Question about modeling for video games.
polycounter lvl 2
When making things like guns for video games do the models need to be water tight as in all of the verts welded together? Or is it ok if some parts are just separate objects overlapping?
Replies
You can have separated objects, it'll make your life much easier too. But leaving open edges/unwelded verts is usually seen as sloppy (and slightly higher vert/edge count in engine) unless carefully and intentional placed.
Unless strategically position as Kanni mentioned, it's really not good practice too have open/intersecting geo plus can also incur unnecessary baking error/s when the use of a contiguous mesh may've averted, in the first place.
Edit:
A great example I think when modularity is introduced - https://polycount.com/discussion/166058/ak-337-modular-rifle-system
I've seen tons of game assets that are not welded, mostly if they are static and not deforming.
Depends on what you are doing.
-Do you see a seam?
-Are you wasting uv space by crashing objects into each other?
-Is there z-fighting?
I personally wouldn't obsess over welding everything unless there is a reason to, especially if it makes it difficult to make edits later on.
There is one rule: allowed is what works. neilbeard mentioned the points where it does not work. So simply keep your eyes open :)
For a weapon though i would go for a watertight mesh if even possible. You run too quick into z-fighting. And you don't save anything with a thousand little independant parts here. More the opposite. Maybe you can keep some things separated. A magazine for example. But usually even then the whole gun usually shares a single texture.
Oh yeah, I should have clarified. Those are situations where you definitely want to weld vertices because not doing so would be problematic.
@EarthQuake had an insightful post here https://polycount.com/discussion/comment/1778918/#Comment_1778918
Thank you all this clarifies a lot for me
I definitely prefer water tight meshes, but don't mind them intersecting . Water tight meshes are way more reusable and flexible if you want to be creative with an asset library. They work much better with certain rendering tech like distance fields and light map baking.