Home Technical Talk

Lowpoly from kitbashed mesh?

interpolator
Offline / Send Message
Larry interpolator
Hello guys, I just found out about kitbashing assets, and I have a question I cannot find an answer to. Say I have all these pipes and assets that i put together and make a robot. How do you make this into a lowpoly? Because baking all these details into a bigger shape doesnt sound like its gonna work.. do you make each individual piece a lowpoly and just bake some screws?

Replies

  • [Deleted User]
    Offline / Send Message
    [Deleted User] insane polycounter
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • Larry
    Offline / Send Message
    Larry interpolator
    I dont have a specific model. Lets say I have a robot that its complexity is like this https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3d/38/14/3d3814cf90f805e8a35d418c8e86f1bc--military-robot-robot-hand.jpg
    Do you bake and make most of these pieces into low poly?
  • musashidan
    Offline / Send Message
    musashidan high dynamic range
    Ah, the sudden realisation that kit-bashing is such a fantastic and liberating way to create until......you then realise that you are a production artist rather than a concept artist.....

    Kit-bashing is great for mashing ideas together quickly. Kit-bashing is not great if you are intending to create a real-time production asset. The whole idea of KB is that you don't need to plan out a workflow in advance, and what modeling methods to use, or worry about topology or vert count or unwrapping. Unless you really know what you're doing workflow-wise I don't recommend it as an efficient or viable option for a complex hard-surface production asset.
  • Larry
    Offline / Send Message
    Larry interpolator
    @musashidan So since I have no library yet on such things, if I make each and every item with a low poly version, would that solve the problem you say?
  • musashidan
    Offline / Send Message
    musashidan high dynamic range
    No, it's not a problem if you're making all the pieces yourself with production in mind. But then you're not really kit-bashing in the 'traditional' sense. :)

    But there's no reason why you couldn't make a production ready kit of unwrapped parts set up for a low/high bake workflow. Almost like a modular kit of parts that could be used on many different machines/mechs/etc. But, this will still take time up front. And planning.

    With concept kit-bashing arbitrary parts are just mashed together for a pleasing astetic with little or no regard for production. Different shapes and forms can be just jammed together to create new forms that might not have been planned. 'Happy accidents' as it's known.

    But, go ahead. Try it out. Experiment. If it works and saves time, great. If not, still great as you've learned from it and have a built a custom kit. You have nothing to lose either way.
  • throttlekitty
    If you're talking about maintaining a high and low version of each kitbash piece, I'd recommend against it. Using that robot hand as an example, you'd be throwing verts around for things like the finger bones instead of scaling them. Now you're in the position of having to make the same edit for the complimentary model. Now when you start making quick and complex edits, like notching off a corner of some sci-fi greeble panel thing, you're going to have a real bad time.

    Poly reduction would be your only easy way out, but you're still going to do work fixing the result. You could potentially boolean everything together and retop from that as a small shortcut. I'm with musashidan here about the workflow comments, but there's nothing wrong with trying it out and seeing what works for you.
Sign In or Register to comment.