Beveling Objects for Game environments??

Amank679

Hi Guys, 

I want to say thanks for all the replies on my previous posts! It was a huge help And I'm definitely taking all the comments into consideration for current and future environments I create.

The whole Idea of beveling has been brought to my attention recently. I'm curious how important Beveling actually is. I've been told that it's something that applies more for animation but can is not a necessity for creating environment assets, that the illusion of a bevel could be made via blend masks in Substance Designer.

I personally haven't used Blend masks in Substance yet but Since my art style leans more realistic, I assumed the bevels would add more towards realism. 

So my question is, Are bevels really necessary when modeling environment assets? If so, is there a certain way to bevel that's efficient (certain edges or tools that make beveling easier) or should it just be left out and added in as illusions via blend maks later?

I've attached an environment asset that I've recently Beveled for reference.

Thanks again in advance!

Taylor Brown

Hard to tell from the pic but I think I'm seeing a lot of ngons from the way you're beveling. I personally dig the medium poly workflow which relies heavily on bevels/chamfers. some good info here: https://polycount.com/discussion/184727/starfighter-inc-creating-next-gen-spaceships

I used it on 99% of this project. It was actually my first time trying it so the degree of success varied. Relative to your asset, I tried going for larger bevels. If they are too tight, the effect is lost. I've set the project as downloadable if you want to check it out further.

https://sketchfab.com/models/2de7dbbe520e460ba397914fa8140ceb

CreativeSheep

Where are you seeing nGons ?

Animas

I see these

Taylor Brown

^

Ashervisalis

Take me down to n-gon city,
Where the mesh ain't clean, and the topology ain't pretty

Haha just kidding. @Amank679 If you want to be a professional, you're going to need to add bevels onto your high poly, and bake the bevels into a normal map in your low poly. If it's a large object, and the bevel would be maybe a centimeter or bigger, then maybe it's a good idea to add a bevel onto your low poly as well. I'm not sure of your skill level, but it looks like you're recently starting out, so I'd focus on making your meshes into high poly, and making that high poly look really good. If you're also going to sub-divide, aka smooth, I'd add 2 divisions onto your bevel, so there would be 3 edge loops supporting the sub-d.

Amank679

@Ashervisalis  Thanks for your reply! Yes, I'm currently a senior in college majoring in Game Dev with Environment Art as my concentration. This object itself Is quite large. In fact, it's the largest object in my environment. 

So, currently, I only have this low poly version of my object and no high poly. This whole object is around 800 faces (1600 tris).  Since this object is part of a game environment for Unity engine, I don't want to add to many polygons. But to clarify, you are saying I should create a high poly version and then bake out the high poly detail onto the low poly object using ZBrush?

If that's the case, then where do you recommend I add more poly to? I don't want to throw around extra poly just for the sake of having High poly either.

Also, I'll definitely keep the extra subdivisions in mind!

Ashervisalis

You don't need to use ZBrush to create the high poly or a bake, unless you're looking to sculpt the mesh. How big is your mesh going to be?

I'm not too skilled on really large meshes, but an issue I might see would be a giant mesh having a visibly low resolution normal map due to the size of the mesh. If it's large enough, you could always throw down a bevel with 3 edge loops, and soften the middle edge loop to give it a smooth corner look. If you only have 2 edge loops like you have here, and you soften those, it should have an effect on the parallel faces, which you wouldn't want.

Amank679

Ashervisalis I've attached some images that show the size of the object compared to an average height human reference. As for the Smoothed Bevels, I'll definitely get on that!

Ashervisalis

Yeah, you definitely won't be able to use a normal map to smooth the corners of that. I feel as though the bevel option will work best. You'll be applying tiling textures to this in engine, yeah?

Amank679

@Ashervisalis Yes, I'll be using Substance Painter or Designer to Texture this which I will put together in Unity Engine.

My other question is, I looked into baking high poly onto low poly objects in Maya but I know there are other baking software out there as well. Is this something a program like Xnormal could do or is it limited to Normal baking only?

Ashervisalis

Baking high poly to low poly is baking a normal map. xNormal can do this. I usually use Substance Painter for baking. Unless this object is going to be really far away from the camera, you probably won't be able to use Substance Painter for texturing, you'll need to just apply a tiling material in engine and then vertex paint multiple textures onto it. Something of this size would need a hell of a texture size for it to not be super pixelated with its grand scale.

Amank679

@Ashervisalis Ah ok, that makes a bit more sense. I was under the assumption that baking normals and high to low poly baking were a little bit different. I currently bake normals of sculpted detail via ZBrush but have never used Substance Painter for this. 

I do know its possible to bake in Substance Painter, I will definitely look into that.  

I'm not quite sure what you mean by vertex painting. Is this different from regular texture painting/ Does this specifically apply to larger environment assets?

Ashervisalis

It does specifically apply to larger objects. Let's say you have a large metal item, as big as your mesh here. You're just going to slap on a tiling texture in engine. This, however, will be obviously a tiling texture, and pretty bland. So let's say you create/find 3 different textures: Metal, rusted metal, and super dirty/grime metal. You add all 3 textures onto one material in engine. Then, when you vertex paint, you paint specific textures onto the areas you want. Check out any of the tutorials regarding vertex painting on YouTube;

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ue4+vertex+painting+tutorial