Hello! I’ve recently wanted to get back into 3D modeling as a full-time career. I’ve 3D modeled various amounts of things (mainly melee weapons) and want to widen my arsenal with a new variety of skills.
I think starting with building showcases would benefit me a lot in this scenario due to the complexity of scenes I can come up with diverse environments that can include a variety of different objects such as miscellaneous items, organic meshes, foliage/nature, structural architecture and even texturing.
However, when it comes to building actual structures that a player can walk in (utilizing blender that is), I have a hard time grasping the workflow behind it. Some thoughts leading to this mindset are:
How would I got about structuring my model so that the player can easily walk through without any geometrical obstructs?
When creating walls, should I make each wall a separate mesh and combine them in studio? Or should I have them all together and import it as that into studio?
What would be the best way to avoid the (Don’t know the terminology) thing where the mesh will have invisible barriers to them that players can bump into or walk up?
All-in-all I want to know the best workflow and for someone to tell me that I’m overthinking all of this or asking the right questions.
Anything helps!
Given that the engine only approximates the collision of a mesh it can be hard to get accurate hitboxes. You will often need to turn off the collision of the mesh and instead trace its shape by hand using invisible parts. But before you do that there is a studio setting to check the collision shape of meshes - ‘Show Decomposition Geometry’. Use this to correct any collision problems.
Honestly I would create buildings (especially modern buildings) using Parts, not meshes. Their shapes are very geometrical so they are easy to put together in studio. MaterialVariants will let you apply different textures and PBR maps to them as well. Extra detail can then be added with meshes (like custom door frames, support beams, and so on). And tricky geometry like curved roofs can always be modelled separately in Blender.
Here’s a building I made recently using these techniques and it looks totally fine. Only the roof tiles texture is mapped awkwardly so I could consider using a mesh instead, but the walls were all made with Parts and look just fine.
I’m guessing you are referring to cases where the normals of a triangle are facing the wrong direction. Game engines apply a technique called backface culling where the order of a triangle’s vertices is checked (which is either clockwise or counter-clockwise orientation) to quickly determine if they should be drawn. It’s an efficient optimization technique to eliminate any triangles that are facing away from you.
In your modelling software you will have an option to visualize backface culling and potentially fix any of these invisible triangles. If you’re using Blender the easiest prevention method is to use Mesh -> Normals -> Recalculate outside or something to fix any inwards facing normals.
Another question on top of all of that if you wouldn’t mind answering.
How would I go about scaling everything correctly when crossing my build that I make in studio with other meshes I model in Blender for example?
They always come out super large and if I size them down they don’t exactly fit the building I made in studio. What’s a fix around this?
