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"The Kettle Quest" overview/tutorial is ready


Gaia Clary
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Hi.

I just have finished my first iteration of my overview tutorial about how to manage the transition from Sculpted Prims to mesh objects. I have tried to make the tutorial independent from any tool. But it is adressed to people who already know how to create Sculpted Prims. It is NOT a newbie tutorial !!!

If you are interested, then you can find the tutorial on the Machinimatrix Blog:

    http://blog.machinimatrix.org/kettle-quest

Here is the result i made during my quest:

copperKettle.png

I appreciate any feedback on weak or not understandable parts. Where do i need to go further into detail ? What should i describe better ? What have i forgotten ?

 

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Feynt Mistral wrote:

I'll admit though at just a few pixels on screen, it's unlikely anyone would actually see that lowest LoD.  >D

Thanks for the hint!

I have changed LOD0 by reducing the handle to 3 triangles and spending some more triangles on the kettle body and add the interior again. It looks better to me now.

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Feynt Mistral wrote:

You could probably make the handle a triangle strip that's outward facing, maybe 6 triangles (3 quads).

That does not work very well, because the (my?) eyes seem to recognize the deviation from the handle much easier when hard angles are involved. So although the handle is just a straight line now, it still looks more appealing to me than the 6 triangle solution.

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For the small LODs, make the handle a triangle with an alpha texture image of  the curved handle.  Then copy the triangle and reverse it so it can be seen from the other side, for a total of 2 triangles.  Very small objects you cannot tell a flat image (billboard it's called in the 3D graphics trade) from a 3 dimensional model.

You can most easily make the alpha texture by rendering just the handle in your 3D program, using a camera view placed so it is seen flat.

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thank you for this hint. I will add the billboard approach to the tutorial.

2 questions though:

 

  1. you have to use a separate texture face for the billboard, correct ?
  2. When i use one triangle per side i have to scale it up so that i can place the handle on it.
    Wouldn't it be much easier to use a Quad (2 triangles) instead ?

So from what i see the plus for billboard is:

 

  • You can get a very good approximation.
  • You need 4 triangles (2 per side) (not necessary but easier to texturize ?)

The minus against billboard:

 

  • You only have a flat representation of the object
  • You need an extra texture face also on the other LOD meshes (can be hidden)
  • SL does not provide a true Billboard (image always in view plane)

I guess the plusses count way more than the minusses ?

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Gaia Clary wrote:

  1. you have to use a separate texture face for the billboard, correct ?
  2. When i use one triangle per side i have to scale it up so that i can place the handle on it.

    Wouldn't it be much easier to use a Quad (2 triangles) instead ?

(1) Not necessarily. You could put the handle in an unused corner of the soup texture, and just fiddle with the UV map to make it appear on the lowest LOD.

(2) For this object two triangles in a rectangle would fit the shape better.  For a tree, the canopy might be done as single triangles intersecting to give reasonable appearance from all angles.  It will depend on the object shape and what you use for physics.  It will also depend on the prim accounting.  You might not need to bother with billboards if your prim count is already low enough.  Alternately, using it might push you from 2.1 to 1.9, and make the rounded off prim count go from 3 to 2 on some object type.  I consider a "billboard" as one of the bag of tricks for model makers.

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