Modeler Questions

Shaze

Hi everyone, I was just asking myself somes question and I was hoping if someone could answer me (knowing that most of you are in the game industry)

#1 : Do you use a lots of different models to complete one? Such as detachable pieces (door knob, then the door, and group it to make a "complete door" for example) Or try to make objects or things into a single model

#2 : When you are making high poly mechanical things, do you use meshsmooth? What are you using to make your model mesh seem so well polish.

#3 : As a modeler, do you have to unwrap/textures the models most of the times, or someone more specialised in that domain do it?

Thanks for the futures answers

ChaosEidolon

Hey Shaze, welcome to PC. I remember wondering about the same junk when i first got into doing this stuff.

#1: Yeah, often you will have detached pieces of "floating" geometry in your model, which can often help you save on poly's when modeling. A lot of games actually have seperate meshes for things like character bodies/head/armor sets etc which is matches up in game to create variation. You wouldnt even know that they werent built as a solid mesh.

#2 : The process generally used for that kind of thing is call Sub-D modeling. Not super experienced with that myself, but http://www.subdivisionmodeling.com/ is a good resource for that.

#3 : It varies a lot from company to company, but from what ive seen its usually either the modeler that unwraps and sends it to the texture artist, or do the whole thing from modeling through UVing to texturing.
UVing sucks when you first get started doing it, but its not hard, just takes a few tries before you learn the tricks. It's definately something you want to know if you go into modeling. 3d Studio's unwrap tools do a decent job, and there are plenty of 3rd party programs that have gotten it down to a science and basically do the work for you. We use Headus UV unwrap at work and it works like a freaking charm. I believe they have a free demo to try on their site if you google em.

Hope that helps!

Shaze

Hmm, fine, thanks a lots for your answer. I was guessing that unwraping was an essential thing too, seeing that most of the mod team was asking for it.

Maybe a last question a little less essential, but still popping out in my head each time I am modelling :

Is there a faster way of getting 2 vertex at the center of both of them in a quick way. I am always taking the scale tool and moving the mouse until it write the X,Y or Z axe to 0 to make sure they are perfectly at the same position on the axe I want.

But I was seeing myself in the futur making these weird mouvement with my mouse during like 20 seconds just to "equalize" 2 vertex... I don't thinks I should keep this manner, and I use it so often -.-

A things that could do the same things would be the align tool, but it doesnt seem to work on vertex and with a selection of like 5 vertex to align it will just doesnt work I guess.

I was thinking about a snap to vertex and restricting only one axe to move, so it would align quickly with another vertex but I didnt found the option to restrict the mouvement and maybe it just doesnt work.

So how do you do?

Joseph Silverman

Target weld, collapse, and/or Make Planar might all do what you want, if you're using 3dsmax.

jgarland

I'm not sure I entirely understand your last question, but I'll try to answer it as best I can.

To align a set of vertices, I typically use the "Make Planar" tool. It can be found in the "Editable Polygon" roll-out menu. You can align the vertices along a particular axis, or you can flatten them out along the average angle of all those selected.

I'm not sure if this was what you're looking for, but I hope it helps. If not, feel free to ask again.

Shaze

Hmmm tryed it and it doesn't seem to work. It do it after 5-10 click with 2 vertices selected, but if I try to get 3 or more, it screw up.



There, for example, you can see the vertex I want to align



There you can see the align wanted. I need to move the mouse until the damn number reach 0 to make a perfect align. One solution to do it more quickly would have been to type in the text box the number 0, but for the scale tool, it doesnt work. I also tryed the absolute mode, but again, something change the way it go.

So I was looking for sumthing else, but Im starting to believe theres nothing to optimise the time it take to align a group of vertices.

Joseph Silverman

Convert it to editable poly and make planar by x. Ought to be a little 'x' button right under/beside make planar.

Shaze

Awww, my mistake, I thought I was still in edit poly >.<

Yeah it work pretty well, thanks a lots

jgarland

One other thing you may find useful is the fact that you can right-click a spinner (the value slider with the arrows) to instantly switch to the lowest value possible (zero in this case).