Several objects but still one mesh? Help in understanding please?

Mr.Wednesday

Hi everyone!

I have been given an assignment recently and I wont get into too much detail because I really want to nail it on my own but there is one requirement that is bugging me. It says that the character must be only 1 mesh. So far so good, but right afterwards it requires that the eyes have to move so I should make the eyes separate and not merged, but still one mesh. This is where I dont get what he meant. As I see it, the eyes will then be separate meshes although it is a part of the character, right? Does he mean I should group the meshes into one so it can be animated later? By Yog-Sothoth I feel dumb right now. :poly103: Anyway, any help is deeply appreciated. If it helps, I use Maya and Silo as my modeling tools.

Mark Dygert

Typically you have one object with several detached, not welded, floating elements. These different elements are then weighted to various bones.

In the case of the eyes you should make them round, don't deform them to fit your eye sockets, that's sloppy modeling.

You should also rotate them around and see if they clip through the eyelids. If the eyes are going to move the eyelids will probably close also so be careful when baking maps and laying out geometry, you don't want the eyes to clip through the closed lids and you don't want "dirty" eyelids.

This all in one object is sometimes preferable to skinning a bunch of separate objects because you can work on the weights at the same time without having to dance around in stacks and constantly change selections. With many separate objects skinned it gets to be a pain pretty quickly.

It can also be a drag on some engines to have many separate objects when they could be combined.

Mr.Wednesday

Thanks Mark, In this case it is a cartoony character which the eyes are more like "Dots" outside the head so I don't think there are eyelids involved at least, which makes my work easier. But I still don't get if I should combine everything in Maya at the end into a single mesh or should I just group it?

Jason Young

If the assignment says one mesh you should combine it.

Mr.Wednesday

Alright, Ill end up doing that. I was having a hard time with this... :P Thanks! I don't want to fail over a small detail so I really appreciate the help!

Mark Dygert

Yea combine it when its all finished, normally I don't even bother to save the model that way, its just something I do before skinning. Normally there is a bit of clean up and house cleaning people will do before skinning, where I work we don't require the modelers to combine everything before passing it on, we let the animation guys figure out how they want things carved up.

I guess for checking over submitted work it would make things easier.