What unit system do you model in?
mod
Hey guys, I'm interested to know what unit system people most commonly use in thier 3D modeling app. By unit system I mean 1 unit = 1 CM for instance.
What unit system do you model in? 215 votes
Meters
19%
41 votes
Centimeters
71%
153 votes
Millimeters
4%
10 votes
Feet
0%
1 vote
Inches
4%
10 votes
Replies
For reals , usually mm.
Meters for Unity.
However ...
A frequent problem is that many 3d programs/model viewers don't offer a solid way to check. So for instance, if TB3 was to adopt centimeters as its main unit it should come with a few models and scenes allowing anyone to check their scale against. For instance there should be a .tbscene with a cube clearly labeled "100 centimeters cube" (with the text engraved in the model) so that even the most careless of users would have no choice but understand the unit system. And maybe a generic human silhouette next to it.
An example of how to *not* do things would be Quixel. They offer no way to see what kind of units/scale their program is expecting, and when asked about how to solve a scaling issue their usual answer is to "play with the texture scaling slider" which is not acceptable.
Sketchup is clever in that regard - every new project starts with a human figure located at 0.0.0 meaning that any mistake in unit setup will be noticed right away by the user.
In short : whichever unit you end up using, make sure to focus on user error prevention. The user shouldn't have to guess it, it should be instantly apparent. One easy way to do this would be to simply indicate the units on a little 10cm gizmo axis at 0.0.0 which would be less intrusive than a human silhouette but still very self-explanatory.
A clear import / export chain from / to modeling is crucial if you don't want to guess values when sending stuff back and forth. In this regard I really don't like meshes entirely done in zbrush because they lack the sense of units too (if the base is made in another program it's not a problem though) .
It's easier to think in metres but cm seems most common and nobody wants their animators to deal with huge transform values
Also it was very embarrassing when I realized years down the road that Max will automatically convert any unit you input to the system units. IE: Set SU to 1 unit = 1 cm and type 2" into any field, it converts to 5.08.
It's what everything uses, even if you think of it as "unreal, Maya or Max Units".
As a person who was taught exclusively standard measurements until high school, it's really not that hard to wrap your head around the metric system and get acclimated to it. I'm glad that most schools (at least in my area) are now teaching the Metric system in the lower grades and mostly sticking to it for Science and Math. Standard is still taught also but it seems like the focus has finally shifted off it. I hope this is a national trend but I doubt it, muricans get all freaky about "traditions".
I can never get a consistent object scale in Unity, between modelling, exporting, and importing, but I use meters there. But for all personal work, I use CM, which is default in Maya anyway.
In practice though, I model things relatively to one another, and to the grid. So I rarely, if ever, actually use the units as centimeters.
Also what's with the rounding this forum uses for votes percentages. Currently the percentages only add up to 97%.
I don't display the units though, I find that a bit troublesome for input, in Blender.
What units do I export to? depends on programs, most games tend to be centimeters, decimeters or meters.
Jepp its decimeters, but basically i work in universal units.
Ahh i somehow broke the quote that is embedded in my post.
As long as it's metric, it's pretty effortless to swap between everything.
and now I wanna buy some M+M's mmmmm
Also imperial units need to die in a fire.
I remember a while I ago I forgot to switch my unit setup from imperial to metric. I didn't realize it until after I imported a modular mesh to Unreal. It was the size of an ant.