Do you UV unwrap the inside of a helmet?
polycounter lvl 7
I'm currently making a helmet and I'm wondering if I UV unwrap the inside.
Leaving this out lets me have more space for the other UVs but I'm not sure if that's the way to do it. The head should be blocking this part at all times though.
Also if I have one object "stuck" in another (in this case the crest of my helm) can you leave the bottom of the mesh open (because it's intersecting with, and inside, another mesh) or do you have to close the meshes at all times, even if the part would not be visible?
Leaving this out lets me have more space for the other UVs but I'm not sure if that's the way to do it. The head should be blocking this part at all times though.
Also if I have one object "stuck" in another (in this case the crest of my helm) can you leave the bottom of the mesh open (because it's intersecting with, and inside, another mesh) or do you have to close the meshes at all times, even if the part would not be visible?
Replies
If you think you might want to see the inside at a later point, keep the mesh there, but you can leave the UV parts off of your map. When you apply the texture, they will have part of the texture randomly assigned and it won't look great, but it won't matter because it won't be seen.
You don't have to close meshes, you can design them how it would be seen. The only time I'd close a mesh was because it was a character that was going to be animated, This stops any unwanted gaps.
That's good to hear, I'll go with that then. What about edge loops not looping but ending? For example if I have a mesh that looks like this from the front: But like this from the back. (Replacing the more complex geometry with a single face). As you can see here, the edge loops don't go around if I do this.
Is that a problem/a shitty way of doing things or is that a valid tactic?
This might cause unwanted shading results when triangulating n-gons and/or nonplanar polys.
If you want more control, triangulate the object yourself before exporting it from your modeling package.
If you like how it shades, you're good to go.
(note that the modeling package and the engine will probably traingulate the object in different ways, so make sure to export an already triangulated mesh or you'll most likely run into surprises)
With edge loops I'd recommend making them go all the way around. What you have on the back is an N-gon. Generally it's best to avoid these as they can cause a few different issues such as smoothing and animating, but all meshes are triangulated automatically in game engines so it depends on what your target is for this piece.. This link should help with understanding N-gons.
keeping the edge loop going will increase your poly count, but your vert count (in this case) should remain the same.
Is the face not going to be seen by the end user or are you just wanting to have it flat? If it's not going to be seen you could always treat it like the inside of the helmet and get rid of it.