Union of meshes - basic ground rules
by Alex Rice · in General Discussion · 06/26/2004 (11:29 pm) · 3 replies
I'm using Blender to create some .dts characters for TGE. This is kind of a basic question I would think, but I don't see it in Finney, or in my Blender book. I hope someone can tell me what's the "best practice" for a TGE developer.
Imagine an animal with squashed icosphere for the body and other squashed icosphere for the head. They overlap. Any of these methods could be used to combine the meshes:
a - join the meshes and call it good
b - get the union of the meshes
c - by hand "weld", merge, knife, add faces, move, etc
Which is optimal for game development in TGE? For productivity of artist? The way I each of a-b-c is
a- fastest and nicest looking? but there could be hidden faces which is just a waste of graphics resources right? Is there anything wrong with it, other than that?
b- nice looking but produces an explosion of number of faces where the auto-welding is done by blender
c- a puzzle, slow, painstaking, and always looks a little crooked.
Imagine an animal with squashed icosphere for the body and other squashed icosphere for the head. They overlap. Any of these methods could be used to combine the meshes:
a - join the meshes and call it good
b - get the union of the meshes
c - by hand "weld", merge, knife, add faces, move, etc
Which is optimal for game development in TGE? For productivity of artist? The way I each of a-b-c is
a- fastest and nicest looking? but there could be hidden faces which is just a waste of graphics resources right? Is there anything wrong with it, other than that?
b- nice looking but produces an explosion of number of faces where the auto-welding is done by blender
c- a puzzle, slow, painstaking, and always looks a little crooked.
About the author
#2
Personally I don't physicly join the two elements (meshes) unless: A) There is some sort of deformation going on (ie. through bones) that will move the intersecting elements about in a way that they are both not uniform; B) The texture needs to wrap perfectly from one mesh to the other; or C) The model is large enough that you can see the seam between the two intersecting pieces.
06/27/2004 (10:29 am)
Actually any of those methods that you mentioned Alex will work just fine. Personally I don't physicly join the two elements (meshes) unless: A) There is some sort of deformation going on (ie. through bones) that will move the intersecting elements about in a way that they are both not uniform; B) The texture needs to wrap perfectly from one mesh to the other; or C) The model is large enough that you can see the seam between the two intersecting pieces.
#3
06/27/2004 (7:17 pm)
Thanks for the feedback & suggestions! 
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