Newish Noob question from me, which I hope you can help. Below are screenshots from a game coming out called “Little Devil Inside” by the NeoStream company using Unreal Engine (moved from Unity). Check them out as looks like a fun and interesting game…Anyway my question is on their modelling of the characters.
Can anyone tell me how they managed to get that Low Poly, yet looks like Smooth edge look at the same time. You can see from the pictures, their style looks like it has smooth face/shape but flat edges around the eyes/ears/hair and other parts.
How did they achieve a low poly yet style of smooth look?
Sure it is a simple question…Maybe it is a High Poly model which gives impression of Low Poly?
Very talented creators either way and interested in how they achieved these models.
I have seen that they have flat edges on ears, eyes and parts of body, however they still get the flat smooth look across the rest of the face, so the question is how can you do that in Blender?
When I smooth or Sub Surf my characters, it smooth it all and takes away the flat edges. If I don’t it shows the mesh as a whole as blocky. So if you look at their models for example, they have a smooth round face but with flat edges.
Wondering how that is done with characters to have the Mesh Faces being smooth with flat edges.
No subdivision modifier, just press W in Object Mode and choose Shade Smooth. For really sharp edges, press W in Edit Mode/Edge Selection and choose Edge Crease. Type 1 for a completely sharp edge
I was going to mention the same. Thanks for saving me a few minutes.
I love Little Devil Inside’s art style, and I’ve spent a good bit of time looking at shots from the game. It isn’t really low poly, at least not in the standard sense. Most of the detail is brought out through the geometry, which has a decent amount of underlying polygons, but very little detail on the textures themselves.
It’s sorta like clay, sorta like papercraft. It’s smooth where it needs to be smoothed, and flat where it needs to be flat.
Little Devil Inside is just such a great art style, which I like as it isn’t too realistic and gives the impression of low poly (see below for example on their monster cute looking creature as well, where you can see if gives that low poly feel but same time with other characters it is both smooth and flat, which gives impression of low poly as you can actually count the vert faces in some places (eyes, ears) so I was wondering how they do that Style…
@stray Your example I think they do the Auto Smooth 35c or Auto-Smooth+sharp Edges maybe.
How do I do this in blender with Auto Smooth?
At the moment with my character model, although I like my character model, it is coming across a little too realistic in shape and too smooth, like your example above and want it to be more like the "auto-smooth 35 like you have shown or the auto smooth sharp edges.
@Renzatic I notice they do high detail environments and what gives the impression of low poly characters or sharp edges on characters.
Glad you are all getting where I am coming from with the question now. I am a newbie so thanks for being so supportive and if you could help on knowing how I do the Auto Smooth 35 or that kind of look which looks like it might be that to work, then that would be amazing support.
To enable autosmoothing, go to your Object Data Properties tab on the right side of the screen (the little upside triangle with three vertex points), expand the Normals tab, then click Auto Smooth, and input 35 degrees for the smoothing angle.
Another thing you can do if you want to be more specific about it is to jump the smoothing up to 180 degrees so everything is smooth, and mark your sharp edges manually by going into edge selection mode, rightclicking, and choosing Mark Sharp.
If you want to nail the style down, I’d suggest starting small. Like that shot of the little cyclops monster? Do the lantern and top hat. They’re pretty basic shapes that you can wrap your head around a little more easily, which will allow you to get a better feel for things overall. Start small, and work your way up.
Hey @Renzatic you are so helpful so thank you. I am going to try this tomorrow and see. Silly question… How do i increase the smoothing 180 or are you saying instead of increase it to 35, in same part put it to 180?
I will also try the edge select as well tomorrow.
You are soo right about the start small. I will do a side tester quick model and do some testing.
Will come back to this thread on if it was possible.
I just want to say a Big Thank you, as it seems that is the trick. Auto Smoothing with angles and or mark sharp is the trick.
I am now at that Artistic stage of what to do. Do I want my character to look smooth and realistic with the “sub surf” or do I want to apply the Smooth with the Auto Smooth angle number and or add the sharp edges. I will have a think.
Question…In terms of “Sub Surf” or Auto Smooth…I assume It makes performance faster with not applying Sub Surf as that would add more verts when applied.
What is the difference in Weighed Normals and Auto Smooth? Sorry I don’t actually know what “Weighed Normals” does?
Either way thank you very much for your support and knowledge
If you want to stick as close to Lil’ Devil Inside’s style as possible, I’d probably forego any high level subsurfing, and keep to marking your edges sharp where necessary. If anything, I’d stick to just loop and knife cuts for adding detail.
I want to say that keeping the subsurf modifier on might be slightly more resource intensive than applying it, since it’s constantly having to recalculate the underlying mesh with every vertex move. In all honesty though, I really don’t know.
Though at the level you’ll be working at, you won’t notice any difference with it on or off. You have to get well into the 6 digit, low 7 digit face count range before you start having to weigh your options for maximum efficiency.
I tend to use weighted normals for structural details, and hard surface models. things with lots of bevels and flat planes. It tends to make sharp edges look sharper, and flat faces flatter. For more organic objects, sticking to autosmooth and edge sharps will work for you 99% of the time. Though given the style you’re going for, there may be situations where firing off the weighted normals modifier might fix some random shading issues that linger about.
I have been switching between sub surf and auto smoothing. Looks like Auto Smooth and Sharp Edge is the way to go to get a nice stylistic artistic model, so thank you for your support.
How did you know that 35 degrees auto smooth was the way to go? When I try 180 and then mark sharp, I do see what you mean but looks like 35 might be the way to go. It means I have to re go over my character but that is fine.
In terms of “making performance faster” I meant in a game when completed not Blender sorry, As assuming sub surf when applied and exported makes more verts at the end. So true with game engines now adays, my model won’t do anything haha! I am using Blender for modelling and UE5 for game engine.
Thank you for the support and going to work on seeing if I can get this kind of style and make my own version/look to it.
In the example I provided 35d was just a number that seemed to work best in this particular case - 30d is a default but it left some random sharp edges on sides, where I did not want them. This is a choice that is made depending on the situation. Slide it here and there and see what gets you closer to the goal.
Using 180d let’s you have complete control over the sharp edges. Since there are no angles over 180, the model is completely smooth all over… except for the edges you define manually.
Enabling auto-smooth with an impossible angle might seem silly, but what it actually (probably) does is leting blender know that model has and uses Custom Normals.
Style like this probably suggests manual control in everything.
PS. Subsurf does mean adding actual geometry, which is probably fine for pre-rendered animation. But in real-time? Usually not recommended (but I don’t know anything about that for sure).
When you get right down to it, you could toss in as many high poly characters as you want, and if it runs, then hey, more power to you. Though the general rule of thumb is to get the look you want while using as few polygons as possible.
the nice thing about Lil Devil’s style is that, if you try to copy it as closely as possible, you’re unlikely to end up with a model over 10,000 tris unless you just go flat out ballswild crazy on the subdivisions.
From what you are both suggesting, what I believe I am getting from you is to Not use Sub Surf and to use Auto-Smooth with mark sharp.
I am experimenting with that with 35/180 and other numbers to see what fits and editing the edges from there of what I want to be shown with sharp edges and what is to be smooth. It seems like it will get the best result I guess.
Question on this. Some of my Sharp sides are showing, which I have tried to remove/clear but it still shows. I can guess this is due to the fact I might need more loop cuts in that area? I will play around.
Oh it is tricky though as I do keep flipping between Sub Surf (as it makes my model look so nice but too realistic) and then back to removing sub surf back to 0 and adding auto smooth. Once I have the look where I want it, I know I’ll be happy.
With Little Devil Inside, it is more I love the style they have done with the characters, makes you love the world, makes it room for less realism in other aspects when creating which will let you get away with being more unrealistic and also gives more of a game character I suppose.
There are exceptions to that, and exceptions to those exceptions, and exceptions to even those. I’d say that during these practice oriented stages of your 3D education, the primary thing you should worry about is whether your model looks good or not. Anything you learn making your first model can serve as a foundation to do the same thing with less polygons later. Or if you like the way something looks, but believe it’s a little too high poly, there are dozens of ways you can reduce your poly count.
Like you think your model looks better with the subsurf on? Then apply it, and dissolve some unnecessary edgeloops. There are always options, and really, the best thing you can do right now is learn them.
Don’t worry about whether if every edit you make will render it totally un-game ready. Try to make something that’s reasonably poly heavy, then post up a shot of it and the wireframe to get some feedback on where you can improve.
Love the suggestion and feedback! I will do that. I already am on the draft 2 of the character.
I want to make sure to stick to Quads. I currently have 0 triangles which it is like a puzzle sometimes to try and make them all quads. Actually find it fun and great when I solve it.
I will have a look at applying the sub surf and trial and error which I am constantly doing at the moment.
