Exploded Mesh or not exploded mesh?
polycounter lvl 8
Hi guys, I got this question while i was working on a weapon and thought if it is best to explode my mesh or not. Exploded i find it easier to place my Cage all over the mesh without a problem whilst not exploded i cant really get the cage around all angles. So my question is: Is there any difference from an exploded mesh Bake to a non exploded mesh bake?
Replies
Ambient occlusion: yes. It won't look awful but it might look less cohesive as parts won't cast shadows on one another.
In most case, the main body of the gun should be baked together even if things aren't water tight.
This is backwards, if you're going to do one but not the other you would explode bake for normals(to avoid intersecting issues) and not for AO(to retain inter-mesh-chunk ao).
Though I explode bake for normals, ao and then do a second ao bake from the lowpoly to get that inter-mesh-chunk ao.
Why?
Anything that is going to give you intersection errors should be exploded. If you want a "seamless look" you should simply use fewer mesh chunks, ie: merge your meshes together.
I tend to merge together everything that isn't A. going to animate/be removed and B. going to cause complex overlaps etc. Then explode the rest. When you get experienced with this sort of workflow you'll probably have in the range of 5-10 or so unique mesh chunks that need to be exploded, so its really quick to do. Though I've seen a lot of meshes that have like 30+ mesh chunks, which is generally not a very optimal way to model (even if the tricount is lower, the vert count tends to be real high, the uv usage is worse and you get a lot more aliasing).
Oh ok cool, I see exactly what you're saying now. Boo to early morning reading comprehension. I agree with your post now that I understand the proper context.