Vertex Color, Baking and Other stuff
Hi! To start off, I am super new to Unity and most of its aspects. Literally, I grabbed the program last week and tried to venture into this thing with little coding and 3D optimization knowledge. All I can do is model and animate things.
My assets are made in Maya 2014. I heard importing Maya-made assets of anything is a total pain in the ass, so I was kinda wondering if someone can do a super easy breakdown of "Unity Ready" optimization for models-- rigged/animated and otherwise. I looked up a couple, but I still get really confused...
Also, I use vertex coloring for my models. Much faster for me, as unwrapping UVs and all that drives me up a wall. But the thing is, is that something I shouldn't be doing? Or moreso, is it a bigger hassle to deal with vertex colored models than it is with models with UVs? Does it matter? I did try a few imports, without baking and with (failed) baking, but it never really seemed to matter in the end... :"D
I'm also a little confused on the baking process for vertex colors specifically (believe me, I've been looking up various tutorials as we speak). Baking in general, to be honest, but that's probably something that'll click over time.
tl;dr: I'm reeeeaally new at this...
Examples of my vertex colored stuff-- these were test animations.
My assets are made in Maya 2014. I heard importing Maya-made assets of anything is a total pain in the ass, so I was kinda wondering if someone can do a super easy breakdown of "Unity Ready" optimization for models-- rigged/animated and otherwise. I looked up a couple, but I still get really confused...
Also, I use vertex coloring for my models. Much faster for me, as unwrapping UVs and all that drives me up a wall. But the thing is, is that something I shouldn't be doing? Or moreso, is it a bigger hassle to deal with vertex colored models than it is with models with UVs? Does it matter? I did try a few imports, without baking and with (failed) baking, but it never really seemed to matter in the end... :"D
I'm also a little confused on the baking process for vertex colors specifically (believe me, I've been looking up various tutorials as we speak). Baking in general, to be honest, but that's probably something that'll click over time.
tl;dr: I'm reeeeaally new at this...
Examples of my vertex colored stuff-- these were test animations.
Replies
However if you are just doing vertex colors because you don't like uv unwrapping and not as a stylistic choice I think that may be limiting you as an artist in the long run. Many software suites have made uv unwrapping super easy. If you do any baking I'm pretty sure you want to uv unwrap your model anyways.
As for rigging, that can depend on the game engine on what way is best. Both Unity and Unreal have naming structures it prefers though they can be lenient in terms of naming if you don't plan on sharing animations between different rigs.
Both Unity and Unreal handle FBX files quite well, you can probably do some research on what the best export options for each engine are for FBX exports.
In terms of optimizations I think it entirely depends on what your target platform is. If I recall though for rigging models and exporting, generally you will want to bake down any animation from controllers down to the base skeleton/bones that are skinned to the mesh before export, while bones themselves are supported things like custom constraints, IK and FK controllers generally don't carry over so well. So you can use IK solvers and all those things when making the animations so long as they are controlling the skinned bones and the information is baked down into those bones' animations before export.
Generally the less bones used in a rig the better for performance.
Though thank you! I will look into these.