[WIP/Help] Need Advice on Creating Realistic but Lightweight Tassel Earrings (Blender/ZBrush)

ITZSABO

Hey everyone,

I'm currently working on a stylized-but-semi-realistic project, and I need to create a pair of tassel earrings similar to these:

My main goal is to make them look visually appealing and believable, but still optimized enough for use in a near low-poly or game-ready environment. I'm using Blender and ZBrush, and I’d appreciate any advice on:

• How to approach the tassel strands: should I go with geometry (individual threads or simplified clusters), hair cards, or just textured planes?

• Any tips on baking normal/alpha maps to keep the mesh light

• Best practices for UV mapping something like this

• How to balance realism with performance, especially for accessories like these

If anyone has tackled similar assets before, or has workflow recommendations (or even good tutorials), I’d love to hear from you. I'm aiming to include this in a real-time character project, so optimization matters.

Thanks in advance!

Eric Chadwick

It really depends… what is the triangle budget, how close does the camera get, do they need to animate, do they brush up against other things and thus do individual strands need to deform, etc. What’s the intended game engine, and are there material restraints to work within?

In general, without knowing answers to those questions, but knowing you want low poly, I would just make the red threaded part as a solid cylinder, and emulate the strands with a texture.

ITZSABO

Eric Chadwick said:

It really depends… what is the triangle budget, how close does the camera get, do they need to animate, do they brush up against other things and thus do individual strands need to deform, etc. What’s the intended game engine, and are there material restraints to work within?

In general, without knowing answers to those questions, but knowing you want low poly, I would just make the red threaded part as a solid cylinder, and emulate the strands with a texture.

Thank you Eric
I haven’t set a specific triangle budget since this is just a personal project and I’m still learning.
The piece will be fairly close to the camera, so I’d like it to look good while keeping the poly count as low as possible.
As for animation, yes — I’d like it to have a bit of movement to make it feel more realistic.
There are no strict material or engine constraints, so overall, the goal is to get the best visual quality with the fewest polygons possible.

Eric Chadwick

Well then since it's only for a portfolio and not for a specific game, I would do away with tech constraints entirely and suggest just focusing on making it look as good as possible. That's the biggest hurdle, by far, for any artist to get work in game development. The tech can be taught fairly easily, the aesthetics are much much harder to teach on-the-job.

ITZSABO

Eric Chadwick said:

Well then since it's only for a portfolio and not for a specific game, I would do away with tech constraints entirely and suggest just focusing on making it look as good as possible. That's the biggest hurdle, by far, for any artist to get work in game development. The tech can be taught fairly easily, the aesthetics are much much harder to teach on-the-job.

Thank you so much for the valuable advice! You're absolutely right , focusing on visual quality makes a big difference. I’ll definitely keep that in mind while working on my portfolio.