Just need the right direction lads.

[FrogTheFirst]

Hi!

I'm back after a bit pf practice (nto that much). I've been working on a sword blade but it's quite complex, so I have yet to finish it (having troubles to make it look good, like profile/taper the blade at the end, decide how to place my edges/polys, etc.)

So I also started a new mesh/weapon way easier to do (see image). It's a 2handed steel mace strongly inspired from M&B warband, I finished the rough shape and I don't really know if I did it correctly or of it's complete garbage.

I also feel like Turbosmooth has troubles smoothing some edges. Furthermore, I feel like having too many polys, is there a limit? The baseball bat (about the same size) hasa lot less polygons.

 

Here's the mesh without turbosmooth :

Here with turbosmooth :

 

What do you think of all that?

 

 

Cheers!

 

PS : I still have to make the handle, do you have an idea on how I could model a handle made out of rope? Twist several cylinders and attach them on the mace?

Edited December 12, 2017 by FrogTheFirst

[ehtyeci]

Pretty cool. I like the design.

You have a few too many edge loops on the pommel. I would take off a couple that aren't doing anything to the geometry. Every loop adds a crapton of polys on cylindrical objects. You also have one in the middle of the shaft. Only use them if the topology needs it, or to create support edges in order to sharpen up topology that is softened due to turbosmooth.

The turbosmooth creases you're getting are because of two things; the mesh has triangles, and you've got edge loops too close of each other.

You'll want to stay in the range of 5-20K tris for the in-game model. You could go higher/lower - there aren't really any fixed values. 50K is insane and highly redundant for a melee weapon, just to throw you some numbers. The usual workflow is to model only so that the silhouette/outline of the model looks OK, and then you fill in the rest of the details with a normal map from a more higher poly version. Whether you create the hi-poly or low-poly first is up to you. Keeping the tri count down is an art in itself.

As for a wrapped handle, it depends on the type of wrapping. Like, if it's a spiral wrap, paracord or braided. I would probably make a braided mesh in hipoly, then bake the normals onto a cylinder for the low poly to use ingame. If you search for "3ds max braided" you'll find a few tutorials on youtube.

[FrogTheFirst]

Ok I'll delete the useless edge loops, a simple ctrl backspace would work or it'll mess up the mesh? (already used it anyways but it'd be good to know).

 

I keep the loop on the shaft as a landmark to know where the handle ends :smile:

 

If I want to smoothen the whole mesh like before but keep some edges unsmoothened, how should I proceed? Like keeping those edges (see picture below) quite hard or angular but smoothen everything else, what should I use/do? (maces tended to have angular or hard edges on their head, it wasn' t all round up)

 

 

Oh, and what is the best between turbosmooth, NURMS, and smoothing groups?

 

Finally, when I'm done with modeling, how far am I to the final FO4 mesh? What are the next steps? Uv Wrapping, texturing, ... ?

Edited December 13, 2017 by FrogTheFirst

[FrogTheFirst]

Sledgehammer : 267 polys

baseball bat : 616 polys

 

My mesh : 5372 without the triangulation :confused:

About triangulation, I know I need to convert polys to triangles to use the mesh in FO4, but how do I triangle polys? I guess it at least doubles the number of polys?

[ehtyeci]

Ok I'll delete the useless edge loops, a simple ctrl backspace would work or it'll mess up the mesh?

To delete an edge loop, select one edge, hold SHIFT and select the next edge. This will make an edge loop selection. Now you can dissolve using CTRL+Backspace. When you dissolve topology, you need to watch out so that you aren't leaving edges or vertices floating without being properly connected.

 

If I want to smoothen the whole mesh like before but keep some edges unsmoothened, how should I proceed? Like keeping those edges (see picture below) quite hard or angular but smoothen everything else, what should I use/do? (maces tended to have angular or hard edges on their head, it wasn' t all round up)

For low-poly, you use smoothing groups to define those surfaces. For high-poly, support loops/edges close to eachother will sharpen the edge between them.

 

Oh, and what is the best between turbosmooth, NURMS, and smoothing groups?

Smoothing groups doesn't touch topology. It lets you decide where to let normals flow and where to cut them off. It is used to define which surfaces are smooth shaded and which are flat. When you're making low-poly, it's good for visual representation to assign smoothing groups. When you make a proper high-poly, you'll most of the time only use smoothing group 1 (aka all smooth), because you can control how sharp something looks by using support edges.

 

Finally, when I'm done with modeling, how far am I to the final FO4 mesh? What are the next steps? Uv Wrapping, texturing, ... ?

After modeling comes the UV unwrapping and texturing stage. Some people hate UV unwrapping. I personally love it.

Once that is done, you export to a nif and get it set up before adding the weapon through the CK.

 

Sledgehammer : 267 polys

baseball bat : 616 polys

 

My mesh : 5372 without the triangulation :confused:

About triangulation, I know I need to convert polys to triangles to use the mesh in FO4, but how do I triangle polys? I guess it at least doubles the number of polys?

You're using turbosmooth, that's why. Remember, turbosmooth divides the entire mesh so you will have four times the polygon density of the control mesh. Only use turbosmooth for the high-poly. Also, with turbosmooth active in your stack the polycount is already showing tris.

 

To triangulate a mesh, add a Turn To Poly modifier and set Limit Polygon Size to 3.

[FrogTheFirst]

So you'd advice not to use turbosmooth if I want to put this mesh into fo4? It doesn't look good at all without smoothing. Is it going to be a problem if I let it as it is (I optimised it a bit, deleted some edge loops here and there and fixed some issues) with 5k+ polys?

What are the values to classify a mesh as a low or high poly?

[ehtyeci]

Turbosmooth on the game model itself, nope. Turbosmooth on the high-poly you'll be using to bake normal maps for the game model, yep.

High poly is anything from 10k to 10 million. The numbers are purely arbitrary, it really is contextual. You could have a 20k poly driftwood plank in-game and from a functional perspective it doesn't make a difference. 5k is still fine, it'll work fine in-game, just not as optimized as it probably could be.

[FrogTheFirst]

I don't get it, I mean I do not know what baking normal maps is .. yet.. So I'll have to turn off turbosmooth (which I already collapsed on my mesh, I hope i saved before collapsing it) to use it ingame?

[ehtyeci]

Imagine if there existed a type of texture that you could project onto a low-poly mesh, so that it appears high poly in-game. So instead of having the GPU calculate all the polys, it takes surface normals from a map instead. The only thing it can't do is change the silhouette and sharp contours within the model, which is why most polys should go towards that.

For your first weapon it doesn't really matter. As long as it's not 50K or something ridiculously high. Just for reference, I think the CBBE body has something like 50K, but it has a LOT of curves and is meant to be morphed substantially.

[FrogTheFirst]

Ok, for this one I'll let it at as it is currently with turbosmooth. So I sill have to UV unwrapp it then texture it. About the texturing part tho, I found several ways to do it, or at least some different ppl do it differently. Some just put it in Ck after modelling it and add some textures, that's it. Some others use photoshop then put it in CK or FO4edit. Just using Ck would be enough?

 

What 3ds max material would you use on that mesh?

Edited December 14, 2017 by FrogTheFirst