Vertex color spliting

PolyHertz

I was wondering what the best way to achieve this look would be?:



It seems to be using vertex colors for everything, but they're split perfectly along the hard edges. The only way I can think of to do this is to actually split the geometry at borders, but I'm concerned that could cause z-fighting issues. So is there a better way to do this? Maybe a way to assign vertex colors by UV shell/element, Face ID, or something else?

JamesWild

3DS Max? Just detatch them to elements. Or in Blender, use Y to split. No matter how you do this there is going to be a split vertex regardless just as you'd have on a UV seam or hard normal edge.

Ace-Angel

You can select faces and apply a unique vertex color on each face, at least in Max, without the need of limiting yourself to the brush and vertices, the only issue it you it will take some time, and you need to have alot of hard groups to make the angles pop out properly.

So basically, use the V-Color modifier, Select faces, set color and collapse mod, done!

Also, yes, you can select them via ID, Material, etc, so long as you have them setup up manually before hand. And no, you don't need to detach them or do anything fancy like that.

Also, are you sure it's 100% V-Color? I'm seeing alot of Z-Diffuse gradient, meaning the top colors are bright and the lower ones are darker...on the other hand, they're not using a Lambert term from the looks of it, since anything pointing away from the light isn't casting a diffuse shadow (Or they're using Half-Lambert, with a really low value).

Of course, I'm talking out of my arse since I don't know the game and haven't seen it in motion.

I mean it can be done with V-Colors, sure, but it seems like an awful amount of work, especially the way you have the nice red transition in the front of the helmet going for bright red to slightly less bright red.

LoTekK

Vertex color would be the obvious assumption, though it's also possible they've just used a texture map with blocks of solid colors and gradients, and UV'd accordingly. Since it's mostly large areas of colors and gradients, this wouldn't necessarily be overly difficult, either.

m4dcow

I think it uses vertex colors, and just like a single vertex can occupy multiple points in UV space, or have its normals split, vertex colors could be used the same way.

I use Maya and it's fairly easy to do this by assigning colors to a face, or going into vertex color mode and painting that way so you can have those hard edges.

Farfarer

In 3DS Max you can apply vertex colours to a face or faces (it'll do all the vert splitting automatically).

Or in any other program you could probably split it, paint it then weld it back together (if you can't do the per-face option). Any 3D app worth it's salt should handle the split vertex map when welding the vertices back together.