General Game Asset Creation/Blender Overview

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vortexracingleader
Posts: 1192
Joined: Sat Jan 12, 2013 1:49 am
Team: MotoRAD

General Game Asset Creation/Blender Overview

Post by vortexracingleader »

So after many many messages i have finally got the time to write a pretty in-depth post that i hope inspire new artist , help with people learning, or to refresh some people who already know what they are doing ;). Hard-surface modeling, poly modeling, whatever you want to form of modeling that we use to create game assets. Pretty much we are using quad/tri's (quad = 4 Sided Polygon tru = 3 Sided Polygon)
Here is a example
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know that we know what type of modeling we use for creating our models let me go over general workflow.below are a few great reads about general game asset creation

https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/film-g ... game-ready - General Concept

http://www.cgmasters.net/free-tutorials ... en-assets/ - Really good Blender one



A base workflow the a majority of cgi artist use is the following
-High Poly Mesh
-Retopology (Remaking mesh to be Low Poly)
- UV Unwrap
-Bake
-Normal Map
-Specular Map
-Cavity & Ambient Occlusion Map
-Texture

When creating your High Poly mesh go nuts with it, add as much detail as you can as all that information will be transfer to the low poly thanks to our maps. To achieve your high poly model start simple and add all the detail, make sure your edge flow (poly flow) follows all the hard edges on your model.Really look at your reference images during and before you model. visualize the shapes and the edge flow that you want before heading into your modeling program it helps alot. use a subsurf/subdivsion modifier to the mesh. it may look will soft at first, but that is okay! use this technique to select your hard edges and bevel them to achieve the best results

now that your High Poly is finished you are ready to start Retopology. Most programs make it pretty easy to make your low poly and in blender it should be really easy. if you have a smart poly flow on your high poly you should just need to delete your supporting edges ( what the video above did ) you should be able to create something from that, of course you would need to refine and clean it up. delete a lot of the unneeded parts and simplify your mesh up. its pretty simple. Make use of grid fill and other Retopology tools such as your program's snapping feature.

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After your complete your mesh you will then want to start on unwrapping your low poly model. this may be the most boring part when it comes to 3d modeling. you want to work piece by piece when working on your UV Map making the big parts on the model large and the small parts on the model small to make your UV Map more efficient..

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3 ... Map_Basics

Baking and getting your maps is the most tedious task when it comes to modeling but if you setup your model correctly it should be a breeze.. you should spend the most time on getting your maps perfect. they really make and break a model. there are several programs to bake your maps in so i will try to link a few.Before baking and after uv maps triangulate your low poly model. all game engines triangulate your mesh for you but doing it in blender forces the game engine to render your triangles and not their's that way there is no shading errors on maps.


Normal Maps
Blender

XNormal

3dsMax


Specular Maps
Photoshop


Ambient and Cavity Maps
Blender


XNormal


3dsMax


I really hope this helps people out and gives them a good place to reference what to do. i suggest really learning what your tools do in your 3d program before jumping into modeling, really get to know your 3d program it helps a lot.
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broland278
Posts: 1252
Joined: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:28 am
Team: MotoSavage
Location: Kansas
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Re: General Game Asset Creation/Blender Overview

Post by broland278 »

Sick post Damien! This should help anyone interested in learning.
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