Splitting Meshes

kmyung

Hello there- coming back at you with another question. 

I'm working on this character and have a REALLY hard time wrapping my head around how many separate meshes I want on the model? For example, I want to separate the belt and center-piece from the chest and the arms from the chest. Is it wrong to do so and cause issues with deformation? Or should I just unify as many meshes as possible. I just have an easier head wrapping my head around the topology if it's in separate meshes.

Not sure how to proceed... thank you!

Alex_J

There's many factors that can influence such a decision. Whether it is one contiguous mesh or separated -- either way you can make the rigging work. As a slightly further along beginner to another, I'd recommend trying out both ways, just however it makes sense to you, and going through the full gamut of rigging and animating. For rigging and animating, I don't mean that you need to learn these entire professions (that make take a little bit of time ), but you can use something pretty beginner friendly like Maya humanIK and then test things out with whatever free or cheap animations you care to use. 

Some areas that may be suitable for separated meshes would be the overlap of the fur around the boots and pants. Tying that geometry together would likely be annoying, and make unwrapping more difficult. As the only bending that can happen is above and below that spot, deformation shouldn't be an issue. 

The belt in the middle of the torso may be a little more troublesome to rig if it was separate, but not impossible. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer. Might depend on the animations you use as well. But, there probably isn't a strong reason to separate it. So long as your topology is clean and logical, unwrapping is simple enough whether its connected or not. All the leather straps wrapped around the arms and legs I would hope are connected to the rest of the mesh. 

kmyung

yeah I think i'm starting to understand and see what portions of the mesh work together as one continuous mesh.

Thanks as always man- you've been helping me out a lot these past couple months. Cheers