just yet. Thanks for any help in advance!
Select the mesh, go into edit mode, go Mesh>Clean Up>Limited Dissolve and adjust the Max Angle setting until you get a satisfactory result. It’s not a perfect method, but it might work really well for your model.
you can look at as many tutorials as you need, but you honestly just have to stop and think about the shape for a moment. Look at the sides of the plank, with the abundance of squares. you could easily make that just one long square, and subdivide and deform it to fit the cracks.
You only need to add as many edge loops as you need to deform something, if it’s easier for you, you should sculpt in those micro details, and bake them into a normal map. Try to keep your low poly meshes as low as possible, try to use bevels and utilize smooth shading. You’d be surprised how low poly some game assets actually are, and you wouldn’t even know!
Here is a quick muck up, this plank is only 68 tris. But as long as the major keypoints are there (the highs and lows of the cracked wood) and they are able to communicate a SILHOUETTE that’s accurate to the viewer, you can really make it look good with normal maps and textures.
