3d-modeling

[steady zealot]

Even tried splitting every quad in the curve to make it look like it was pieced together, and that looked really weird

[tough plover]

maybe?

or

[steady zealot]

This was the 45 degree one I mentioned

[steady zealot]

There's this. It's similar but a bit different because of topology

[tough plover]

I see

I think the fact that there it's so smooth and not like individual planks is what's making it look a little odd

[steady zealot]

I'd prefer not to have to cut a line through the curved quads, but I'll give it a shot to see what it looks like

yeah potentially

[tough plover]

let me try another alternative design

some kind of segmented thing?

maybe having the planks run the other direction would help?

just throwing ideas out there

[steady zealot]

I tried something similar to that and it looked pretty weird but maybe if I divvy the segments up properly it could look good

here's with your other design

it looks nice to me but it necessitated some weird geometry

And I'm not too keen on it

I'll keep experimenting! Thanks for the input!

[spiral sigil]

How the hell are seems going over edges that don't exist anymore

[spiral sigil]

Do you want to see dimensionality on each plank being placed into the bar feature(?), it looks handcrafted and more real

[steady zealot]

What do you mean by this?

[spiral sigil]

There are edges tangent to the bevel

[steady zealot]

I'm not sure I follow

Either way, I'm redoing the texture to include planks

[steady zealot]

Alright, It looks more physically feasible now!

[spiral sigil]

Those individual slabs getting smaller and squished into trapezoids is probably not something people would want to choose in a real construction scenario

[steady zealot]

What's the alternative?

[spiral sigil]

I don't remember how to professionally UV Unwrap I've been out of season for awhile

[steady zealot]

If you can describe to me how they should look, I can do it

[spiral sigil]

It's easier to picture how it should be if you imagine actually placing each slab

[steady zealot]

I watch a fair amount of woodworking videos but I'm not quite sure what your vision is

[spiral sigil]

Keep the slabs same size except for the one where it meets

[steady zealot]

You mean rectangular versus trapezoidal?

[spiral sigil]

Yes

But if you think it's better the other way it's fine

[steady zealot]

That's far too much work, so I think I'll pass. But I appreciate the input

[spiral sigil]

Yeah for now idk the math

All sorts of perspective math with trigonometry

But it seems to make more sense of things since after all the 3d application is using that math to show you your model and texture

[steady zealot]

In order to make the planks rectangular, I'd need to make the actual mesh have rectangles in the bend, and that would require remodeling the entire bar corner

So I think this is fine for now. The scope of this world is much much larger than this one room though, so I have a ton of other stuff to work on

[harsh saddle]

Seems like it could be done with just the normal map but I honestly don't think people are gonna care or even notice most of the time, looks good and who even knows how wood works?

[steady zealot]

It is using the normal map, but I'm using trim sheets and tiling textures, so the UVs determine the shape

[harsh saddle]

Ah, right, that does complicate things.

[umbral steppe]

hello, im trying to learn how to create avis, does anyone know where can i start? tutorial wise at least, thanks :p

[tough plover]

https://discord.com/channels/189511567539306508/1139228456090087495

[steep ice]

what SIL blendshape is for?

because it does nothing

[azure rain]

that's the point so it knows what it looks like when you're not talking

[steady zealot]

SIL is short for Silence.

It is a bit confusing as to why it exists, because you'd think it would just use the default shape without any shapekeys for silence, rather than a shapekey with no difference

[tight dew]

I was gonna go to sleep, but then that midnight motivation kicked in and I made a rigged candy bucket

This is a full minute of me just wiggling a rigged bucket, felt like sharing

[solar fossil]

Why did I watch the whole thing? it's just a bucket. What was I expecting?
It's a wiggling.
Bucket.

[steady zealot]

https://tenor.com/view/pocket-watch-hypnosis-hypno-pendulum-watch-gif-20366272 Same effect

[spiral sigil]

[royal flower]

This is a bucket

[stone olive]

i think the fact that this was recorded at 5 am really adds to the ambience

[jagged bronze]

so i have this fedora hat model that i found for free online but i noticed that the band around it is not against the hat, and it looks bad and i wanna figure out how i can make it like flat against the base hat, can anyone help me out?

[tough plover]

should probably use my fedora instead

[jagged bronze]

price?

[tough plover]

https://sacredvrc.gumroad.com/l/mVzLt?_gl=1*1f96qe3*_ga*MTY2NDkyMDc3LjE2ODQ0OTgxMDI.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*MTY5MzY5MzYzMC41MS4xLjE2OTM2OTM2NDkuMC4wLjA.

free

but you can tip if you'd like

[jagged bronze]

eh no thanks

not my style

[tough plover]

it comes with the Substance painter files, you can change the textures as you wish

[jagged bronze]

yee ik

[tough plover]

it's also a hell of a lot more optimized than the one you're using lol

feel free to modify it in any way you'd like

[stone olive]

maybe you could seperate the band from the hat ( click a vertex on the band, press L, then P > seperate by selection ) and then apply a shrinkwrap modifier

and then adjust the distance from the hat itself so there isnt clipping

[jagged bronze]

ok

[strange lotus]

For bodies, is it generally easier to cut up a premade texture to fit a new UV map in photoshop or edit the model's UV in blender to fit the texture map?

Trying to use a skin texture for a body it wasn't originally made for

[tough plover]

you should probably make the textures from scratch, pretty easy in Substance

[strange lotus]

I have zero experience in that

unfortunately

[tough plover]

did your specific body mesh come with any textures? might be easier to modify those

otherwise good luck getting UV seams to line up

[strange lotus]

It did but they are very simplistic. I'm trying to modify the (neck down) body of a furry avi to human skin

I guess I'll keep at it in PS

I'll try and blend the seams when I'm done

Hmm

This is hard 😅

[harsh saddle]

Really good texturing is arguably just as hard as the modeling.

[devout olive]

When I me and a friend made this avatar and put it into VRChat, we came out with these annoying white lines, how exactly would we fix this?

[tough plover]

you didn't add enough texture padding around your UV islands

what did you use to texture?

[devout olive]

Procreate

[devout olive]

Is there a way to fix this?

[tough plover]

check to see if there is a way to adjust the UV Padding

if not, you can use blender to bake out the padding. this is an older video but it should cover the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xNqqsP2cjA

[tough plover]

released a Blender add-on to facilitate working in Substance painter with multiple UV maps by creating copies of the mesh(es) for each UV map automatically and giving them new materials so they show up as separate texture sets. useful for shaders like Poiyomi that let you choose which UV you want for basically any texture. let me know if you encounter any issues https://github.com/sacred0/SubstanceMultiUVExport

[glacial lion]

awesome

[devout olive]

Im trying to make a hat on my avatar grabbable, how would I do that?

[devout olive]

Whenever I try to bake my textures for my model, they all come out completely pitch black, how can I fix this?

[distant lake]

does anyone know if it's possible that I can make the teeth stick out from the mouth while it's closed? (I'm not home right now so these are the only references I have as of right now)

[ionic skiff]

definitely. you could model it so the upper row of teeth is forward to the point they stick out. could also make the teeth only stick out during specific gesture expressions by moving the teeth with shape keys

[distant lake]

alright I'll try that when I get home, thank yoy

[ionic skiff]

youd probably need there to be a bit of a curve to the teeth, more like it wld be irl ig if you wanna go for the first option

[distant lake]

alright

I tried that originally but I messed up and gave up really fast but he looks uncanny without the teeth

[harsh saddle]

Not properly mapped would be my guess. If you're going to bake to your texture, you need to not be using tiling and not have overlapping UVs.

[tough plover]

if you have the metallic value set to 1, it'll also end up black

[void lintel]

I love it when you export your model and blender just corrupts your blendshapes

[obsidian nova]

Those white lines are the edge of your texture map. You’re seeing them because of something called “mip-map compression”.

[obsidian nova]

Ah wait, seems like someone already answered you.

[dull crater]

So I need a little help with something

Because I used the grab tool to get the arms and legs, I ran into an issue where I can't properly detail the elbows, knees, as well as add fingers and toes

Because there aren't enough polygons in those areas to do it right

[dull crater]

If needed, I can also share my main reference photo

[harsh saddle]

Turn on dyntopo in the top right, it will give you detail wherever it's needed. You'll need to retopologize this to make it animateable anyway if that's the plan so you might as well not worry about topology.

[dull crater]

Ah, thank you very much, I'll try it when I get home

[vivid plover]

Anyone encounter something like this in Blender before?

Sometimes an object I have will no longer show the selection in edit mode.

Other objects still work correctly.
And I can still select parts of the misbehaving mush - I just don't have any visual indication of what edges are selected or seams or sharp.

I've encountered this in multiple meshes/projects now.

Blender 3.6.2

[quaint jasper]

Seeing your entire UI would help

[copper mulch]

how do i smooth out this edge

[tough plover]

ok, so it does seem like I was right with the idea that it was originally two layers

can you go back to the original mesh and try this:

• in edit mode, hit L over the mesh
• hit X > Vertices
• see if there is anything left

[copper mulch]

this model is broken as hell rn 💀

[quaint jasper]

This tool is my personal favorite in edit mode

[quaint jasper]

Has it been decimated or something ? The topology looks not great.

Flat shading certainly doesn't help

[copper mulch]

i had to decimate it , it was 100000 polygons

yeah i can tell the topology is bad when i smooth shade it

[quaint jasper]

Well, refer to my image above and it might help

[copper mulch]

i fixed it wohoooooo

[orchid phoenix]

true

i have it bound to q so i can spam it lmao

[spiral sigil]

https://youtu.be/zs3bCr1kbZU?si=IobeVgaYDJEl9jvy

[umbral flume]

Does anyone know how to cut into another object? I am trying to make an arch, the oval and wall are joined because I thought it would be eaiser

[thin shadow]

knife tool

[umbral flume]

how

[thin shadow]

can't get anymore elaborate than that. It's just called "knife tool". Depending on workflow, K.

[quaint jasper]

Knife project

[vast stone]

boolean operator

or mayb not idk, knife tool probably easier

[quaint jasper]

Knife project is the tool made for that purpose

[heavy sonnet]

My weight painting is being weird, I'm trying to do mirror weights, but whenever I paint it mirrors it on the body

So for example

I'm painting the left leg

It shouldn't be mirroring the weights exactly on each leg

But the right and left bones should be mirrored

When I paint on JUST the left leg

It paints symmetrically

So when I try to weight paint the left leg it is making the right and left leg painted to the same bone

I understand it should do this for bones in the middle

But these are left and right bones it shouldn't do that right?

And the weights aren't even mirroring between legs 😭

I've never had this happen before??

I know the mesh is symmetrical, I used mirror modifier

Nvm somehow mirror vertex groups got unchecked, that was my issue

[swift jolt]

Yes that is what mirror does :)

[tough plover]

in order for the weights to be mirrored properly, the vertex groups for the opposite side need to exist

to create them all, select your mesh in object mode, shift click the armature, and do ctrl + P > empty groups

[snow estuary]

Your character reminds me of prismo

[tough plover]

avatars take a very long time to make, how much are you willing to pay for something like that?

[alpine pond]

Based off of that yeah

[tough plover]

I'd also be careful with anyone solliciting you for commision work from this server, 99% chance it's a scam. using VRC Traders ( #community-servers-old ) would be where I'd go for commision work

[alpine pond]

I've been in the vrchat community since 2017, so I am aware. It all depends on the individuals price range to be fair.

[alpine pond]

Appreciate it thank you.

[snow estuary]

The character looks simple

I say 50

[tough plover]

to make it from scratch? hell no lol

stylized like that, I doubt there will be bases similar enough to be good starting points

maybe one could be used for the body, but I think the face would have to be redone

[heavy sonnet]

that's not what it usually does with opposite side bones, it usually paints asymmetrically but copies a mirrored version of the weights to the corresponding bone on the opposite side

[swift jolt]

never done that for me when using the mirror

[heavy sonnet]

well i figured it out

mirror does what you said if you have mirror vertex groups disabled

it does what i said if you have it enabled

[autumn gust]

So like, is it possible to have the cat's fix model button not mess with the bones at all, just merge the meshes without decimation (for some reason decimation generates noticeable and major holes in every mesh)?

This is for Blender 3.6 by the way.

[tough plover]

can you not just merge meshes manually? it's just ctrl + J

Fix model is not required for anything

[autumn gust]

oh ok

[autumn gust]

That would not conflict with say ones with shape keys?

[tough plover]

no, the shape keys just get added

just make sure the UV Maps have the same name

[autumn gust]

And what about multiple materials that might have shape keys of same name?

[tough plover]

what? that's not how shape keys work

[autumn gust]

say for example the default shape key

[tough plover]

shape keys belong on meshes, they move vertices from one location to another. they have nothing to do with materials

[autumn gust]

That moment when I cannot atlas 1 of the materials due to needing to use an option on a shader to support cutouts and not knowing if I can use that option on all materials in unity without issues with them as well. 😹

[tough plover]

you can atlas a material that uses cutout transparency, but that would also mean that the entire rest of the material would need to do the alpha test, and would need the alpha channel in the texture. keeping things that require transparency on their own material is generally recommended, although with cutout it's still going to work if it's one material

[autumn gust]

ah ok

I see

So it would not affect the mesh that does not need cutouts on parts of the atlas texture then?

[tough plover]

it wouldn't affect it, but it would mean you're using the alpha channel for the whole thing, which would double the size of the texture in vram

[autumn gust]

Yeah, that was why I think not combining the head part in the atlas is a good idea.

as it is the only thing that has transparency.

Also would bring it down from ~20 MB (with the poiyomi shaders) down to about 6 MB or so.

in textures alone

[tough plover]

if you use Normal quality compression in unity, a texture with alpha is twice the size. if you use High quality, it will be twice the size of a normal quality texture, but will look better and supports alpha. it really depends on what you need though

[autumn gust]

true

[spiral sigil]

Can still atlas them, but use a separate material for the transparent parts.

Not sure if there is any real benefit to it or not honestly

[autumn gust]

I tried to atlas them but for some reason unity messed up the showing of them on a few meshes which became RIP.

[spiral sigil]

Well it's time to understand how unity reads off texture space then eh

Also not use cats

[autumn gust]

I did not use cats, I used separate tools this time.

like the material combiner plugin for blender.

[heavy swift]

...

[spiral sigil]

I don't like to say it but if you can't troubleshoot the issue with the automatic atlas you probably shouldn't use it yet until you can do it manually. Then you will understand what went awry

[autumn gust]

yeah

[misty compass]

anyone know how to remove this radius setting on blender 3.6?

[tough plover]

if you mean that you want the selection box again, just hold left click on the circle selection button

or hit W

[misty compass]

Thank you

[timber bay]

if i press Z for cut through on my blender knife tool it doesn't cut through

it enganges ORIENTATION LOCK to ze Z axis instead.

someone please help i go insane RN

[stone pine]

so you're trying to confirm your cuts?

Oh I googled what you're asking. K for knife tool, then press C, and hold shift for cut through @timber bay

[pale mica]

You only need to use C to enable cut-through. X/Y/Z now toggle axis lock for the cut, I think the command was something else a version or two back

[autumn gust]

So like I took a free hair that is 38.8k tris and decimated it to 5k tris, does it look good still?

[spiral sigil]

Since you automatically decimated the front short fat hair strands, they are noticeably more bendy then some of the other ones

There seems to be a lot of geometry in the back of the hair where it's longer that you can dissolve edge loop easily with little consequence, because they are already running so straight down so more geometry doesn't actually add more detail there

[spiral sigil]

At least it looks like you did automatic decimation over the entire thing at once

Also to determine if it has enough geometry we would need to know if the hair is going to have like physics

[autumn gust]

the sad part is that when I downloaded the hair for free (the creator posted it for free on their store page) they merged the strands together into a single mesh without decimating.

[spiral sigil]

If you want better you have to make better

[harsh saddle]

If you want to separate it to control decimation levels per strand, you should be able to hit L when hovering over that part of the mesh to select all connected faces and then P to separate. I think there's also a way to automatically separate all disconnected parts but I don't know it off hand.

[spiral sigil]

There is a way yeah

[harsh saddle]

Manual edge loop dissolution is the best route for good results, though you're always going to lose some fidelity unless the base mesh is just needlessly complex but using different decimation levels on the parts of the hair that will be more visible could give somewhat better results than full automatic decimation.

[autumn gust]

I see

btw the hair was from here: https://sockembopem.gumroad.com/l/uncmm?layout=profile

[autumn gust]

interesting for the hair I was using I was able to select, edit mode, P, and then by loose items to get each strand.

47 strands on it total oh my.

[harsh saddle]

Ah, yeah, that was what I was thinking of. You definitely want to recombine those after decimation. VRChat is not going to like 47 separate meshes on your avatar.

[autumn gust]

yeah 47 + 7 more like it.

the hair was the 8th one

which is why I am doing hair in a separate blend file actually with only the hair.

Easier to fix if stuff goes wrong.

And honestly I might do the same with my avatar's cat ears and tail and merge the cat ears with hair to reduce the mesh's on it as well.

😅

[harsh saddle]

Yeah, unless it's something like a prop where you want to toggle its visibility or give it specific components (like constraints) meshes should generally be combined on avatars.

[autumn gust]

yeah

How does the look on decimating each strand look so far?

yes I enabled wireframes on each one.

[autumn gust]

oh nice

got it down to 8k tris

it's actually ok just over 30k tris reduced on it.

[spiral sigil]

If you ask me the hair is scuffed from the beginning

It's quite boring basic and not good at what it does but it's what most people default on

Hopefully you learned valuable information for optimization through this process though, you can then apply it to any other project

[autumn gust]

true

[gritty junco]

is it possible to decimate geometry without losing weight paints? every time i use decimate my weight painting gets wiped

if so how do you do it / what’s an alternative

[snow estuary]

Nope

Decimate basically makes a new mesh

[gritty junco]

damn alright

thank you

would it be possible to use data transfer from the body then? on the decimated mesh

[spiral sigil]

Make a copy of the mesh so you have the original, decimate the main, then do a data transfer from one to the other and use "nearest face interpolated" for the closest copy. You may still have to fix some weights in areas.

Doing "decimate" will not screw up your UVs but if you do un-subdivide it will.

It will also lose shapekeys.

[tough plover]

what? you can absolutely decimate without losing weight

go to edit mode, select the part of the mesh you want to decimate, then do f3 and search for Decimate

in the context box, turn down the Ratio to decimate it

[gritty junco]

every time i used the decimate it gets rid of my weight paints

[gritty junco]

thank youuuu i’ll try this

[tough plover]

it shouldn't. what blender version are you on?

[gritty junco]

2.83

[tough plover]

that's quite old

[gritty junco]

the addons + tutorials i used when starting out with blender all used 2.83

so i just stuck with it

[tough plover]

vertex groups and blendshapes are both preserved when decimating. this has been the case for as long as I can remember.

[gritty junco]

well one time i had clothes with weights and after decimating them the weights were gone

i asked a friend about it who’s more experienced than me and she said that always happens

[tough plover]

yea that's just not true. if you use the decimate modifier, you can't apply it becuase blender doesn't allow you to apply most modifiers if you have shape keys

[gritty junco]

there was no shape keys on it

i just used the decimate geometry in edit mode

i’ve never really used modifiers (mostly because i don’t know how)

[umbral flume]

Can someone tell me how to ass verticies to a face when i am trying to move the faces and edit the object?

[tough plover]

what are you trying to do here

[umbral flume]

i am trying to move the back of the couch around the coushion and I don't know how to ad verticies while I am moving them

see if i move them it's not what i need

[tough plover]

are you trying to go from that straight couch to that curved couch?

[umbral flume]

yes. They are all one mesh

[tough plover]

you should add loop cuts to the back of the couch (ctrl + R, hover over an edge, mousewheel to add more cuts), and use a Simple Deform modifier to bend the couch

[umbral flume]

I've tried the duplicate option, but it just dupplicates the back of the couch and that's not what I need.

I'll try. Thank you

[tough plover]

@umbral flume

[umbral flume]

The ctrl + r works. not as fast as I used to be in 3DS max, but thank you

[tough plover]

use mousewheel to add a series of cuts, like I show in the clip

not sure how you could go any faster than that lol

[umbral flume]

I wasn't using the scroll wheel lol

[tough plover]

try to only add as many loop cuts as you need, in this case enough to match the amount of geometry on the coushins

[umbral flume]

I added one and put it at the middle of the curve and doing it by halfs. it'll make less pollygons for load times

[tough plover]

why not just add a series of loopcuts like this? the curve is uniform, it makes sense for the spacing of loops to be even

you can choose to not have as many loops as the coushins if you want

[umbral flume]

The vertices get in between the other vertices and it's hard for me to find them and deseleect them

well i could have moved them to where they where stretched way behind the couch...

but oh well

that's a problem for future me

XD

[umbral flume]

Thank you for your help.

i did the scrolling on the other half and it worked wonders

[gritty junco]

how do i fix this massive hole 💀

i downloaded these pants and didn’t edit the geometry so it’s not anything i did

edit mode pics unposed if needed

[tough plover]

dear god the poly count on those pants what the hell

[gritty junco]

I KNOW

i didn’t make them don’t blame me

(this is why i asked the decimation question earlier lmfao)

[autumn gust]

I figured out what my issue is with atlasing.

turns out it was not on my end but something with the material combiner plugin accidentally assigning the incorrect location of one of my material's UV's.

I even went as far as to ctrl+j all of the mesh's before using it as well to no success.

ah I see the issue

there is a long bug if say you try to combine an indexed texture.

The issue is, how do I know if it is indexed in blender?

[quaint jasper]

Select everything and press M > merge by distance

[gritty junco]

thank you SO MUCH

how do i fix this though

im guessing just weight paint again and sculpt a little bit?

[quaint jasper]

In this case you inadvertently merged some vertices with the method above, so undo the steps and make sure that the bottom part of the pants are overlapping first

[autumn gust]

By chance happen to know of way to check if a texture in blender is indexed? It might be the cause of trying to material combine textures together causing issues at runtime in vrc with one material seeming to be the wrong color.

[quaint jasper]

You can also purge non indexed data with the File >

[autumn gust]

oh

[gritty junco]

i just undid the weight painting and redid it after merging , it fixed the issue 🙇🏻‍♀️

thank you!!

[quaint jasper]

[autumn gust]

by chance you know how to safely decimate a body mesh without destroying it when the low poly version is 21k tris to try to at least make it 5k tris for quest?

I have such a body mesh that I need to figure out optimizing some more 😅.

When I try using cats on it, it seems to put random holes on the mesh.

[quaint jasper]

Aside from manually dissolving edge loops, I don't think so. Cats bake has sometimes done an incredible job, sometimes entirely unusable. So I've often gone the manual route

[autumn gust]

I see

So you agree that cats is not perfect and sometimes destroys the mesh 😅.

[quaint jasper]

Yep!

But when it works, it's really wonderful

[autumn gust]

yeah lol

sadly I also will need to decimate the head too

as it is 11.6k tris alone.

The only big mesh's I have now on my avatar is head, base, and a few clothing as a single material.

😅

I sure quest 3 will improve a lot and improve the limitations on the quest versions of the performance checks

as even things like 75 bones is too small lol.

(the base I use is 75 bones alone, and that does not count hair bones and bones that holds materials on the head lol)

[harsh saddle]

Even if it does, they still will likely want to set performance standards with Quest 2 in mind unless they want to have different performance ranks for every headset. Quest 1 can still technically run the 100 MB worlds we were eventually allowed to create, there's just like a 95% chance of crashing.

[autumn gust]

I was thinking of like, removing support for Quest 1 when 3 comes and supporting quest 2 at minimum.

Since Quest 1 just seems like it sucks from what I heard about it so far.

[azure rain]

the quest one has already been deprecated

[harsh saddle]

Yeah at this point it is but I don't think they'll want to be deprecating Quest 2 very quickly.

[tough plover]

^

especially with how popular it is

the current stats are based on the quest 2

[harsh saddle]

A lot of people aren't going to be jumping ship to Quest 3 for years if at all.

[autumn gust]

Also I think quest 2 should be able to handle at least 32k polys on avatars right if that was updated to be the poor level threshold with bones matching PC?

[autumn gust]

they won't deprecate quest 2, it would be supported like Quest 3 lol.

(with Quest 1 removed)

[tough plover]

the limits aren't set arbitrarily. they don't simply pull numbers out of thin air and decide those are the limits

[autumn gust]

That is my idea.

[tough plover]

there is testing and benchmarking done before limits are chosen

[autumn gust]

ye

[tough plover]

the quest 2 is already running at the limit of what it can do

have you not heard all of the people complaining about crashing?

[autumn gust]

Also some avatars perform very well on quest despite having 69k polys and 161 bones 😅.

[tough plover]

being the only avatar in a world does not count

[autumn gust]

Because the one I have uses only ~13 MB of texture memory and 5 MB of physical size.

[tough plover]

you need to consider instances of 40 or more people

[autumn gust]

true

[tough plover]

I don't know if quest lobbies can go up to 80, but if so, the limits better be damn strict

[harsh saddle]

Crashing seems more common recently on Quest 2 for whatever reason. Hopefully an update will sort it out to be at least like it was.

[autumn gust]

sometimes bugs in vrchat crash it too.

[harsh saddle]

I sometimes get performance issues on my PC in crowded instances even when I have the minimum displayed rank and max size adjusted for performance.

[autumn gust]

true story, vrchat drains my laptop battery even when connected to a 45W power cord 😅.

[autumn gust]

oh my

[autumn gust]

most likely because most users have very poorly optimized avatars.

[harsh saddle]

It's not the newest PC, a 2060 but Quest 2 can't hardly handle a crowded instance with Quest-friendly avatars.

[autumn gust]

true story whenever that happens it sometimes outright crashes vrc or even Windows because AMD sorta screwed up their graphics driver code.

And worst of all

they considered the bug report to be spam just because they did not want to fix it lol.

[harsh saddle]

That's the thing, I alter the settings so that almost everyone is in a fallback avatar and then its barely playable in PC VR if you don't get VR sickness atall.

[autumn gust]

oh my

[harsh saddle]

So if that's happening to my somewhat outdated gaming PC, standalone Quest 2 is another matter. I often get max frames when Quest 2 people are at 35-40

[autumn gust]

oh my cool

[snow estuary]

vr in 35 frames??

sick

[spiral sigil]

Krampus forgot his units, who was their math teacher I need to have a word with them

35,000 triangle¹ over 60 frame¹ × 1 person¹

[harsh saddle]

I think you forgot to take the derivative of time

[spiral sigil]

Let's put this all on the axis of time before we get ahead of ourselves

No time is irrelevant except when considering ram getting clogged the more random shit you load and unload into it

Frame should be on Y axis and triangle/person should be on X axis

The derivative of any continuous part of that graph should be in units of triangle¹/person¹×frame²

[dull yarrow]

ayo anyone here able to make me a 3D Model based off my reference sheet for free? im broke

[spiral sigil]

There is Walmart tacobell KFC laundromat hardware-store Walgreens Dunkin-donuts miscellaneous-warehouse-jobs chinese-takeout-kitchen

Why no job

[azure rain]

nobody is going to make your model for free

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1486350/VRoid_Studio_v1230/ this free to download software could get you a pretty close match for it

Steam

VRoid Studio v1.23.0

VRoid Studio is a 3D character maker that lets you use your imagination to easily create your own original characters. By making your 2D characters able to move in a 3D space and usable in anime and game production, your creative range will greatly expand. The VRoid Project has started with the hope that many creators will have fun exploring the...

▶ Play video

[spiral sigil]

Lmao funny joke

[dull yarrow]

K

Thx

[dull yarrow]

Yes

[spiral sigil]

Find job then u can do no work ez

[dull yarrow]

K

[spiral sigil]

The work u do is job

Be a real human in society not everyone can live inside unless they have a computer science bachelor

[tame sinew]

How would I make this Kama model look torn and ripped? I'm not sure how to...

[steady zealot]

Just finished this ceiling texture for my world

[harsh saddle]

I don't know much more to it than cutting out some triangles/adding new cuts and deleting faces where you want the holes to be. For a more realistic cloth look, you might want to use multires to subdivide it and use that to bake a normal map

That's a very pretty ceiling. Must've taken some time to get all the curly bits to fit properly.

[tame sinew]

So like use some sort of map to mark out cuts, and then have blender make cuts in those spaces?

[steady zealot]

Yeah I hand placed the curves. Thanks!

[harsh saddle]

You don't need a map for cuts, just delete some triangles and move the surrounding vertices around to get the shape you want for the hole. It's a very methodical, manual process. If there's an automated process for that, I'm not aware of it.

[steady zealot]

You can also just find a ripped cloth texture and UV Unwrap the model to use it

and have some transparency

Depends on the style

[harsh saddle]

True, transparency is an option if you aren't concerned about it looking good on Quest and a lot simpler to make more complex shapes than making holes in the geometry.

Quest can't do transparency so you need to alter the geometry there.

[steady zealot]

Right yeah, depends on if it's gonna be quest compat, because transparency doesn't work on quest as stated above

[tough plover]

yea transparency can work super well, especially if the mesh has no thickness

example

[tough plover]

looks very good btw

[steady zealot]

Thanks~!

[tough plover]

what resolution are the textures?

[steady zealot]

In that picture, 4k. In the world it'll be 2k

I make all the textures in 4k and then use unity's compression thing to make them 2k

[tough plover]

wonder if you could get away with 1k lol

[steady zealot]

Maybe but I'm trying to keep it looking decent

lmao

[tough plover]

ye ofc

[steady zealot]

And this particular texture is going to be tiled every 12 feet

so it has to be relatively high res

[tough plover]

you also mentioned it's a ceiling tile, so I'm assuming it'll be far away most of the time

[steady zealot]

Each story in my buildings are 12 feet tall

so they'll be 12 feet from the ground in some places

and 24-48 in taller rooms

and considering my avatar is 6 feet tall roughly, they'll be seen as close up as 6 feet away

by me

closer by those taller, etc

[dull yarrow]

man i got one shit sucks

[tame sinew]

What if the mesh does have thickness, and the other side can be seen from front view?
And I am planning on having it be quest compatiable

[devout orchid]

quest has no transparency and all shaders have backface culling

so its a. should be modelled with polygons b. visible through parts will double polygons amount

ok your model has thickness so no need to duplicate polygons in that case

[harsh saddle]

For Quest, I'd ensure only areas that need thickness have thickness and any holes will need to be modeled on both sides and ideally have a rim, though maybe you can get away without one. It can be hard to have something like a coat where you can see most of the inner lining and get everything under the polygon limit but I guess holes can technically help remove some triangles.

[steady zealot]

Coat of Arms for the world I'm making.

[spiral sigil]

Oddly reminiscent of an old 3ds style of modeling, something about the golden petals and bell flowers especially

Maybe it's just the rendering of the gold's overvalued sheen

[steady zealot]

Probably

The render isn't going to be used directly, this is a screenshot from substance painter

So it will look different in realtime

[obsidian nova]

I need to know more…

[tame sinew]

That is so impressive...
How'd you do it? And is there a video tutorial?

[steady zealot]

No tutorial, just good ol' fashion 3d Modeling and baking/texturing~

[spiral sigil]

You'd be surprised what progress you can make with a solid idea

Or what you believe to be one anyway

It's because you have the willpower and energy to bother to learn

[haughty cedar]

https://tenor.com/view/vegeta-rain-gif-23391878

[snow estuary]

Just realized blender is only good at modeling

Doing other things in there is just pain

[quaint jasper]

Like what?

[lusty void]

I’m a bit late but I’d recommend using transparent textures to with a cutout shader make it look torn

[devout orchid]

@quaint jasper spreadsheets

[harsh saddle]

To be fair, people that do grease pencil animations and video editing in Blender are a little odd.

[spiral sigil]

I pretty much use Blender for everything and it does a pretty good job. Texturing is a lot better if you setup your brushes.

Also, get some brush alphas.

[harsh saddle]

Yeah, reports of Substance painter being necessary for texturing are greatly exaggerated. Is it a useful tool? Sure, but there were textures before Substance.

[snow estuary]

Ok imagine there's 100 object and each of them have its own material

How do I bake all their diffuse onto one map quicky?

[tough plover]

in blender?

[snow estuary]

Yea

[snow estuary]

Yup

To my knowledge, you need to go into every material and set a texture and click it

And repeat 100 times

[tough plover]

SimpleBake would simplify the process, paid plugin but might be worth it: https://blendermarket.com/products/simplebake---simple-pbr-and-other-baking-in-blender-2

it's still totally doable in blender without it though. you have two main ways of doing it:

• baking from one UV to another
• baking from a mesh with all of the mats to a mesh with one mat

I think the second option is simpler, but it would only work well if the pieces are static. occluded parts of the mesh wouldn't be baked properly.
as for how to do it, here's how I would do it:

• duplicate all of the meshes, and combine the result into one mesh. this will be your "source" mesh.
• duplicate that mesh, and on the copy, delete all of the materials, and create a new material. this will be your "target" mesh.
• on that material, create a new image texture node, and create a new image with the size you want (probably 4k)
• on the target mesh, go to UV editing, seleect all of the UVs, and use UV > Average island scale. then, you'll want to pack those UVs as efficiently as possible. I recommend using UVPackmaster with Heuristic search, but UVPacker is a free addon that should do a decent job, and I think the latest versions of blender ships with a better UV packer.
• in the rendering options, set the render engine to Cycles, GPU Compute, and reduce the samples to like 16 for Render.
• in Baking, set the bake type to Diffuse, only enable "Color", enable "Selected to active", and set the Max ray distance to like 0.1.
• select your source mesh, shift click the target mesh, and click Bake
• to test it, connect the color output of your new texture to the base color of the principled bsdf node

@snow estuary

[vivid plover]

I think this was the cause of my edit mode selection issue. Fixed in 3.6.3

https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/110136

[autumn gust]

wait that tool fixes holes from decimation?

[tough plover]

if you have holes in the mesh, no. you'd want to fix those yourself

[autumn gust]

o

[spiral sigil]

BakeTool is better for this because it allows you to create multiple "Jobs" and you don't have to waste all your time to setup the addon for every bake like SimpleBake

Another free addon is The Lightmapper which is really good at baking lightmaps
https://github.com/Naxela/The_Lightmapper

[snow estuary]

My 3d work flow is so bad

I spend like hours on fixing my weird issues

[quaint jasper]

I think that's pretty standard

If I'm lucky, I'll spend more time on a model than on technical bullshit

[spiral sigil]

Yeah, that's pretty normal

Will still be finding and fixing weird issues long after you say your are "done" too.

[snow estuary]

And your modeling have to be non destructive as possible

And could be back track at any moment

[quaint jasper]

Nothing that can't be fixed with a bit of manual work

[spiral sigil]

I keep "prototype" copies of stuff in case I need to undo something or if I need to reuse it later. Those copies still have modifiers and stuff on them.

Usually never need them again

[snow estuary]

I got like 5 collections lol

Which include sketch, modeling, texture, and all combined for questies

[spiral sigil]

You could consider ways to alter the process if you recognize which issues arise in which situations

[steady zealot]

I keep backups and copies of stuff, but no amount of preparation can 100% protect you from simply having to redo some things. I think part of the strength in the craft comes from your ability to come back from a loss like that

Persistence is the golden ticket

I often find myself so worried about doing things in the wrong order, for fear of having to redo something because of it, that it prevents me from even starting a project. And that's something I think a lot of us struggle with

[spiral sigil]

Adam Smith on his writing on what wealth is and labour once mentioned how the subdivision of labor is more efficient and produces a larger output compared to the same amount of people working individually. Of the 3 main points, one was that when moving from task to task you lose time by "sauntering". Every shred of every second wasted adds up more significantly then people could ever think

This applies to practically anything any person can do

Also consider how much of your weekday is taken by a job, hours taken by sleep, hours taken by eating, etc. More than HALF of your life will certainly be spent on these things unless you have found a way to amass enough wealth to keep yourself afloat without working or your work is what you are trying to train yourself to approach mastery

So it is definitely important to make use of the time available. For most people it is a common habit and lifestyle to do anything but what the smart-human-part of your brain wants. A chinese idiom goes like this: "A dog cannot stop itself from eating shit" which means it is hard to break bad habits

Figuring out how you personally will get yourself into your own personalized habit for your own personal goals I believe is the hardest battle, harder then practicing hundreds to thousands of hours practicing art or any other skilled occupation/hobby

[steady zealot]

Miscellaneous furniture is so satisfying to make

[spiral sigil]

I have had meshes refuse to fill quad faces with the 'F' hotkey. It happened again and I want to know why it seems to go defunct randomly.

I am showing normals because I thought it may be that, but it doesn't seem to be my current problem because I had just reset the mesh's normal orientation

I think it has to do with some kind of automatic vertex group, because the part of the geometry I had just recently modified is not being selected along with the whole when I select a ring of edges with alt+rightclick

though when I select it with 'L' the entire mass I expect to be grouped together is properly grouped together

[quaint jasper]

What about grid fill?

[snow estuary]

Why is ur mesh so weird

Some part overlaps and are not connected

[spiral sigil]

I have no reason to spend 5-10 minutes cleaning up that geometry just for me to iterate on the entire design in a week

[snow estuary]

Fill quad only works if the connecting edge is part of a loop

[spiral sigil]

The loop is continuous, or well a series of discrete points connected with straight lines

Though it decides that one side of the loop is separate from the other

There are no free radical vertices hiding in the same coordinates of another vertex

[snow estuary]

Use the bridge tool

[spiral sigil]

Guess I'm stuck to that

[autumn gust]

Anyone here mind helping me with turning long hair strands into short ones?

[snow estuary]

Just scale them?

[autumn gust]

that would mess up the top part of them.

I just need to trim the length up and down.

starting at the bottom of the strands ofc

[snow estuary]

Box select

And deelete

[autumn gust]

hmm

but I also want to keep the shape but shorten it.

I guess I could use the grab tool in sculpting?

[snow estuary]

You could take a pic

[fossil canopy]

can anyone help me please. im on the 2.91 version of blender. im working on a vrchat avatar and the cursor is stuck, it wont go back to a select toggle. it only stays as the cursor.

[snow estuary]

Right click like a real man

[tough plover]

your shift key is likely stuck, and you're using right click instead of left click'

shift + right click is to put the cursor somewhere

[spiral sigil]

Super voronoi clouds

As far as clouds go

Turbulent voronoi

[upbeat rose]

Do people who use blenders prefer to export using CATS? And can anyone show me picture of the settings regarding the export in Blender & Unity?

[tough plover]

I would recommend making a blender export preset with these settings:

Path: Unity project (where your model is).
Path Mode: Auto
Include:
Object Types: Empty: On, Camera: Off, Lamp: Off, Armature: On, Mesh: On, Other: Off.
Transform:
Scale: 1.00
Apply Scalings: FBX All
Forward: -Z Forward
Up: Y Up
Apply Transform: On
Armature:
Add Leaf Bones: Off
Bake Animations: On ```
and use that whenever you export your model.
using CATS to export works fine too, but it often will give you a pop up if you have a handful of meshes and tell you to join them, which I find annoying.

[upbeat rose]

Thank you for your reply. As an additional question, do I leave Geometry as the default in the Export setting?

And I wonder if I can ignore the warning of Can't generate normals for blendscape 'Hair_front_ahoge_x' on mesh 'hair_front', mesh has no smoothing groups ..

[azure rain]

why is your hair involved in blendshapes?

[upbeat rose]

It's to adjust the length of your hair.

[azure rain]

thanks and it doesn't look like anything would explode if you ignore that?

[jovial seal]

brain is melting dont know how else to add detail

[tough plover]

most detail will be done via textures

[jovial seal]

;-; im scared of texturing this my blender textures suck ass

xD

[steady zealot]

Is this for VRChat or a realtime use of any kind?

If so, it may be wise to learn how to bake normals from high poly models to lower poly models.

[jovial seal]

ye pretty much

i wanna learn to do that!

but cant find a good tutorial that can keep my peanut brain entertained for more than 5 minutes

[steady zealot]

I use substance painter to bake my normals, as it's a fairly straightforward process. Only issue is Substance is $100USD normally, for the perpetual steam license

[jovial seal]

me is poor

[steady zealot]

Doing it blender is a little trickier

I wish I had a good tutorial to link

[quaint jasper]

You can get a free year through the student license thing

[steady zealot]

Don't you have to be a student?

Or can you fudge it

[devout orchid]

its always morally correct to pirate adobe products

[steady zealot]

True

[quaint jasper]

100% can fudge it

I uploaded a nuked spongebob meme as my student ID

[devout orchid]

still baking normals is not that hard in blender

[tough plover]

that system was pretty great lol

it's a bit different now though

[steady zealot]

Do a high poly 3d model commission for somebody for like $100
Reinvest that money into substance perpetual license
Profit

[jovial seal]

i dont think im ever good enough to get commissions for that much lmao

[quaint jasper]

Did you not make those?

[steady zealot]

I feel that. Self doubt is a real hindrance. But I'd say you're well on your way, if not already there.

Plus, $100 isn't a lot for a fully scratch high poly model

Freelance 3d artists charge much more than that for some models

depending on complexity of course, and time

Just have to find your market. VRChat users may not have the money (or the understanding of the value of the work involved) to spend on custom models like this, but other communities might.

Anyway that's a bit off topic, but it's food for thought.

[tough plover]

@onyx jewel

keep the little "pinch" to one edge, but just make it less tall

so that the geometry is denser

[onyx jewel]

any chance you could pose that one? just wanna see what it looks like bent -- also I think I see what you mean, like squish the back side in more?

I guess I'm just kinda paranoid because my stuff's clipping on my existing avi right there at the legs lol

[onyx jewel]

aw cmon that's smooth shaded 😆

eh it's fine dw about it, I'll change mine to match

[tough plover]

if you really wanted the front of it to stay sharp, you could add an extra bone with a rotation constraint

these are the weights, it's fairly basic

also, before anyone says "it's too blocky", it looks perfectly fine in game

most people will not be looking super close to the point that the lower poly count will be apparent

[onyx jewel]

b b-ut I need 374,836 polygons

I think I need to model the little ball joint a bit more

have too much smoothing on the base mesh

the base is kinda over muscular lol

[tough plover]

seems better

[onyx jewel]

looks good to me 🙂

just automatic plugin weights

[spiral sigil]

bro don't make me have to 3d model to 1 up you

[onyx jewel]

oh I don't doubt I could be 1 upped in approximately 15 seconds by someone that knows what they're doing

[spiral sigil]

i have the framework for figuring it out but ive been too lazy to put in the work

i dont think i figured out weight painting really

[onyx jewel]

https://www.blendermarket.com/products/voxel-heat-diffuse-skinning

this shit is magic

it takes like 2-4 minutes to run and then an additional few minutes if you want to smooth bake it afterwards but the weights come out great with no effort as long as joints are in the right place -- used it on my jacket and a couple other clothes the other day

[spiral sigil]

i dont see the difference from the gif that shows comparison

is that the point

[onyx jewel]

yeah idk what that gif is really showing besides it doesnt split into chunks

[spiral sigil]

oh i see there is part of the head tht just doesnt get picked up on

its floating

[onyx jewel]

the actual youtube videos quick start and review show it a lot better

the only thing I don't like is there's no way to exclude bones from auto weighting, so like my physbones and stuff I had to go merge vertex weights with the proper bones

[spiral sigil]

i cant worry about that automatic stuff until i know what its supposed to loo like

[onyx jewel]

all I know is its gotten better results in that 4 minutes than I got with hours of screwing with my jacket

now, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know enough to know its doing a good job

[spiral sigil]

oh clothing

[onyx jewel]

it can do just regular body mesh too

[spiral sigil]

yeah idk its probably impossible to figure out unless you understand theweights of all the body parts under the clothing

then u can know how clothing should move relative to the body

[onyx jewel]

pic I posted above was just body mesh

but it did a great job with the clothes too

easily worth the $30 imo

again grain of salt because I'm clearly not very good at manual weight painting

[spiral sigil]

its time to model feet

less scary then hands because u dont need weight paint on ur toes

thats what ill be doing if u want to versus

[onyx jewel]

I'm just retopo so I'm cheating

[spiral sigil]

i dont see how its cheating as long as you are basing it off of a concept or ur fut

sculpting to retopo and polymoddeling are equally valid

[onyx jewel]

well, it's cheating because the verticies shrinkwrap themselves to the base model

which has already modeled feet

[spiral sigil]

well u got to model your own feet then

[onyx jewel]

maybe once I'm done with this lol

[spiral sigil]

mm

you can trust your own feet to be good example but you never know how well someone else moddeled foot

unless you already know anatomy

[onyx jewel]

nope lol

[calm marten]

Any tips on how to make the legs look more normal? They just seem really off to me

[onyx jewel]

biggest things I see is they don't join to the body well & missing kneecaps

combine the legs and body mesh and then maybe smooth / flatten around that area?

[tough plover]

consider the center of gravity and balance, and the fact that the model has digitigrade legs. you want to bend the knees more so that the toes are in-line with the knee

[calm marten]

Yeah I haven't gotten to that part yet sadly, plus I haven't joined meshes and made them look seamless before so gotta understand that part in a minute lol.

[onyx jewel]

ah no worries, sacred has better advice than I do anyways

[calm marten]

So knees and toes in-line and bend knees a bit more. Gotcha

[tough plover]

should also probably thicken up the thighs

they look too slim

especially compared to the calves

neck and head have definitely improved since earlier

[calm marten]

I've been thinking about doing that so much but left little to no room around the crotch

Glad to hear those 2 are better lol

[onyx jewel]

probably slightly dumb but if you cut an X and subdivide it makes a decent circle ish

I feel like there's a better way to do that lol

[tough plover]

I normally prefer selecting a face or multiple faces and doing I to make an inset

your solution doesn't look too bad either, although it does cause some loops to go in weird places

[jovial seal]

i did ive been modelling the mfor a few huors sorry for late response my brain melted

[onyx jewel]

I am the optilooper now

just tried the inset and don't like it as much but it works

I'll have to remember that tool, it'll be useful in a sec here

[calm marten]

Tried doing what you two suggested on the legs and got something like this

[jovial seal]

its a furry so personally (if i was drawin it so ig id do this modelling it too) focus on the thigh size they dont appear wide enough i mean look how wide the wickerbeast thighs are or digigrade fursuits! it is digi grade thats packed with foam right

[calm marten]

Fair point, my only worry is the legs will overlap if I make them any bigger. I might just need to expand the hips a little

[jovial seal]

wide not bigger

[onyx jewel]

does this look semi right or do I need to make it be less weird
subdivided result seems to match contours pretty well but it's also being shrinkwrapped..

[jovial seal]

also the torsoe seems really elongated

[jovial seal]

uhhhhh i cant describe it but usually isnt there meant to be a hexagon shape around the ankle not a square? or will that form when subdivided?

[onyx jewel]

if you look closely in the grey it'll form a hexagon with the X cut

[spiral sigil]

wow how have i not thought about doing topology directly on a reference photo except only for that one perspective, and then figure it out later in all dimentions

[onyx jewel]

I'm doing it on top of a base mesh btw, it's not a photo, you might know I just figured I'd let you know

[jovial seal]

i would recommend confirming how the topology forms after a subdivide and CTRL z if it dosnt work right

[onyx jewel]

I have the modifier on, it's shaded with the subdivide

[jovial seal]

yeh but thats not always the topology their could be alot of redundent verts atleast ive had that happen to me before and it was a huge pain in the ass to fix later after i didnt notice it

or maybe im just dumb and dont understand the question xD

[onyx jewel]

ah yeah I'm being careful about that, whole reason I'm doing my retopo is because there are too many triangles

[jovial seal]

yeh it looks really good so far ankle just looked a lil wierd to me cause of that centre point

[onyx jewel]

yeah the X thing is odd I was just messing around and figured it out

[tough plover]

here's how I personally did it

[onyx jewel]

considering it.. really don't wanna do the toes lol

[calm marten]

My bad, heads a bit turned around today lol

[spiral sigil]

the featues of the foot just get all dampened so often in models mmm i have to figure out how to lose less of that

[jovial seal]

hold on

[spiral sigil]

i see this with hands too

[jovial seal]

i heavily recommend looking at referances for this and even try tracing legs of some models like the rexioum wickerbeast and protogen

[onyx jewel]

oh yeah you can put reference images straight into blender btw

can set them to only show when you're looking at it orthographically

[calm marten]

I have a reference model but I had the view hidden. I can look at that a bit more, but are these changes any better?

Obviously I need to readjust the position but thighs seem a bit better

[tough plover]

it looks a bit more balanced, but the shape of the leg still looks like a noodle

remember, this is the foot

[calm marten]

Whoops meant to correct that

[snow estuary]

Aren't they gonna join it and sculpt it

[calm marten]

Sculpting might be hard since the legs are just planes with the skin modifier so IDK if that makes this better or worse😅

[snow estuary]

Got any topology tips for hands?

[onyx jewel]

if you apply the modifier it shouldnt be an issue, just click the little V arrow next to hte modifier and click apply

(this will bake that to a mesh dont do it till you're done tweaking)

[spiral sigil]

meh tips its just gonna be a lot of brute force learning

[snow estuary]

Apply the modifier>and voxel>sculpt the hell out of it

[spiral sigil]

gotta know how to sculpt for that one

[calm marten]

Just to be sure I dont misunderstand anything, which modifier am I applying? If it's the skin I already have it on and what does voxel do

[tough plover]

hands are definitely tricky, but this is how I did it on my friend's orc avatar and it worked out well.

[snow estuary]

Wow the top part of the hand has quite amount of loops

[spiral sigil]

man the palms of the hands are such a delicate matter

[snow estuary]

I can't really get the hand palm right

[spiral sigil]

oh nice finger

[calm marten]

God the smooth movement for that is beautiful

[spiral sigil]

im this close to drawing topology directly on my foot so i can plan the flow

[onyx jewel]

do it

[snow estuary]

Just download a feet pic

And draw over that

[spiral sigil]

i have my own and essentially im doing that in blender onto an image

but it is not yet satisfactory

[snow estuary]

Just don't make your topology too messy

[spiral sigil]

my standards toxically high dont worry

[snow estuary]

Figure out the main ones that holds the shape

[spiral sigil]

yes and determine what regions begin deform

i have arched foot do u have that

that makes for a more dynamic foot

[snow estuary]

From scared design, you can see the loop around the ankle that go backs to the leg disrupt the smooth flow and creates a small ankle like shape

[tough plover]

indeed

[spiral sigil]

the one that funnels into a star?

[snow estuary]

Pretty good design for a feminine character

[spiral sigil]

oh i see what you mean yea the topo is almost cocentric to the protruding bone

[tough plover]

from afar with smooth shading (no normal map, so doesn't look as good)

[snow estuary]

I think is ok

[spiral sigil]

i will try to plan around the most exaggerated areas

and use terminating tricks that i can remember

[snow estuary]

Is it possible to bake high subdivide normal onto lower ones?

[spiral sigil]

isnt that how cage baking works

high to low

[tough plover]

do you mean like, if the high poly mesh already has a normal map of its own?

if so yes, but only in blender, not substance

[snow estuary]

Multires

[tough plover]

if you're just baking from a high res mesh with no textures, you can easily do that in both blender and substance

[onyx jewel]

reasonably happy with this even though it looks a little odd, seems to preserve the curve of the foot without adding too much geometry

[onyx jewel]

or maybe it's just shade smooth making it look better than it is

either way I'm happy

[tough plover]

this area is a little weird

[spiral sigil]

The power of normal maps coursing through their veins

[snow estuary]

Would be nice if it wrap around the food

[onyx jewel]

yeah, not really sure how to fix it without adding more geometry or following the contours less

[spiral sigil]

You kinda SOL if you don't start it right

[onyx jewel]

I mean, I can re-do it, but I think this is fairly ideal

just following contours

it is weird that it's not a perfect grid but whole reason I'm doing this is to cut back on polygons, not make perfect topology

[snow estuary]

Don't redo stuff, is just wasting ur time

[tough plover]

ehh

[onyx jewel]

already wasted a week trying to make the existing avatar work, this is best option

I am absolutely at my polygon limit if I want to keep joints flexible and no clipping

plus I've got baggier pants I want to add to it and I know that's gonna push it over instantly

[snow estuary]

Then why you model legs???

[onyx jewel]

nice to have for future

trying to make this something I can maintain till the end of time if I want to

[spiral sigil]

You will improve dramatically in the future given you keep 3d up

[onyx jewel]

(realistically it will lose it's charm in 2 months)

[spiral sigil]

I wouldn't focus now on making assets to save you time later since you still need to completely learn the ideal shapes and forms of them in the first place

You'd be doing basically the same thing but have a focus on studying using it as learning

[onyx jewel]

oh yeah I'm gonna make more eventually -- I just don't wanna go like add a pair of swim trunks or something later and be like ah shit gotta remodel the legs and re-bake the normals and all this other stuff

I'd rather do it all now so I have it

[spiral sigil]

Yeah it's a slow one man process

Tedious

[snow estuary]

Just don't include it in your model

[onyx jewel]

or like, if I wanted to make a different avi I'd have a base to use that I can sorta call my own

only sorta though lol

at what point do you transform it enough to call it your own

[spiral sigil]

That will be your trophy of sorts marking your intermediate-advanced understanding of the body for 3D purposes

[spiral sigil]

You make it scratch no transform

[onyx jewel]

I need to go re-visit my initial tutorial sometime

I tried sculpting off a reference image and it went really badly

wasted an entire 2 days on it and just deleted it

[snow estuary]

Learning sculpt helped my 3d modeling a lot

The forms and shapes

[spiral sigil]

Yeah I haven't figured out the science but it's just practice that's the only thing that makes a difference

If I had practiced when I started 2 years ago and never stop I would not be here rn

[snow estuary]

Why

[spiral sigil]

I use blender like once every few weeks for the last 8 months

I am the embodiment of thinking but no doing... Everyone is on a spectrum of their ratio of thinking to doing

With art you are fucked on ur own if u are too far on the thinking scale

[onyx jewel]

it's kinda weird to think about -- I'm making a new mesh with the existing under it as a reference, what if you used it beside the avatar as a reference? how different does it have to be? is using a reference picture considered not your own work? what if you're making paper art and you trace a reference image's outline?

I guess this is something courts have to decide often, there's probably not a clear line

[spiral sigil]

Before I answer that I would ask you first, would using the avatar as a reference and using someone else's work as a crutch be a good idea, or try to create your own framework of understanding whatever u want to model

[onyx jewel]

could taking inspiration from other's art styles be considered not your own work?

[spiral sigil]

It's not even about credit

[onyx jewel]

idk, anyways I'm just being dumb

[onyx jewel]

nah, I want to make my own eventually

[spiral sigil]

It's just about your ability to consistently produce a quality output

[snow estuary]

Great artist steal lol

[onyx jewel]

I want to be able to sculpt something from scratch

[spiral sigil]

Based tho

Some people take this out of context and of course there is more to it than that

[snow estuary]

I though that sentence is pretty well known

[onyx jewel]

I mean, all of art and human creation is standing on the backs of others -- what objectively makes it harmful instead of fair?

[snow estuary]

You can't really make anything without referencing something

[spiral sigil]

You would be surprised how many people will dispute it. But you never see artists who produce good work dispute it

And not every artist wants to get better art but just wants to use it as an outlet, and have definite ownership over that art because it's themself

Artists who just seek to make the best work possible don't often concern themselves with that though

This is the hunch I have about it all based only on what I have been able to observe and myself

[spiral sigil]

So this question cannot be considered without understanding the priorities of individual people in regards to art

It's not worth your time, just understand your premise and directive as someone interested in art and if it's to produce AAA quality assets consistently then do whatever it takes to acquire that ability

[onyx jewel]

Even if you knew the priorities I don't think it can be answered well, but there is a curve there that makes it more acceptable if you're just making art for yourself to enjoy or to better yourself

[spiral sigil]

Curve as in what

Oh

[onyx jewel]

on a theoretical graph

sorry lol

[spiral sigil]

I understood that was the structure of the analogy thingy but I didn't get what was getting plugged into the analogy

[onyx jewel]

yeah I was wondering if that would come across right when I typed it

[spiral sigil]

So why do you do art

[onyx jewel]

right now mostly just to learn -- 2 months ago I didn't know how to do anything besides move and delete the default blender cube

got bored of the donut tutorial twice previously

I have motivation now because I get to show it off ingame

my avatar is also part of my identity now in a way really

is there anything I can do to my shrinkwrap modifier to stop geometry from getting stuck under the nails

probably just gonna smooth on the original mesh

[spiral sigil]

I had attachment with a character like that but it's long passed haha

If you have friends you can get more motivation if they like seeing your projects when you share them

[snow estuary]

String wrap has a offset

[onyx jewel]

yeah but the offset just makes it further, it still gets stuck under

[spiral sigil]

Rotate the nail to be more planar to the geometry of the finger under the nail

There are math words I'm using but trust me it makes conveying the idea alot easier if u know what it means

[onyx jewel]

I'm just gonna hit the original mesh with the smooth brush I think 😦

make them 1 piece

[spiral sigil]

Smooth brush will be the cope necessary for now until you take the time to deeply understand each part of the body

I have to accept this reality going forward for myself too but this means only progress

[tough plover]

select the middle vertex and do alt + S to push it outwards

[snow estuary]

What alt s does

[onyx jewel]

wait, is this resizing the vertex itself? what is it controlling?

this scares me immensely 😆

[tough plover]

it moves vertices along its normal direction

[onyx jewel]

that'll work for now, appreciate it 🙂

[tough plover]

S vs alt + S

[onyx jewel]

it almost feels like it's adjusting the vertex's weight or something

ohh that's weird I don't like that

[tough plover]

what is likely going on in your case is that if you haven't been using snapping, the actual mesh you're working on is very far from the mesh you're shrinkwrapping to, causing erratic behavior

[onyx jewel]

am using snapping and re-applied a duplicate shrinkwrap just to be sure

[tough plover]

what you can do is duplicate your shrinkwrap modifier (before subdivision), and applying one of them

perfect

[onyx jewel]

but very well could be all these modifiers

[tough plover]

it doesn't help the toes are super close together

[onyx jewel]

should subdivision not be before shrinkwrap?

[tough plover]

baking for that will be quite difficult, and will probably need some manual fixing

[tough plover]

I do two shrinkwraps, one before and one after subdivision

[onyx jewel]

ohh cool

[calm marten]

Sorry to butt in again but I think I hit the main points you guys mentioned. I may need to make the legs longer?

[tough plover]

you should lengthen the shin and foot, something like this

the knee is currently way too low in your model

and the legs too short

[calm marten]

That makes sense. Thighs are already long so that would even it out

Oh god I turned it to the side, why haven't I noticed the knee on the floor before🤣

[onyx jewel]

is there a keyboard shortcut for joining 2 selected verticies together to 1?

Alt M

[jovial seal]

anyone got a good tutorial on how to generate normal maps and height maps in blender from higher polygon models?

[tough plover]

it's just M in newer versions

[tough plover]

https://youtu.be/0LuEqvO9QsE?si=Jt6RlFsGLciMbwjM

a normal map is likely all you need

[jovial seal]

thankyouuuu

[tough plover]

one thing not mentioned in that is that you probably want to set the number of Samples for Viewport and Rendering to a lower value, like 32

don't need 4096 lol

@jovial seal

[jovial seal]

oki!

il try and comprehend this when i next touch my kitchen model

but my peanut brain is too bad lol

so i should bake the doors right?

[tough plover]

depends. you definitely could, and it would give the illusion of the depth fairly well

but up close the illusion may fall apart a little bit

plus you wouldn't be saving that many polygons by doing so

focus on baking things where you can save a lot of polygons by doing so

[calm marten]

I'm starting to feel like the more and more I try to correct it, the less sense it makes. Is this about what you were saying?

[tough plover]

yea, getting somewhere, remember that things being too smooth will likely not look good

you should:

• sharpen up the knee
• sharpen up the ankle
• make the thigh a little thicker in the front

[jovial seal]

ye but aslong as the door hinge has depth it should work right the rest of it can just be a normal

[calm marten]

I could try but with it being a single row of vertices I unfortunately limited myself on making certain parts thick

[jovial seal]

is it all one model or?

[calm marten]

No I have everything separate in case of a scenario like this so I could remake the legs

[jovial seal]

how do you plan on mergin it all?

just curious

[calm marten]

I'll be honest I'm not really sure. I don't have a single clue what I'm doing or what to do,I'm just playing it by step and trust me there's a lot of confusion lol

[onyx jewel]

oh yeah you're gonna have a really bad time smoothing it if they're not one model

select both legs and the body and hit CTRL + J to join them

then your smoothing will probably work as you're hoping for

[jovial seal]

holy crap that tip video is secret sauce thankyou!

[onyx jewel]

you can also enable mesh symmetry up here to smooth it equally on both sides (the X thing)

[jovial seal]

ive been looking for that for ages

[calm marten]

I'll try that. Does it make it that much harder since I started making them separate?😅

[onyx jewel]

nah, most stuff like that gets started seperate and then joined to a big chunk

but yes it will make it way harder to smooth it, like infinitely harder

[calm marten]

The downside that may come back and bite me is the arms, ears and legs have the mirror modifier so hopefully I don't mess that up😅

[onyx jewel]

you can always just leave the mirror modifier on I think

shouldn't be a problem

don't apply it till you're ready to do non symmetrical work

and even if you screw it up -- cut half the mesh off, mirror it again, check "merge" under mirror

[calm marten]

IDK what I'm ready for lol. Sacred said I need to work on the legs and the hands are still very rough forms so I guess I have a bit to do still

[onyx jewel]

can always make minor edits after it's in the game too

well, and major, just takes more skill

[tough plover]

keep the mirror modifier up until you need to do stuff like unwrapping

for your high poly mesh, you don't really need to worry about it

[calm marten]

Understood. What would you advise I do next for the model, I'm unsure where to progress. I know I need a tail and hair still but that probably comes later right?

[tough plover]

I would get your high poly mesh to the point where all of the shape is finished

when your blockout is close enough to the shape you want, duplicate all of the meshes, join them, and remesh it so you can begin sculpting finer details

keep the original blockout meshes in another collection

[calm marten]

I'm guessing having duplicates is in case something happens and I have the originals to revert to?

[tough plover]

yea pretty much

it's always a good idea to keep backups

[calm marten]

And for remesh just use vortex correct?

[tough plover]

?

[calm marten]

Sorry for the remeshing modifier it had vortex as a setting

[tough plover]

not sure what that is

there are many ways to remesh in blender

you can try them all out

[calm marten]

Which do you recommend?

[tough plover]

in sculpt mode, you can do Remesh in the top right. there should be an option for Quad

do that, pick a poly count of like 10k to start, and try it

[calm marten]

Sounds good I'll start working on all of that. Thank you!

[onyx jewel]

someone needs to make an AI to unfuck blender meshes

lemme re-apply shrinkwrap and turn everything off again

I wish so much you could just place verticies like you can in other cad programs

alright it's time for me to go to bed, I'm losing depth perception and being unproductive

been reasonably productive today tho

5300 triangles with all modifiers applied

old body is 30k fully modeled, I'm hoping to end up <15k

ethics on posting it somewhere for free when I'm done with it so others can use it? is it enough of my own work? would it be a no-no because it's modeled on top of a paid model? original base doesn't even look like it's for sale anymore

thinking probably not but

[snow estuary]

No?

[still wadi]

so you're tracing another model ?

lmao

[snow estuary]

Burh when u make new YouTube video

[ionic skiff]

i mean thats just what retopology is, which is what theyre doing

[still wadi]

except they didn't make the original model

thus tracing someone elses model

imagine itake your model

i trace it

and claim it as my own

"it's just retopology man"

🤡

[ionic skiff]

thats why they were asking if it was okay

they didnt claim anything as their own, they were asking a question

i agree taking somebody elses model, retopologizing it and then claiming its yours is wrong, but theres no harm in asking a question. i can see where theyre coming from

[still wadi]

well from our conversation he hopefully will get his answer

[spiral sigil]

His focus on ownership is weakening his potential if his objective is to learn and excel like he said earlier this day

They want something decent enough to their name so bad they will be willing to trace a par model to make a par trace, this is what I suspect

It is not even about stealing or credit. That realm is irrelevant if it is not severely damaging the IP owner directly and is conducive to their real learning

They fail themselves in credit and creating an objectively good product

[orchid phoenix]

no

[onyx jewel]

kk

[onyx jewel]

Idk I just hate that I'm putting in a bunch of work and can't share it but it's whatever

been into open source software for years

idk yeah it's basically tracing though I'll stop asking

[tough plover]

the one possible way you could share it is if you 1: get permission from the author of the original model, and 2: get proof of purchase of the original model for anyone who wants to buy your retopo of it

[onyx jewel]

the base isn't even for sale anymore, been replaced by a newer better one

[onyx jewel]

hmm that might work
I think I'll send it to the original creator and let them do with it as they please

[ionic skiff]

i really need to continue my base sculpt as well but next up is feet and arms..

then retopo time, finally

[orchid phoenix]

you could definitely be paid by people to retopo models for them, but redistributing models without the creators permission is a nono

[onyx jewel]

not good enough for that yet lol

[ionic skiff]

youll get there

[still wadi]

or you wont

50/50

[onyx jewel]

entirely possible

might lose interest at some point, it happens

[calm marten]

Ok I think I got it this time. The lower part between the foot and calf may be too long right?

[spiral sigil]

Again, worry about that when people actually want the models

I choose not to put that delicately

[onyx jewel]

I'm just gonna send it to the creator and let them decide what they wanna do it with it

I don't wanna sell it -- just want others to benefit from it

I think my mind is just kinda stuck in the open source software community too much

[spiral sigil]

And you still fixate on some other random shit with other people

Others can't benefit from shit work man

I can say it even plainer if need be

[onyx jewel]

appreciate the support and encouragement ❤️

really makes my day

[spiral sigil]

Your current system going forward is not conducive to improvement

Understand that is the premise

[onyx jewel]

having others benefit from my work, even just a simple thank you is enough to keep me going a lot of the time

it's how I motivate myself to learn

[spiral sigil]

It doesn't seem like that's an option as if you had that support group you'd already have em, no?

[onyx jewel]

it's not the only source of motivation -- I have been wanting to learn this stuff for years and just never had any real reason to

only downloaded this game a few months ago

idk, I love getting the little emails every now and then from software stuff I've done in the past like "hey this is awesome thanks for making it" or even if it's just someone asking for help how to use it

[spiral sigil]

Sure just don't deceive yourself

[onyx jewel]

appreciate the support

[restive sorrel]

anyone know how to fix this as i am adding cloths to avatar but it just looks wired when i go in to pose mose

thanks

[onyx jewel]

that looks like weight painting having too much influence, try painting the bottom edges of those to be a much lower weight on each leg

can also try the voxel heat diffuse weight painting blender plugin to automatically, I've had a good time with it but ymmv + it's $30

[spiral sigil]

Your anger holds back your potential

Your ego that you feel needs defense