Low/High Poly Questions
polycounter lvl 8
Questions for gamedev:
1.) I made the inside of the piano with all of the complex parts so that it could be opened and seen. That tripled my poly count and I'm looking at 16,000 faces now. Should I reconsider including the insides, or gut it enough so that it's not even close to being accurate to a real piano, or leave it as it is?
2.) What is the industry best practice for moving this into Substance Painter and baking a high poly onto it? Do I have to combine this all into one mesh? Should I make 1 mesh for each material type (metal, wood, etc)? While I'm at it, should each material be on a different UDIM space or everything in 0-1 UV space?
Replies
Just for fun?
Cause i wont use normalmaps on this one. Only for details. Model the asset with around 100-200k poly.
Thats fine for realtime asset if there isnt a real game around.
Cars in Games does have up to 1mio poly in the showroom. And use only normalmaps for detailmaps.
So it depends on your needs. Tell us more.
Do I combine everything to one low poly mesh? Or do I make a different mesh for each piece or material type?
Making multiple meshes is not only unnecessary on performance (which doesn't matter in this case) but just a pain to have a single static object have multiple pieces that you have to "build" in engine.
if it's a game asset you should try to make all the polygons not go below a certain size. Instead of using polygons for small details use texturing instead.
This means I wouldn't model in the bolt things on the top. I wouldn't model the strings - I'd try to make the interior simpler by using baked textures instead of geometry. I wouldn't even make the white keys as separate meshes - just use a texture.
You can use your existing model as a hipoly with a few extra details. I'd think about exploding the mesh to bake it - or separate it into different hipoly files.