3D Asset Creation Question

Inquisitive_Scholar

On YouTube I see videos where people create an asset made of multiple singular pieces https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsVu31GTjo8 and other times people make a model that in the end is a single piece such a character model.

Sometimes people ask me why I created an asset from a single geometric piece, but I am under the impression that as a 3d artist we are suppose to create an asset from a single piece.

Eric Chadwick

The model in that Youtube is not for a game. He turns on smoothing (subdivision surfacing) at the end there. This technique is really only used for texture baking.

But mostly in games, we try to combine objects together into single models wherever possible. As long as the vertices all share the same material, we can attach the parts together. This increases performance, generally.

But you keep them separate if the parts need separate materials (window is transparent, rest of house is not), or if they need to be animated differently (door needs to open, wall around it does not, so we have two objects), or if one of them is a destructible object, or to help out with culling, etc.