Reading Steven Stahlberg’s old posts at CGSociety, I’m interested in his mentioning having a separate, modular head on his universal basemesh.
I think this is possible by using a method of smoothing (‘smooting groups’), which behaves differently than Blender’s. I imagine the way he describes, the head and body are two different objects, and thereby one could remodel and retexture the head without having to touch the body at all, then add both the head and body to the same ‘smoothing group,’ which would apply things like smoothing – and, for my aims, subdivision surfacing – across both objects, to eliminate any seams in the geometry.
Am I correct in this being impossible in Blender right now, or am I just missing the way to do it? If it indeed is currently impossible, I’m interested in others’ ideas on how to define this to post to Blenderstorm. “Inter-mesh smoothing”?
Not exactly sure what you mean but here’s a thought…
Create two vertex groups, 1 for the Head, 1 for the Body.
Do work on the head or body.
Merge the meshes with Ctrl + J
Use the Remove Doubles command to erase the seam where the neck and body will meet.
The single model will remain with two Vertex groups, but will allow you to hide / remodel / or Unwrap at a time, just simply select the Head or Body group and Hide it.
The image on the left is the result after the head and body become one object. The image to the right is after you use the Remove Doubles command / merge vertices by hand. Not sure if this is what you meant. Heads will not be changeable without multi bodies to mount the head to. But the body or head can be easily taken out, altered and re added to the body object. But will have to merge the verts at the point of the seam.
Hey, yeah – vertex groups! That seems like it’ll do, at least for the time being; thanks Ninja!
What I’m really trying to do is keep a fully mapped and textured high poly (for subdivision) body mesh, with the ability to sculpt and connect a new head without having to merge the two objects’ UV maps and textures.
With ngons on the way, we’ll eventually not even have to worry about matching up the verts at the neck!
