I am not sure if this is a blender problem or an unreal engine problem

[Admiral Fisher]

On the first tree it is about 4 thousand to 6 thousand ploys. The texture does not streach. On the other tree, which is supposed to be an oak tree. It is 220 thousand polys and I made the streating somwhat better by enhancing texture resoultion. I am not sure if this is a blender problem or an unreal engine problem as I can import trees from other tools such as treeit and I can import medium poly trees without issues. I don't know it this is a high poly tree problem but I was wondering how to fix it. I have delt with this problem for a awhile.
https://gyazo.com/e40eaa673d8a06df3c67cec74afa406f

[Mr Chappy]

Hi,

You don't want to be using a tree, or any type of game object or character, with 220k polys in a game engine!

My best guess for the actual cause of the stretching would be that you have unwrapped the tree before applying it's scale, this can cause a variety of issues! Check that this is done and see if it fixes it!

But don't use that tree as it is in a game engine, it's using up way too much of the available resources.
You need to make a low poly version of the tree(via retopping it) and bake the high poly model details onto the low poly model(creating a normal map).

[Admiral Fisher]

like is there a special way I scale it or do I scale it the normal way and How do I bake it?

[Admiral Fisher]

what does that mean to bake it?

[Mr Chappy]

Hi,

For scale do this :
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/31769/how-to-set-the-current-scale-to-1

Baking :
Game assets are low poly but they normally look high poly. Baking is the process of creating a texture(called a "normal map", the weird blue looking textures you have probably seen somewhere) for the low poly model that emulates the detail of the high poly model.
Retopping(creating the low poly mesh using vert/edge/face projection onto the high poly mesh) and baking are subjects unto themselves. Don't expect to pick this up in a couple of hours....
The best thing to do is go to Youtube, type "Blender retopping" which will bring up many tutorials showing this process.
Likewise with baking(make sure you are looking at this type of baking and not baking light, they are not the same thing).
Blender can do baking but there are other options, Xnormal(free, I think), Substance Painter 2(not free, this is the one I use), and others...
Getting clean bakes is a learning process. I tend to triangulate my entire low poly mesh(via a modifier, don't apply this unless you have a backup or at all if you are exporting to another format like .FBX as it will apply it during export, leaving your editable model in tact), then I set the entire low poly mesh to smooth shading.
The low and high poly mesh must be perfectly aligned as well!

[Admiral Fisher]

well I got the polys down to 55 thousand and the texture does not streatch nearly as much. I also baked the uv map and the normal map. However, crafting another tree like this one will be a challange. Thanks for the help.

[Mr Chappy]

Is the tree the main level structure or is it one of what will be many trees?
If it is one of many then you want to be looking at around 1000-2500 polys max, 55k is ridiculous unless the one single tree is the main feature of the level and even then it's still way too much... Especially with potential effects, shadows, and lighting causing over draw which could multiply the drawn poly count several times at runtime...

The main character in a AAA game will probably only come in at around 20k - 25k.... You need to re-evaluate your perspective on this or you will end up with a game that will struggle to run on a modern beast of a PC, regardless of what engine you use...

[Admiral Fisher]

I know about polys. I know trees should not be above 2500 tris. The problem is that I am using the sapeling gen curve to mesh. I have never been able to generate a tree below 40 thousand polys. I also sculpted my own trees at about 3000 ploys. I have managed to get it down to 55 thousand and I know it is ridiciouls.

[Mr Chappy]

Have you looked at how to re-top yet?

[Admiral Fisher]

Цитата допису Mr Chappy:

Have you looked at how to re-top yet?

Yeah it was in the manuel. It looks like it will take pratice.

[Mr Chappy]

You need to learn how to retop first. Then you can have a look at baking... If you baked your 220k model onto your 55k model then it is likely the normal map that you created is doing very little or nothing at all as the geometry will be almost identical...
Can you post a pic of the generated normal map, I would like to see how much it is doing at the moment, thanks if you can!

[Admiral Fisher]

https://gyazo.com/7ffe6d5e8acec6c3d2ac9293f2944d7d?token=c84f612c539fc0c040ffcd38f34d7b97

And if you wish to help me even futher with my game you can send me a friend request.

[Mr Chappy]

Hi,

Thanks for the offer regarding your game but I have enough on at the moment. Cheers anyway!

That normal map does not look right at all, by the look of it has the neutral blue(does nothing), and blank white spaces which are not part of a normal map, they are either gaps or errors generated from the bake. All in all that normal map is doing nothing that it is supposed to...

This may well be because you are baking almost identical geometry, and possibly some other mistakes on top of that...

Retop the tree, it may take a bit of time to get the hang of but it is needed knowledge so worth doing, there may be another way but you are best off doing it this way for the experience of having done it. Then try baking again when you have a low poly mesh of around the 1k-2.5k mark.

You can ask on here via this post or a new one if you get properly stuck whilst doing any of this!

Good luck :)

[Admiral Fisher]

hey thanks for your time.

[Mr Chappy]

No problem!