I apologize is this has been asked before, or if this is the wrong place to ask, but what is the recommended height for rigged human-size characters (measured in Blender units)?
I don’t think it has been asked before. Blender units can be anything you want them to be, so most modelers use units of Heads. Normal people range from 6 heads tall to 8 heads tall (roughly 4’ 10" to 6’ 6".)
Generally, I try to use the camera and lights as if they were the camera and light for a room. However, the only reason I do this is to make using some parts of blender easier. Ie, so a marble doesn’t have a radius of 50 BU, or 0.002 BU. It really doesn’t matter at all, I just like to work with numbers 1-100.
I generally use 1m=1BU, so a character is 1.7BU high.
So near 2 squares high? I know - duh!! cause at the moment my character is about 6 suares high from the x axis - is that way too big?
What about pixel size aswell. ie what would the resolution size of the grid be 800 ppi x 800 ppi? bigger, smaller?
Size is pretty unimportant. It has some relevance when you’re using things like SSS or ‘dist’ values on lamps, but it’s still a pretty static value.
What really matters is proportions.
@Dundaglan: There is no ‘pixel size’. You can zoom in as far as you want, and have any resolution you want(Well, to an extent). Basically, pixels have no relation whatsoever to the grid.
Pixel to grid size is… flexible. It depends on your camera position and the apparent size of the objects inside the window.
IE: Take a 1unit cube. look at it from a planar view and set the camera to view from that point too. Zoom way in, and the cube fills the screen, giving a seeming PPG of around 600. Zoom out and as the cube shrinks, the number of pixels it needs also shrinks, which shows that the number of pixels per grid point depends on so many variables that its a useless metric for creating measurements from
I make each blender unit a foot.
When I model for UE3, I have to make each Blender unit a cm, I have some BIG models on screen. Usually I just model it smaller and scale it up once it hits the engine.
The size matters, at least when you do the modeling stuff, a model a couple of iterations ago when I wanted to clean it out from doubles to my fear I lost lot of fine tuned parts of the eye and ear details. Studied the setting of the remove double limits that was something of 0.001 and no more fine grade setting available. Had to scale up 2x 3x to clean out the “right” doubles.
On the other hand one of the Blender things it that there is no master scale, You are free to use what ever scale you want, but as I realized there is some “magic” line of how tiny things you can use without breaking some tools.
Actually I’m interested in how this minimum BU vs internal tool functions are related?
And the answer on that, Krisnack, will be the minimum scale limit.
1 Giant Grid = 1 person
Or you could just adjust the spacing to something like 16 to say 64 or even a 128 and do all your modeling at the actual size for the unreal editor (turn the viewport clipping way up)(worked in unrealed3 anyway, not sure how it is for ut3’s editor…)
it’s not just the proportions, it’s just easier to have everything to scale to begin with. I tend to have my characters have it’s physical feet at the floor plane/grid, and about 20 or 2? (quite the difference, I know) blenderunits tall.
Thanks I’l try that out. The only issue I have had so far with Blender and UE3 is if I make my objects too small in blender, when I get them into UE3 they are completely black and have no shading at all. But, if I open up blender, scale the object and export again, its fine.
Isn’t the physics engine based on 1 blender unit= 1 meter? e.g. http://www.continuousphysics.com/mediawiki-1.5.8/index.php?title=Physics_Tips So if you don’t have any reason to go otherwise, it seems good to stay near that, in case you later want to do something using the physics engine.
it also depends on the style of the character - you could rig a short round character just as well as a tall lanky one 