When to Float.
polycounter lvl 17
So I have this Plane/Ship thing I am working on. And I will be adding some flourishes. I know things like bolts can float on the surface, but for some thing like vents, should I take the time to cut those into the geometry, or just let them float too?
On the one hand the rivets will be floating for the normal map, but these vents, mostly, will not be about contributing to the normal map, but rather the silhouette itself. Is it kosher than I float these, or -should- I carve them in and make them part of the whole mesh? I really would only like to do/float one so they can all have the same UV space. What would -you do-?
On the one hand the rivets will be floating for the normal map, but these vents, mostly, will not be about contributing to the normal map, but rather the silhouette itself. Is it kosher than I float these, or -should- I carve them in and make them part of the whole mesh? I really would only like to do/float one so they can all have the same UV space. What would -you do-?
Replies
It'll be easier to explode the high poly later if you need to for baking. It's also much faster to model, there's no need for those vents to be attached to the main body of the ship.
If the surface they attached to was curved and not flat and you needed a perfect smooth connection between the two in the normal map then you might need to attach them to the main body.
Use the scatterer tool (or the randomizer).
You simply need to set the script to "paint" one object per click, and align it to the surface's normal.
If you've got an edge-loop/ring that runs around where you want your rivets, you can select it, convert the selection to a shape(spline), and use the spacing tool to instance your rivets around the new spline. It gets the normal facing a bit wonky at times but you can rotate the objects in local-space or in sub-object mode to get them facing the right direction.
Personally I wouldn't waste my time with Advanced Painter it was a nice idea but Neil did it so much better. Most notably he added a click to paint feature, where Advanced Painter requires click/drag painting to place objects. If you use the spacing setting in AP it makes it hard to drop one precisely where you want it.
Neils script also has a lot more useful features where AP kind of falls flat.
Attachment constraint isn't all that practical unless 1) your main mesh will never change and 2) you want the object to follow along on the mesh as it animates.
To place a new vert you have to manually clone the rivet (which won't move) then go into the motion tab > parameters > Position > then click set position to move it around on the mesh.
Each attached object is attached to a face, each face has a number, when you add or remove geometry the object either resets, or moves to the new face with that number. Because of this, after you're done placing the objects you should take a snapshot (Tools > Snapshot) then delete the objects with attachment constraints.
It's because all of these minor hiccups that I don't really recommend it that much any more. Now some scripts could be written to help automate this but then it would be pretty much just like a painter script would.