Fist

[bnewton81]

Poo! that still looks very good. I just finished a hand, but it has almost a 1000 verts. Way too many.

[Fuchida]

Try the decimate modifier, should keep the rough modell with less verts

[tachzusamm]

I just finished a hand, but it has almost a 1000 verts. Way too many.

If you ask me: No. Why do you think that's too much?

Try the decimate modifier, should keep the rough modell with less verts

Well - IF you are going to apply a decimate modifier, don't do this on the hand. It will completely disturb all hardly worked-out loop flow, leading to ugly results in finger bending when the rig is used. This is because decimate converts quads to triangles, which makes smooth rigging difficult.

The process flow should look like this:
1. Model a nice hand, taking care of topology and face loops. The videos posted will help.
2. Already have a subsurf modifier in the stack, during the modeling process. SubSurf = 1 will be enough, may lead to 4000-5000 faces. Don't care about this at this step.
Be sure that you have selected Shading: Smooth for the model. This will give the organic look avoiding sharp edges.
UV-Unwrapping should take place at this early stage as well.
3. Build your rig, bend the hand's fingers as you want until it looks cool.
4. Apply the rigging, which leads to a fist model.
5. Tweak the fist model, still keeping subsurf in the stack, until it looks more cool.
6. Apply the subsurf modifier.
7. Then, finally, add your decimate modifier, if you think it will slow-down URU otherwise.
8. Apply some corrections if necessary.

Alternative Method:
1. - 5. as above.
6. Still having the subsurf modifier in stack, build a lightmap for your model, using the UV map, not using the "Lightmap Pack" function.
Keep this lightmap image for reference.
It could be even better to set subsurf to 2 or 3 during lighmap generation - it will produce a texture with really soft shading, based on the high-res subsurfed model.
7. Just remove your subsurf modifier, and apply the texture. This gives you a low-poly model with baked high-res shading.
8. Done. You may still add some subtle tweaks, or apply textures, but still keep the original lightmap as a the highres shading applied (maybe using multiple textures, lightmap as multiply).
9. Be sure to export this fist model as shadeless.

[bnewton81]

that easy huh? I see how you edge flow is very important in a hand or face. Anything that is going to have to move.

[bnewton81]

2. Already have a subsurf modifier in the stack, during the modeling process. SubSurf = 1 will be enough, may lead to 4000-5000 faces. Don't care about this at this step.
Be sure that you have selected Shading: Smooth for the model. This will give the organic look avoiding sharp edges.
UV-Unwrapping should take place at this early stage as well.

So I should uv unwrap at a low poly count? Why? The map won't be messed up when i apply the subsurf? I didn't know so much went into making a hand. Good info. I usually try not to over think things, but in this case I seem to have under thought.

[tachzusamm]

So I should uv unwrap at a low poly count? Why?

Just because it's easier to shuffle some few points in the UV map around; lot more easier than to work with 4 times the points of an applied subsurf.
Oh, and it will be much easier to unwrap a flat hand than a fist.

The map won't be messed up when i apply the subsurf?

No. The UV-Mapping will still be the same, if you have a subsurf in the stack or after you have applied it.

By the way, the main advantage of modifiers in Blender is to keep them in the stack and un-applied as long as possible; normally you would never apply it.
And the good news is, that this workflow is supported now by PyPRP2 as well - because our fabulous Branan created code that applies them automatically during the export, leaving the main blend file unchanged.

Thanks, Branan (and thanks to all other developers as well).


Oh, and: Happy birthday, bnewton.