Game modeling/texturing advice

General Discussion
1

I'm hoping some people here will be able to give me some advice on a few questions I have - I am a programmer, not a graphic artist, so when I attempt to recruit people to do modeling for my game in a month or two I would like to be able to speak to them in a somewhat educated manner about what is required.


  1. If a high-poly model is created - is it easy to export/create a low-poly version, or must the original model be created with the intent of being low-poly.


  2. Does the actual scale the model is created in matter - or do you just resize each model appropriately in a manual fashion within jME, and then give it an accompanying property sheet or something of that sort so that the game can automatically pick up the scaling information?


  3. When modeling things like characters - where different head shapes may go on the same body - what is the best approach.  Should each body component be modeled separately and assembled ingame?  If so, how do you deal with joining the edges/properly smoothing the pieces together and making sure there are no gaps?


  4. I don't really know the first thing about skinning/texturing models - is there anything specific I should be requiring as far as quality or the way the assets are created? 



    Also, any other advice about game asset creation would be welcomed. (or any useful websites detailing the high level aspects such as these)
2

only a short answer…


  1. the normal aproach is to create a lowpoly model, which will be used in jme. If u wanna use normalmapping for making the model look more detailed, u create a highpolymodel starting from the lowpoy and keep its basic shapes.

    For this you might use Tools as e.g. ZBrush.


  2. You should take care of the models' scale , but its not that important that the artist use specific kind of units (inches, cm, meter). BUT he should aware of use the same units for every model, and take care of keeping them in apropriate proportions. So you could set a global scalefactor within jme.


  3. Well, i couldn't say much about this. I think get a proper kind of system to dynamicaly add/change bodyparts isn't that easy. You'll have to define clear and static shapes of the boders (arm-torso), so each part fits exactly to its parent. This might be suitable for static models, but if u use animated ones i think you would run into trouble… but maybe i'm totally wrong :slight_smile: But this is seriously a interesting topic…


  4. For texturing a model the important part is the uv-mapping, so called texturecoordinates. They define for each vertex of a model, where it should be placed on the textureimage. upperLeftCorner of one side of the Box maped to the upperLeftCorner of the Textureimage for example. For a box it might be suficiant to have an texture with only one side of the box painted, using it for every side. But this is different for e.g. characters.

    The basic technique behind is called uvw mapping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UV_mapping



    4.1 The other thing is how to get models animated. there are mainly 2 techniques: Vertexanimation and BoneAnimation.

    The more handy one for characters is Boneanimation. Here u create a bonestructure within the model, and define “weights” for each vertex. This weight defines how much/strong the vertex is affected by the translation/rotation of each bone, according to the real behavior of your skin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_animation



    have to leave now.

    so far…
3

Thanks emp.



Anyone else have experience in this area too?  I was hoping to get three or four opinions on the topic, in case there are some things one person thinks of that someone else doesn't.

4

I agree with many of the things that he's said and that's only with my limited knowledge of the subject. The best advice that I can give is research a 3d modelling program yourself by tediously finding tutorials. Blender is a nice free one written in a rather familiar language. Search the community forums and you'll find yourself to have a little artist inside.

http://www.blender.org/

#1, #2 Go with what you'll use. Making a high poly model low poly does take some work but it's not impossible. Modifying the model to fit your needs is always better than using that small amount of processing power while running. Although that is of course negated if you need more than one size in the program.

#3 I have no idea honestly. Anything I say would be speculation and might point you in the wrong direction.

#4 it is exactly what emp said. UV mapping seems like the best way to go about this. Bone animations are probably the easiest and crudest way to go about animating. But that also means they're the most documented/supported, too.

Take everything I say with realizing I'm not exactly qualified to answer.