In this series of tutorials you will learn how to create a finished environment for Blender’s Game Engine. The main focus of the series will be texturing and lighting, with the use of some custom 2d filters to enhance the result.
This tutorial is Day 2 in a series – Go to Day 1, Day 3, or Day 4
Day 1 dealt primarily with sculpting the model, and since we want to start with texturing as soon as possible, we used the sculpt mode in Blender to quickly create the shape with the clay brush, and added the main details we will use for the environment’s textures with the layer brush.
Now, in Day 2, while following the premise of skipping as much of the modeling work as we can, we will create a low-poly mesh by basing it off a lower multires level of the sculpted model, and then applying a decimate modifier to it. We will then use this low-poly mesh to bake a tangent space normal map and an approximate ambient occlusion map.
Before starting you should gather all the reference you can. I’ve ended up editing out from the screencast the part where I show the images I’ve used for reference because I’ve followed them quite loosely. However, you can see a composite of some of them here. I’ve also made a test sculpt before starting the real one that can be seen here.
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
This tutorial is Day 2 in a series – Go to Day 3, or Day 4
Start at the beginning – Go to Day 1.
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By Roberto Roch
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Nice! Amazing how it looks the same, but the mesh is SOOOO low poly.
Wow man, I usually don’t comment here, but these tuts are awesome! Really inspiring. Can’t wait to see the next one!
Although you may rushed some parts a bit with the whole baking thing, so I’m gonna have to look into this to fully understand, but thanks nevertheless!
This is a great tutorial. Thorough and complete, and I learned a lot. Please keep up this great work.
Thanks so much for this tutorial on terrain and the great part on baking to the lowpoly version!
This was very concise and was interesting to follow!
This really helped me alot to learn on reducing the polycount withot losing much of the detail. I really liked the intro to the decimate modifier and all the little tricks and hints!
Awesome tutorial, great explanations and fun to watch!
10 stars
Much regards
Nixon
Keep up the great work and thank you so much for making such a great tutorial.
We wish to see another tutorial for texturing this terrain. That would be awesome.
Yeah, a texturing tutorial would really making it complete.
I sometimes read in articles that knowing how to use UV space efficiently is important, sometimes it’s also in job descriptions, but I don’t know what that means. Would be great to have a tut on that.
Part 3 of this series is on texturing, and it is being developed by Roberto as we speak:)
Regarding using UV space efficiently, it is a fairly complex science that involves a lot of different techniques and tricks. But it can be summarized like this: The larger the texture file, the more needs to be loaded into memory in a realtime engine (video games), which will eventually result in a lower frame rate (choppy animation, and lag). So if you can get the same level of texture detail on your model, while using a smaller texture size, the result will be better performance for your video game. This careful laying out of your UVs to get the best possible result out of the smallest possible texture is what they are referring to when they say “knowing how to use UV space efficiently”.
That being said, this is a subject that I know a considerable amount about, so if enough people say they want a tutorial on it…consider it done.
+1 to the UV tutorial.
I’ve already learnt a lot with your dumpster tutorial, but more info about efficient UV space usage is always welcome.
As with modeling, I didn’t payed any atention to UVs in this tutorial. That’s certainly a part I need more knowledge of.
It would also be great if you could combine it with some modular modeling (dunno if that’s the right name, I mean building pieces to create bigger structures with them)
Ps. I had some trouble with the next part of the series because I wanted to try something different than what I usually do that didn’t worked alright in the end, but it’s coming along, will be done soon.
Great series going here. I’ve seen plenty of tutorials on character and artificial environment modeling, but this is the first I’ve seen about more organic environments. Keep up the good work, and I can’t wait for part 3. My only question is, I noticed you used a 1024×1024 normal map for the area, which appears to be a decent sized space. What size would a commercial game normally use for an area this size, because I feel like 1024 wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny without a detail map on top of it.
In response to Kaleb, I would love to see a tutorial on efficient handling of UV space.
I’ve never worked on a real game, so I can’t answer your question about usual map sizes. I’d like to read an answer from a professional too.
What I can tell you is that in this case I use the normal map to make up for the lack of proper geometry. So this is just to define the general shape of the area. Detail should come next.
Btw, thanks everyone for the nice words! :)
Great tutorials!
any chance to get the images you used as brushes in the first one?
Most of the images I used in the 1st video can be download for free at gnomonology.com, you’ll have to register though. :(
The rest of them, iirc, I got them from zbrushcentral.com. Searching for “free alpha brushes” on google should lead you there.
Thanks Roberto, I’ve got it!
So what’s the ETA on part 3?
I’ve already sent part 3 to Kaleb, so expect it to be published soon. I’m still working on part 4 though.
Hey thank you so much for such awesome tutorials! I’ve really learned a lot and it looks like it has great results!
Buuut I’ve run into a wall. I just got to the baking part, and I did everything you said to do..and even watched in full screen to see all of the buttons you pressed, and It is still not letting me bake it. Every time I try, it says “Error! No Images found to bake to.” after I click the “Bake” button. It’ll bake it if I have the low poly one selected, but then its just a solid purple color instead of the detailed normal map..
Any idea what I’ve done wrong? Please and thank you!
I’m using Blender 2.49b on windows vista.
I have been using the blender 2.5 beta and i cant seem to find the ambiant occlusion panel were I can change the sky setting to plain. can someone please help
Thank you, i’m new to blender and you helped me a lot.
Hey there, first of all… this is great work…
But i´m running into problems where the normal baking comes.
first when i put the decimate modifier on my lowPoly Terrain the UV map diappears, so that i have to put a new one on it. then when i press bake with tangent mode there comes just a purple map, without normals in it, if i bake in Object mode, the normal map goes wrong, it´s like the normal go in the false direction in this mode.
what can i do, in a forum someone told me that i should bake it to a simple plane, but that isn´t working anyway, because the plane is just a top view bake then, without the sides of the mountains and hills.
Please help me out, i am triing this since 2 and a half day :( without any good results.
ok, i found out…
it seems that i had to put the hi and the low poly terrain on the same layer before shift selecting them, i had them on different layers and that didn´t work for me, know its working great…. thanks for these nice work!