zerther Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 (edited) Novice modeler here. This was some armor i planned to make for oblivion a while back, and since skyrim is out, I figure I'll try and rework it for the skyrim body. I've always wanted to see armor like this in the game... just cool looking, light adventurer gear. One thing I'm kind of worried about is my technique. Don't mind my terminology, It's been a while since I've used modeling terms. Every different part of this armor is a different object with it's own texture. Is that how you model 3d armor? I ask because, if you look at the middle of the vest, just one of those fasteners is about 4 different objects, and when i started texturing them all, my program started to run a bit choppy. What's the best way to go about making details like that? The bags are two separate objects, the belt sash about 4, the buckle, probably 5. having all these objects seem sloppy to me, and I'm pretty open to any advice/ the proper way to model armor and clothing. Adding textures to all those items seem to make the program (blender) even more choppy. Keep in mind I wasnt running it on my gaming computer, but on a laptop that does get choppy when viewing things like lots of fire, many characters in 3d games. Also, if you want to take a stab at making this armor, feel free. I'm sure someone would do a much better accurate job, and I'm not after the credit, just practice and seeing it in the game. http://i.imgur.com/My1of.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/PzoGw.jpg What I'm trying to copy. this seems darker than mine. http://i.imgur.com/xzHbj.jpg Edited January 16, 2012 by zerther Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
huntsman2310 Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 Usually its when you've finished making all the components of a object and are happy with it that you then join all the objects into one, you have to be careful though, because depending on the Blender version you have, the only way you can get the model into Nifskope is by exporting it as an OBJ. which is essentially a bare bones format that only keeps mesh data, and UV layout or something like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghogiel Posted January 16, 2012 Share Posted January 16, 2012 (edited) Looks pretty good :thumbsup: It's best to minimise the number of textures your outfit uses, not just for performance reasons, but for your own sanity and time as well. if you have 20 mesh objects and 20 textures just for an outfit with what 2 materials really, metal and leather, its a bit of a waste. if it's loads of objects/maps I find the texturing imo takes longer, painting all across a bunch of sheets just makes it more tedious, the game setup is longer, the post export is longer: more blocks to shuffle about, the rigging becomes slightly more tedious. more things can go wrong. there isn't much more too it than just attaching what objects you want to be a single object together. Arrange a decent UV sheet out of the UV islands, and yeah it's sorted. I would have done it already but you can transfer all these many textures you painted to a new UV layout at any time. a basic function of texture baking. I would guess if you are getting mad slow down from trying to display a bunch of textures in your viewport, perhaps your textures are quite big and it's mashing your ram. I have to say you do appear to be spending a lot of geometry on details that I would have only modelled into my high poly mesh, and not on my low poly game mesh Edited January 16, 2012 by Ghogiel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts