Hi everyone, ever since I’ve started working meshes (in Blender) I’ve looked for the best way to apply colors and materials. I searched the forum from top to bottom, and found a few solutions:
Use a color palette, then apply it as an image texture
Use vertex or texture paint (haven’t tried, don’t know how well it works)
Use Blender materials or textures and bake the texture using the Cycles engine - wouldn’t recommend, takes a ridiculous amount of time on some devices, needs good lighting, and things like reflections will be - quite literally - baked into the texture.
Separate your model into multiple mesh parts, import with location in Studio to keep original shape and structure, and finally apply the color and material there.
I personally use the last one, for a few reasons. The main ones are the ability to apply default Roblox materials easily (including neon, the hard one to replicate) and the option to adjust the properties of each individual part. However, I have my own doubts that this is the correct way to do it, and I want to make sure before further continuing to make more models with this method.
My question is: What is the best way to approach this and how does it affect performance and results?
Any help is appreciated!
Feel free to correct any of my points if they’re wrong, I’m still quite inexperienced when it comes to modelling and building in general!
Thanks for your reply, but I was wondering if the different ways listed above have any impact on performance or result. If you know of anything like that, I would appreciate knowing that. Thanks though, good to see which way is widely used.
Like anything in the realm of performance optimization: it depends
Color palette and baking are both achieve the same goal, since both are applied in Roblox as an image texture. They allow you to use PBR, finer detailing in the texture, and other visual benefits. It’s also just a more applicable and cleaner workflow, but that’s a personal choice for me since this is my method.
Vertex painting can be used as shading, while still letting you change the MeshPart’s BrickColor. This can also be used in combination of exporting your mesh split up per material/colour type.
Splitting the mesh up is typically worse for performance, but you’re saving a bit by not uploading textures. How much you’re saving would depend on how many pieces the mesh is being broken up, and how large the texture would have to be if you didn’t.
Thank you for your reply! I’d like to try using a palette, as that’s what most people seem to prefer and performance is quite important to me.
Is it limited to smooth models with no materials, or can you somehow integrate them into it? I’ve seen some special node for that as a blender add-on. Is that something I should look into if I plan to use default roblox materials?
Well technically you can’t use Roblox Materials for them, but nothing is stopping you from making your own materials in Blender, and applying/baking them into a texture to use for your asset. No add-ons required, nodes and materials are standard in Blender.
I’ve found that making my own textures in Blender or Substance Painter turns out way better than Roblox Materials anyways. Granted this is not as performance-friendly, but that’s par for the course for better visuals.