RPG dice are regular whateverhedrons. I can generate base mesh with extra objects addon - that’s the easy part. The “background sculpt” on every face is the same, just the numbers change. So how can I link the mesh of one face to be repeated on every other face?
I tried to separate all faces as different objects, reset their origins to geometry and then link to source face using ctrl+L -> object data. The appereance changed as expected, but with it the rotation also changed to be the same as the source face.
After I thought about it for a while, this is unfortunately a proper behavior, because the rotation of all faces is 0-0-0, even though they look like rotated. So, any ideas how to actually make it like it should be?
Create a single face with texture, once it’s textured you can duplicate as much as you want and the material will follow, then after you duplicate and place all the sides, select them and join them together.
The numbers would have to be separate meshes though.
For the cool part of texturing it, you can use a normal map or displacement… if you have access to substance or other , a complete set of textures map ( normal, diffuse, metalic and roughness ) will permit you to have a better result.
The esiest way would be to model one side and duplicate it and then move duplicates of it arround the primitive into places. if you duplicate using alt+d, the dulpicates are linked so if you change one, all other change as well - that would be helpfull for corrections. Also you can measure angles between faces using MeasureIt plugin to be able to rotate the parts as needed, but that sounds like a lot of thinking, so I would use snapping functionality with rotate operator, that will also be quite fun in terms of what settings you need to choose for these:
I know I can do it manually but this is crazy… I’m looking for an automated method that will snap all faces where they belong right away. What if I need a 100-sided die? Do you expect me to align 100 faces one by one?
Technically what I need is to reset Z-rotation of each face to be in the direction of its normal, but I don’t know how to do it.
Do you really need a 100-sided die? In that case it would be worth having a look into ‘Duplication’ section in the Object properties panel in the Properties editor. You can duplicate a child of an object instead of each face of an object. It takes the orientation of each face’s normal. You would need a bit of math and a lot of thinking to come up with a way to model the required shape though, unless I am missing something… You could use an add-on called Tissue as well.
in terms of what settings you need to choose for these:
