I’m making a tree mesh on blender and am having a lot of trouble finding the perfect amount of vertices on my mesh, i’m using subdivision surface, skin, and decimate modifiers, and I was merging the vertices to make the mesh (Alt-M). You can only un-subdivide the mesh twice because its the only amount that doesn’t make the mesh deformed, and all the other tools in the decimate modifier don’t work that well.
Here is an example of a tree with an ideal amount of vertices, it also looks like this tree was created through the same method.
RobloxScreenShot20200409_094245574|690x369
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Yes, the only useful tool I found in the decimate modifier was the un-subdivide tool, but it seems the only amount of times you can un-subdivide a mesh is twice, all the others deform the mesh.
The mesh example you showed actually isn’t using the subdivision surface modifier at all—what they did was create a low-poly tree shape and then set the shading to smooth and threw on an edge split modifier to keep the sharpest edges clearly defined while leaving the more subtle curves appearing smooth. The main body of the trunk you showed is about sixty vertices.
This is an example of the topology you can achieve using this strategy -
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But then how do they get their branches like this, where it’s all connected? From what I know, the only way to get your branches and whole tree like this is through merging vertices.
Based on the curve angle of a lot of the branches, they must have split the edges manually. That’s something you can do fairly easily by separating all of the edges you’d like to be smooth and then putting them back into the same mesh with the split vertices. I’m not sure what you mean by “merging vertices” because that would effectively do the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve.
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That video doesn’t go over the shading method OP is referring to, which is the point of the thread.
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I let him know that the effect he’s trying to achieve has nothing to do with the vertex count, but instead how the model is shaded.
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I think i’ve solved it, I used subdivision surface and applied it and then added shading and edge split, and I got something very similar to how that tree looks. Now I just have to reduce the tris.
It’s quite likely that this could have been made using a curve and then decimated, it’s a method that I also use to create tree branches and it works pretty well for me. It is also quite easy to use and edit and I highly recommend trying it out if you have not already.
Again, the question this thread is predicated upon is about edge splitting. We’re not talking about what techniques everyone uses to model trees; it’s about how to make it look like the reference image, and it has already been solved.
The edge split modifier increases vertices by a significant amount, it is more likely the sharp effect was created by using auto smooth and messing around with the angle until the desired affect was achieved-
Auto smooth only works with one angle parameter. The reference tree has a very sharp curve at the base which would have thrown off the auto smooth function, which is why they split edges for that particular model. Edge splitting a low-poly model has a negligible impact on performance.
