Learning 3D Modeling, mostly polygon modeling, mostly with Blender 3D Part 2.

Well welcome back,

Welcome to the second part of my study Learning 3D Modeling, Mostly Polygon modeling, Mostly with Blender 3D. If you missed the first part of my study you can find it here.

Hope I haven't lost anyone yet and I hope I've opened some more doors in the great mansion of 3D Polygon modeling.

In some ways I feel like we could have just ended with Boyd's tut. and been said and done but as with anything with me I like to "dig deep" and really "keep moving foward" to get a total understanding across. So with that being said let's get back on the horse so to say.

I'd like to take the time now to point out 2 things which I believe can literally stop you from pulling out your hair and driving you up the wall (not that driving up a wall wouldn't be cool =p). Without knowing about these 2 things you might look at your model and go why does my model look like it was made out of Legos and everyone else's look like they were made out of top quality modeling clay.

So with out further ado I'd like to reiterate what Boyd talked about on pages 12 and 13 of his modeling ethic, which is Gouraud smoothing (Boyd called it display smoothing) and Subdivision Modeling.

Gouraud smoothing is an awesome little tool because it can really make your model look smoothed out with out adding extra geometry to the model. Basically as far as I understand it gouraud smoothing just recalculates how the lighting is distributed across the mesh when and where it's applied thus giving those areas a more smooth appearance.

Note: If you're new to 3D Modeling feel free to skip this next paragraph till later when you're ready to learn more about smoothing. For a further look into how Gouraud smoothing works you can watch Smooth Shading, another great video provided by the guys at The Guerrilla CG Project. It's important for me to point out that Blender has a work around for applying smoothing via angle and you may wish to look at the information under point number 6. found here. Also as far I know at this point in time it's not possible to control the vertex normals in Blender, it's only possible to see them unfortunately.

So just how much of difference can Gouraud smoothing (set smooth button in Blender) make? Check out this screen shot.
It's the same exact head, it's just the head on the left has Gouraud smoothing, or as it's called in Blender Set Smooth, applied to it where as the one on the right does not.


Subdivision modeling is "A popular method of modelling using a "low resolution" polygon mesh which is then smoothed to produce a well rounded model. It's advantage is producing high polygon results while only creating a low polygon base mesh. This term is commonly shortened to SubDivs or SubD." as defined on the The Guerrilla CG Project. With that beind said let's watch Glen Moyes tutorial Subdivision Surfaces: Overview, but understand that Glen looks at topology a little differently than Boyd does, but both ways are right.

As it's says in it's definition Subdivision, or subsurface modeling, can make a high poly mesh from a low poly mesh.

So how does this relate to making our models for Torque? Well since we have poly limits for our .dts objects (models) chances are you won't be bringing in a highly subdivided model straight into your torque project (not to mention you'd have to convert the model, alt-c, or apply the subdivision modifier first, but that's another topic).

Subdivision modeling does have it's use though for our models for torque.

We can use subdivision modeling to make a low polygon model look like a high polygon model through a process where a normal map is produced from the high poly model. A normal map is simply a texture that is attached to the lower polygon mesh that tricks the engine into treating the lower poly models's faces as if they were the high poly model's faces when it comes to lighting.

In lame man's terms the normal map gets alot more detail with out the extra geometry. Just remember though it's still the low poly's faces that are really there so when it comes to producing shadows you'll have to make sure the low poly mesh has the basic shape of the high poly's or your shadows in game may not resemble your model's outline.

Now as I said Glen and alot of others look at topology as the mesh's wireframe pattern, which is nothing more than your model with the edges you've created showing. Here you see the wire frame of my model:
Note: Right side shows the wireframe and left side does not in order to show you what the wireframe is.


With that being said,
Glen pointed out near the end of his tutorial that we've just viewed, that poles can create problem areas for subdivided meshes as can other things so lets look into these issues and how to avoid/fix them with Greg Petchkovski's video Subdivision Topology:Artifacts.

Note: If you are new to 3D Modeling I'd highly recommend using caution when deciding to visit this study I'm about to list because it can be pretty confusing and overwhelming.
If you'd like to further look into the study of topology under the definition of it being a mesh's wireframe pattern a really in depth study of it is/was being done at Subdivionmodeling.com under their threads the The Pole and The Pole-revised. The Pole revised thread is pretty much a shortened form of all the information from the thread The Pole.


In an effort not to turn this blog into a book I think I'll end it here, but first I'll give you a quick look into what I'm going to try to go into in the next step of study.

In our next step we'll try to cover:
-a few modeling methods that I'm most familiar with/see potential in
-Introduction to Blender 3D's interface
-getting used to some of Blender's most frequent tools
-low poly topology and tips to help in key areas


As always please feel free to comment as I go so if you're interested in this study so that I'll know if there is enough interest for the effort it'll take. Also if this study gets enough positive feedback I'm going to make it into a resource to further help others learn. So again please feel free to comment.

NOTE:If in any way I've linked to something that the authors of the works wouldn't want linked to and if you are one of those authors just ask and I'll remove the link.