Question: Topology of a Boat
polycounter lvl 2
Hello Polycount,
I've been self teaching myself to modelling a yacht to be placed in a game engine for phototaking with a good friend of mine. I understand that only triangles and quads are allowed for games. Hence we have made all of them quads. But regarding topology how would that go? Is there a certain way the Polygons need to be so that light reaches them out properly? If so is our model passable what can we do to improve it?
I've been self teaching myself to modelling a yacht to be placed in a game engine for phototaking with a good friend of mine. I understand that only triangles and quads are allowed for games. Hence we have made all of them quads. But regarding topology how would that go? Is there a certain way the Polygons need to be so that light reaches them out properly? If so is our model passable what can we do to improve it?
Replies
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For topology ideas look at vehicle wireframes from top-tier published games. Fans decompile meshes from games all the time.
Also the interior and exterior need not be a single perfectly connected manifold. That's needlessly complicating things. They should be made of multiple separate pieces, much like real objects are created.
You don't need to continue your edge loops across the model.
making everything one single mesh is pretty much pointless these days. There is almost no reason to do that. Maybe you want to 3dprint it, but even then you can work around it.
Just see it this way, is this boat made of one piece in reality? If not, there are not many reasons to make it so. Yes you can combine things, ie if you want to bake them together. But you can also keep things seperated which are seperated in reality. Having loops go all across a single mesh is just horribly inefficient. And think of it this way. Imagine you built everything out of one single piece. Try selecting a certain piece, just this piece, not the surroundings. How do you do that if everything is connected?
It is a pain in the butt.
Not to speak of unwrapping all this, holy crap
Actually is it possible for me as seen in the picture to seperate the interior, 1st floor,2nd and 3rd floor as a seperate mesh? if I do that though would that cause texturing issues like really obvious seam cuts in areas that should have a proper flowing texture? Because at least the exterior of the hull in a ship is made together and the metal flows throughout.
Instead of creating a hull with thickness, most games have no interiors at all. Just the exterior seating, where the driver operates the boat, etc.
Interiors are only modeled if a player can go in there. And they're always modeled separately, so they can be hidden when the player is outside, for faster real-time rendering.