Questions about LODs and stuff.

[Thomas]

Hi guys! After some months of hard learning i'm back to modelling for DotA 2 again, but i still have my doubts about the LODs. I saw that a lot of people creates a base mesh, and import it into zbrush or mudbox for sculpting it, but what i don't know is if the sculpted mesh is exported for using it as the Highpoly, or you just use it for baking the maps you need. Another thing that troubles me if both Higpoly and Lowpoly need to be unwrapped using the same texture. Finally, i have a question for you guys: Should i bake my normal maps using the Blender Engine or a 3rd party software like xnormal? Thanks for reading this far! :)

[HellJumper]

I don't really sculpt, but I can answer several of your questions:

The high poly model is only for baking light maps, normal maps, etc. The actual model used in-game is the low poly version which usually have tri limits of 200-1000 or something. The high poly sculpts that people make have hundreds of thousands (if not, millions) of tris so these are definitely not viable for use in-game where real-time rendering takes place.

If I were you, I'd pick up sculpting if you want to do dota modeling. It's more necessary for Dota whereas in TF2 you can get away with low poly modeling the entire way through. I'm not really a professional or anything, so I can't really recommend what type of program to use for sculpting, but I do know of three good ones: Mudbox, z-Brush, and 3D Coat.

And the rendering of the maps can be done externally or within those programs. I think Lenny/Vlad might have some tutorials regarding the whole map-baking process.

[Thomas]

Originally posted by HellJumper:

I don't really sculpt, but I can answer several of your questions:

The high poly model is only for baking light maps, normal maps, etc. The actual model used in-game is the low poly version which usually have tri limits of 200-1000 or something. The high poly sculpts that people make have hundreds of thousands (if not, millions) of tris so these are definitely not viable for use in-game where real-time rendering takes place.

If I were you, I'd pick up sculpting if you want to do dota modeling. It's more necessary for Dota whereas in TF2 you can get away with low poly modeling the entire way through. I'm not really a professional or anything, so I can't really recommend what type of program to use for sculpting, but I do know of three good ones: Mudbox, z-Brush, and 3D Coat.

And the rendering of the maps can be done externally or within those programs. I think Lenny/Vlad might have some tutorials regarding the whole map-baking process.

Thank you very much for answering! Yes, i think you are right about the sculpting part. I'm kinda new to zbrush, but i have some experience with Blender, so i'll try to use both programs and see what can i achieve. Again, thanks a lot! :)

[HellJumper]

Yeah buddy, no problem. Good luck getting everything to work. Sometimes I wish I had more free time to just mess around and make more tutorials, but alas... I am just a medical student :P