Window Geometry

[Beale]

A follow on from previous thread, but I still struggle with this a lot.

So!

If I inset windows like so:

There are horrible artifacts!

Even worse when specular!

Unity Tesselation

Is there a solution for this? I've tried to look at a lot of 3D resources, but generally it is more concentrated to high-polygon works, rather than <1000 I am working with here.

[nli2work]

give it more polys. ~5k per part is not a real problem. Then make a high poly and bake a normal. add more radial divisions on the cylinder shape or reduce the division on the windows so you don't have all the edges converging on a single vertex. Ideally you need same # vertical division per horizontal division (8) on the window. Manually tesselate before export where necessary

http://www./download/zzfj8d83k4iezwb/4xWIndows.unitypackage

Edited October 7, 2015 by nli2work

[Porkjet]

Just chatted bout this with Bac9 cos it's kinda hard to sum up.

Basically, irregular poly flow gives you irregular shading.

To quote him:

"basically, there are two issues:

First is consistency of size. Shading transitions from huge to tiny faces will look bad without face-weighted normals

second there is topology/flow. Ideally absolutely nothing but relatively undistorted quads should be used. Triangles are evil, pentagons are evil, poles are evil, and n-gons are literally Satan."

Also he suggested i link you to this thread http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56014

And tell you to ask questions about topology there.

Another easier option: why not leave it flat areas and put the windows in with a texture, you decided not to model the rcs nozzles, so why bother with the windows. With nice specular map and normal mapping, it'll look really nice.

[landeTLS]

Attached are some different solutions.

the two bottom ones are 24 and 32 sided. usually the solution is to this problem is to adjust the base topology. but to properly match up the 16 sided window you have there you would need a cylinder with atleast 48 sides. that is a bit too high for this model i think. so the sollution is "hacking" the topology to cause less artifacts from the mismatch. as you can see the 24 sided one still has some artifacts but they are contained to the immidiate area around the window, in game it should be fine(the material is very specular here). the 32 sided one has a bit uneven sides since i used a 6 way radial modeling method but that could be fixed if one chose to do so(not that it causes any problems)

there is also the normalmapped one. i used a quick cylindrical unwrap here so i had to stick with 1024px maps. but with a better manual unwrap 512px should yield a similar result.

of all these i think the normalmapped one looks best, especcially because of the beveled edge effect you get from baking from a hipoly model.

hope this helps

Edit: on second thought i could have made those 4 triangles quads by cutting horizontally(i guess i have developed an aversion to doing it this way since it is bad to stretch polygons that way for hipoly models)

Edited October 8, 2015 by landeTLS

[InsaneDruid]

If only Blender would allow normal editing like zmodeler.

In addition to all that has been already said (besides: 48 sides arent "too big" imho AND it would be better to match the standard 24 sides in comparison to a 32 sided part) I would suggest the following:

First, try adding more edgeloops to reduce the amount of long triangles.

Then, make a duplicate of the main shape of the vessel, without the window cutouts (just the frustum) Add and apply a very high subsurf to it, then scale it to touch the original mesh from the outside (so that the additional geometry is outside your original geometry, and both are touching on positions of the original meshs vertices. Hide the ultra highres mesh or move to another layer.

Add a shrinkwrap modifier to your low res mesh with the windows. Use the ultra highres mesh as target. Exclude unwanted vertices via vertex groups. (In your case, this would be the inset parts of the windows. Apply the modifier.

This way the additional vertices lie on the perfect curvature of the shape that the shading should mimic.

EDIT:

I hope this image will help understanding my slipslop a little better:

Red are the vertices of the original (frustum) geometry, green symbolize the vertices of the windows. The aim is to align them on the exact curvature of the shape that is approximated by the mesh.

PS: in Blender, using the matcap option with the matte and shiny gold materials is a nice way of spotting shading problems.

Edited October 8, 2015 by InsaneDruid

[Beale]

give it more polys. ~5k per part is not a real problem. Then make a high poly and bake a normal. add more radial divisions on the cylinder shape or reduce the division on the windows so you don't have all the edges converging on a single vertex. Ideally you need same # vertical division per horizontal division (8) on the window. Manually tesselate before export where necessary

http://i.imgur.com/alCHFsF.jpg

http://www./download/zzfj8d83k4iezwb/4xWIndows.unitypackage

So is somewhat a manner of splitting the window surface into an equally sized grid? I can try this, thank you

Just chatted bout this with Bac9 cos it's kinda hard to sum up.

Basically, irregular poly flow gives you irregular shading.

To quote him:

"basically, there are two issues:

First is consistency of size. Shading transitions from huge to tiny faces will look bad without face-weighted normals

second there is topology/flow. Ideally absolutely nothing but relatively undistorted quads should be used. Triangles are evil, pentagons are evil, poles are evil, and n-gons are literally Satan."

Also he suggested i link you to this thread http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56014

And tell you to ask questions about topology there.

Another easier option: why not leave it flat areas and put the windows in with a texture, you decided not to model the rcs nozzles, so why bother with the windows. With nice specular map and normal mapping, it'll look really nice.

Thanks for the info!

I can try to avoid tight triangles and drastic differences in density in the future some more

I like to avoid normal-mapped approach for the stake of stokalike-ness, as far as I know - there are no stock parts with geometry-less windows, no?.

Thread is good reference, many thanks!

Attached are some different solutions.

http://i.imgur.com/3BbdCW8.png

the two bottom ones are 24 and 32 sided. usually the solution is to this problem is to adjust the base topology. but to properly match up the 16 sided window you have there you would need a cylinder with atleast 48 sides. that is a bit too high for this model i think. so the sollution is "hacking" the topology to cause less artifacts from the mismatch. as you can see the 24 sided one still has some artifacts but they are contained to the immidiate area around the window, in game it should be fine(the material is very specular here). the 32 sided one has a bit uneven sides since i used a 6 way radial modeling method but that could be fixed if one chose to do so(not that it causes any problems)

there is also the normalmapped one. i used a quick cylindrical unwrap here so i had to stick with 1024px maps. but with a better manual unwrap 512px should yield a similar result.

of all these i think the normalmapped one looks best, especcially because of the beveled edge effect you get from baking from a hipoly model.

hope this helps

Edit: on second thought i could have made those 4 triangles quads by cutting horizontally(i guess i have developed an aversion to doing it this way since it is bad to stretch polygons that way for hipoly models)

The "24-Sided" example is great, I think I may find that the best solution (For my skill level and practicality) Great many thanks!

Question: How is the relationship between window cylinder sides and the cylinder size of the base capsule (I.E. 16-side window and 24-side capsule)?

For example, would a 12-sided window play nicer?

Mainly I am not such a great fan of the normal-mapped one as explained above.

If only Blender would allow normal editing like zmodeler.

In addition to all that has been already said (besides: 48 sides arent "too big" imho AND it would be better to match the standard 24 sides in comparison to a 32 sided part) I would suggest the following:

First, try adding more edgeloops to reduce the amount of long triangles.

Then, make a duplicate of the main shape of the vessel, without the window cutouts (just the frustum) Add and apply a very high subsurf to it, then scale it to touch the original mesh from the outside (so that the additional geometry is outside your original geometry, and both are touching on positions of the original meshs vertices. Hide the ultra highres mesh or move to another layer.

Add a shrinkwrap modifier to your low res mesh with the windows. Use the ultra highres mesh as target. Exclude unwanted vertices via vertex groups. (In your case, this would be the inset parts of the windows. Apply the modifier.

This way the additional vertices lie on the perfect curvature of the shape that the shading should mimic.

EDIT:

I hope this image will help understanding my slipslop a little better:

http://abload.de/thumb/untitled-1l8zfo.jpg

Red are the vertices of the original (frustum) geometry, green symbolize the vertices of the windows. The aim is to align them on the exact curvature of the shape that is approximated by the mesh.

PS: in Blender, using the matcap option with the matte and shiny gold materials is a nice way of spotting shading problems.

I will have to read up here, I can be honest I am a very big amateur, and not using Blender, so the entire post is nonsensical to me

If I can understand? The faces on which the window will rest are of a greater curvature (I.E. more faces)?

But I will follow up, many thanks!

Edited October 8, 2015 by Beale

[nli2work]

So is somewhat a manner of splitting the window surface into an equally sized grid?

The other way around, you need to add more division the cylinder surface around the window, horizontally and vertically. Your window is 16 divisons around, basically in a 8x8 grid, and you are transitioning to 2x2 grid, by a factor of 4. You need at least a 4x4 grid (See LandeTLS's solution); mine examples transition from 12x12 or 6x6 to 5x5 grid base. All the above options still have artifacts around the corners, though much less noticeable. Ideally you want 1:1 flow of polygons while maintaining similar sized quads as much as possible, triangles sparingly and avoid nGons, they should be solved with quads and triangles.

Haven't used Wings3D for a long while, but from what I remember it's pretty skimpy on non-destructive modeling options... like Max's modifier stack or the Blender modifiers mentioned earlier. For something like this, hard surface modeling where you want precision, Wings3D may prove somewhat lacking. I'd say the main take away is stick to quads wherever possible and maintain similar sized faces. Flowing from higher density to lower density geometry will give you artifacts unless it's on a perfectly flat surface... the greater the difference and curvature of the surface, the worse the artifacts. 1 to 1 is ideal; 2 to 1 can be acceptable (can still see the artifacts where triangles pinch), 3 or 4 to 1 (your initial example) is too much. What that means is if you plan to stick to low poly, 1 to 2k ish, you have to sacrifice roundness.

The window pane itself is less problematic unless you want it to be a continuous mesh with the the pod's hull. Depending on the curvature of it you can get away with a flat quad. A cylindrical curvature you need a few vertical divisions, less than the window hole itself. or for a spherical curvature, an NxN grid.

Edited October 8, 2015 by nli2work

[landeTLS]

So is somewhat a manner of splitting the window surface into an equally sized grid? I can try this, thank you

Thanks for the info!

I can try to avoid tight triangles and drastic differences in density in the future some more

I like to avoid normal-mapped approach for the stake of stokalike-ness, as far as I know - there are no stock parts with geometry-less windows, no?.

Thread is good reference, many thanks!

The "24-Sided" example is great, I think I may find that the best solution (For my skill level and practicality) Great many thanks!

Question: How is the relationship between window cylinder sides and the cylinder size of the base capsule (I.E. 16-side window and 24-side capsule)?

For example, would a 12-sided window play nicer?

Mainly I am not such a great fan of the normal-mapped one as explained above.

I will have to read up here, I can be honest I am a very big amateur, and not using Blender, so the entire post is nonsensical to me

If I can understand? The faces on which the window will rest are of a greater curvature (I.E. more faces)?

But I will follow up, many thanks!

Responce to the question regarding my post:

Yes the less segements you put on the window the less artifacts youll get from it. Its all about tradeoffs. Can the model still hold up if the window is 12 sided rather than 16 then thats great. Youll have less artifacts around it. But still only if you limit any interruption in the edgeflow to the immidiate area around the window. Also avoid thin long polygons. Youll also see in my exampled that i chose not to terminate the edges going in the middle between the windows since that would cause more issues and not much gains from reduced polycounts.

Btw i just realized that the "32" sided example is actually 38 sided. This is because 32 is divisible by 8 and your detail goes 6 times around(atleast in terms of placement of those 3 windows in the front) so when i made it 6 way symmetry some polygons where divided into 2. But as i said you can make it nearly even by dissolving the extra edge in the middle. I actually reccomend the 32 sided example for your model since your window is even smaller than in my examples and youll need the extra geometry for that(its not all about window sides, its also about relative scale)

Edit: or you can just go 48 sided(this is what i did for my high poly object before turbosmoothing) its not that high and it may give you a much easier time with your model

Edit 2: upload your model in obj format if you are still having issues and ill take a look at it for you.

Edited October 8, 2015 by landeTLS

[NecroBones]

Here's another idea that might not be what you want to do. Does the window have to be recessed? If you don't mind the window+frame protruding, it could be done with a separate mesh "island" that sits in front of the capsule's wall. Obviously that's an entirely different look, but it avoids artifacts from having a manifold mesh with negative spaces and concave shapes with varying polygon sizes.

[CobaltWolf]

EDIT: what the heck it got rid of my thing when I posted.

made the pod, added a helper cylinder and manually lined it's verts up with the edges of the model. Added two extra edge loops to the pod, deleted the faces, and extruded + vert snapped the new edges to the helper cylinder. Add a new 16 sided cylinder with the window extruded down in. Suffers the same issue as Necro's solution - the windows are no longer recessed which is a big part of the design IMO.

In case anyone is wondering what he's working on.

Edited October 8, 2015 by CobaltWolf

[Beale]

Responce to the question regarding my post:

Yes the less segements you put on the window the less artifacts youll get from it. Its all about tradeoffs. Can the model still hold up if the window is 12 sided rather than 16 then thats great. Youll have less artifacts around it. But still only if you limit any interruption in the edgeflow to the immidiate area around the window. Also avoid thin long polygons. Youll also see in my exampled that i chose not to terminate the edges going in the middle between the windows since that would cause more issues and not much gains from reduced polycounts.

Btw i just realized that the "32" sided example is actually 38 sided. This is because 32 is divisible by 8 and your detail goes 6 times around(atleast in terms of placement of those 3 windows in the front) so when i made it 6 way symmetry some polygons where divided into 2. But as i said you can make it nearly even by dissolving the extra edge in the middle. I actually reccomend the 32 sided example for your model since your window is even smaller than in my examples and youll need the extra geometry for that(its not all about window sides, its also about relative scale)

Edit: or you can just go 48 sided(this is what i did for my high poly object before turbosmoothing) its not that high and it may give you a much easier time with your model

Edit 2: upload your model in obj format if you are still having issues and ill take a look at it for you.

Here's the OBJ

The "24-Sided" geometry you posted above was a good fit, there are very few artifacts now!

I cannot thank you enough! This pleases me a lot, open up a lot of new modelling possibilities!.

The remaining artifacts are a little more visible when having a specular light, but still not bad!

One question, all these un-needed edges around the rear, with no windows, can they be terminated?

I think also 48-sided polygon can be a good fit too, if the capsule can be ended with 24-sided connector (to connect with other parts).

Here's another idea that might not be what you want to do. Does the window have to be recessed? If you don't mind the window+frame protruding, it could be done with a separate mesh "island" that sits in front of the capsule's wall. Obviously that's an entirely different look, but it avoids artifacts from having a manifold mesh with negative spaces and concave shapes with varying polygon sizes.

This was my first thought, it works well for some capsule, but it seems like in the case of ISRO OV it is integral to the look and feel for the windows to be subtracted.

EDIT: what the heck it got rid of my thing when I posted.

http://i.imgur.com/tTgqHQc.jpg

made the pod, added a helper cylinder and manually lined it's verts up with the edges of the model. Added two extra edge loops to the pod, deleted the faces, and extruded + vert snapped the new edges to the helper cylinder. Add a new 16 sided cylinder with the window extruded down in. Suffers the same issue as Necro's solution - the windows are no longer recessed which is a big part of the design IMO.

In case anyone is wondering what he's working on.

A slight bulge out is not such a huge problem, are you using a "hole" there? (The black 8-sided face - I don't know the right terminology).

You are spot on what is being worked on hahaha

Edited October 8, 2015 by Beale

[CobaltWolf]

A slight bulge out is not such a huge problem, are you using a "hole" there? (The black 8-sided face - I don't know the right terminology).

You are spot on what is being worked on hahaha

Yes, it's a hole in the mesh. It's not a face, it's just how my modeling program shows the back sides of the far walls. I use Maya; I prefer working in Modo but I'm too lazy to get it set up on my personal computer.

You said in the Tantares thread it was something Indian and orange.

[CaptainKipard]

@LandeTLS

How did you get that particular edge flow in the 24-sided one? I can't think of a way or recreating it precisely. Did you boolean the window as the last thing? Or did you work around it?

[landeTLS]

@LandeTLS

How did you get that particular edge flow in the 24-sided one? I can't think of a way or recreating it precisely. Did you boolean the window as the last thing? Or did you work around it?

i started by modeling the base shape, made a horizontal loop where i wanted the center of the window to be.

then surface aligning(not necessary since its edges are almost straight but makes for a more correct shape) a circle curve to the diagonal line in the center and snapping it to the center vertex of the horizontal line. then set the segements(interpolation parameter) for the curve to get 16 verts

from the front view i cut while snapping to the verts of the circle curve, deleted the whole left side.

used a slice plane or the quickloop tool(3dsmax) to make the horizontal loops and the cut tool to connect them as seen in the pics. i then adjusted the nearby verts(that where too close) using edge constraints(similar to vert sliding in blender) added a symmetry modifier(x) then beveled/extruded the window inwards. added a radial symmetry modifier(6x). done

i prefer this way of doing simple cutouts over booleans as i find its faster and more flexible. i still prefer booeans for irreguar and more complex shapes.

Edited October 8, 2015 by landeTLS

[landeTLS]

i did a little experimentation on your model and this was what i came up with:

as you can see i didnt change much on the 24 sided one. i did try a few different configs but this was the one with the least artifacts. what i changed was terminating the loops where they are not needed(on the back). i also converted it to 48 sides and 48->24 sides via 2to1 termination. hope youll find some use for this.

edit: oops i may have made a mistake with the window spacing on the 48 sided one and forgot to symmetrify the 24/48 one

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9yFzV-G4YPzeUR6UGlGWGQya0k/view?usp=sharing

Edited October 8, 2015 by landeTLS

[Beale]

i did a little experimentation on your model and this was what i came up with:

http://i.imgur.com/gm4127A.png

as you can see i didnt change much on the 24 sided one. i did try a few different configs but this was the one with the least artifacts. what i changed was terminating the loops where they are not needed(on the back). i also converted it to 48 sides and 48->24 sides via 2to1 termination. hope youll find some use for this.

edit: oops i may have made a mistake with the window spacing on the 48 sided one and forgot to symmetrify the 24/48 one

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9yFzV-G4YPzeUR6UGlGWGQya0k/view?usp=sharing

It seems there are artifacts no matter the approach taken, but still they are not so bad

Window artifacts top and bottom, and the little triangle artifacts (just above the window) in the middle example.

Still, these do not show up until beneath strong specular lighting! So that is a success from you, great many thanks (And thanks for demonstrating how to terminate the edges around the rear of the capsule).

[InsaneDruid]

My best approach is like this (16sided window, 48sided main body)

Only slight distortions on the reflections of a matcap material in blender.

The solution from above, though very nicely done all-quad stretches the reflections quite a bit on the outward-pointing wegde-shaped quads below and above the window. Well at least here in blender.

EDIT:

same area with a matte matcap

Edited October 9, 2015 by InsaneDruid

[landeTLS]

My best approach is like this (16sided window, 48sided main body)

http://abload.de/img/untitled-12tst2.jpg

Only slight distortions on the reflections of a matcap material in blender.

The solution from above, though very nicely done all-quad stretches the reflections quite a bit on the outward-pointing wegde-shaped quads below and above the window. Well at least here in blender.

EDIT:

same area with a matte matcap

http://abload.de/thumb/untitled-15mzka.jpg

That flow looks ok. Im mainly not a fan of straight divisions on curved surfaces(the bottom and top) as it is a bad thing for hipoly work. But it seems to work out ok here. Another thing is that his window is slightly bigger so that it goes through the outer vertical edges on a 48 sided capsule. I chose to retain those edges there by sliding them out but the more i think about it i could have target welded them to the window as that may have caused less distortions in a lp model. I also have another trick i could have tried by applying a bend modifier to the circle curve i use to cut then snap the verts after establishing the topology around it.

[frizzank]

Part of the problem is you mesh has 2 different densities of polygons coming together. Your windows have tons of detail in them and the rest is less detailed.

Plop the capsule in the game and load it into the VAB, Do not Zoom In! If you can see facets or artifacts just sitting there in the viewport then you need more detail. If you can zoom in real close and you still don't see the facets then consider taking some out.

If your lining up a high detailed interior with a lower exterior make the interior frame slightly smaller and you will never see the exterior frame and will not have to worry about them lining up perfectly.

Smoothing is an approximation of the curvature of the mesh, and even though you don't see an edge, there is one connecting every vert and edges are where the artifacts are coming from.

You can see it here on the inside in the middle. Its got perfect edge flow and the mesh is the same density through out. So what gives it still has artifacts?

Short answer is you will always have artifacts, stretching and facets. The solution for each is it needs more polys. The sweet spot is the artifacts are barely noticeable and just enough polys to to take care of it.

This is one of the harder technical problems of modeling, making a hole in a curved surface and have it not look like its dented. I still struggle with it from time to time and I have been modeling for 15 years.

Polys are cheap, textures are expensive.

[landeTLS]

Part of the problem is you mesh has 2 different densities of polygons coming together. Your windows have tons of detail in them and the rest is less detailed.

Plop the capsule in the game and load it into the VAB, Do not Zoom In! If you can see facets or artifacts just sitting there in the viewport then you need more detail. If you can zoom in real close and you still don't see the facets then consider taking some out.

If your lining up a high detailed interior with a lower exterior make the interior frame slightly smaller and you will never see the exterior frame and will not have to worry about them lining up perfectly.

http://i.imgur.com/TIxGYwe.jpg

Smoothing is an approximation of the curvature of the mesh, and even though you don't see an edge, there is one connecting every vert and edges are where the artifacts are coming from.

You can see it here on the inside in the middle. Its got perfect edge flow and the mesh is the same density through out. So what gives it still has artifacts?

http://i.imgur.com/zB6UFSs.jpg

Short answer is you will always have artifacts, stretching and facets. The solution for each is it needs more polys. The sweet spot is the artifacts are barely noticeable and just enough polys to to take care of it.

This is one of the harder technical problems of modeling, making a hole in a curved surface and have it not look like its dented. I still struggle with it from time to time and I have been modeling for 15 years.

Polys are cheap, textures are expensive.

I agree with frizz here. If i where to do this one for myself i would use a max of 12 sides on the window and atleast 48 sides for the base(atleast for the main part, maybe terminating somewhere if i needed the top/bottom to be 24 sided) but this was a good exercise in lp modeling for me.

[NecroBones]

One point to consider when using something other than 24 sides, is that the stock components in all the main diameters (1.25m through 3.75m) use 24 sides. Because of this, many mods do as well. If you use a different number, that sometimes results in noticeable misalignment of vertices and corners when attaching the part to stock parts or similar mod parts. This can be pretty minor, but it's at least worth taking note of.

[Beale]

My best approach is like this (16sided window, 48sided main body)

http://abload.de/img/untitled-12tst2.jpg

Only slight distortions on the reflections of a matcap material in blender.

The solution from above, though very nicely done all-quad stretches the reflections quite a bit on the outward-pointing wegde-shaped quads below and above the window. Well at least here in blender.

EDIT:

same area with a matte matcap

http://abload.de/thumb/untitled-15mzka.jpg

Nice technique!

Still some artifacts when taken into Unity / KSP, but quite localized.

I guess it is unavoidable to remove these bumps and distortions to a strong degree low-poly then?

Part of the problem is you mesh has 2 different densities of polygons coming together. Your windows have tons of detail in them and the rest is less detailed.

Plop the capsule in the game and load it into the VAB, Do not Zoom In! If you can see facets or artifacts just sitting there in the viewport then you need more detail. If you can zoom in real close and you still don't see the facets then consider taking some out.

If your lining up a high detailed interior with a lower exterior make the interior frame slightly smaller and you will never see the exterior frame and will not have to worry about them lining up perfectly.

http://i.imgur.com/TIxGYwe.jpg

Smoothing is an approximation of the curvature of the mesh, and even though you don't see an edge, there is one connecting every vert and edges are where the artifacts are coming from.

You can see it here on the inside in the middle. Its got perfect edge flow and the mesh is the same density through out. So what gives it still has artifacts?

http://i.imgur.com/zB6UFSs.jpg

Short answer is you will always have artifacts, stretching and facets. The solution for each is it needs more polys. The sweet spot is the artifacts are barely noticeable and just enough polys to to take care of it.

This is one of the harder technical problems of modeling, making a hole in a curved surface and have it not look like its dented. I still struggle with it from time to time and I have been modeling for 15 years.

Polys are cheap, textures are expensive.

Thanks for the explanation!

I think it is true to say I am a little picky about the windows, I have let worse artifacts slide (for example from forming a tight cone shape. When the artifacts are only becoming visible when under intense specular highlight, that is no longer a problem IMO

The trouble is, to properly gauge how sever the artifacts are in-game, I need to unwrap the model and texture it? - if I do this then discover artifacts are really bad, it would be terrible to scrap all work and go back to the beginning and rework geometry.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Beale

[landeTLS]

Nice technique!

Still some artifacts when taken into Unity / KSP, but quite localized.

I guess it is unavoidable to remove these bumps and distortions to a strong degree low-poly then?

http://puu.sh/kEuW1/d425383da3.png

http://puu.sh/kEv9e/d7e0a6aeb9.jpg

http://puu.sh/kEvjW/7eba83129b.jpg

http://puu.sh/kEvlq/a9e65eca12.png

Thanks for the explanation!

I think it is true to say I am a little picky about the windows, I have let worse artifacts slide (for example from forming a tight cone shape. When the artifacts are only becoming visible when under intense specular highlight, that is no longer a problem IMO

The trouble is, to properly gauge how sever the artifacts are in-game, I need to unwrap the model and texture it? - if I do this then discover artifacts are really bad, it would be terrible to scrap all work and go back to the beginning and rework geometry.

ok, last one i promise. i did a bit of experimentation(slow day, and i never shy away from a challenge:-P) so i came up with this..thing(also made a sort of tutorial on the process i used. Taking care to use tools that most sw should have in some form or another)

i had not concidered using detached pieces this way before(detached/floating/seperate mesh 24 sided top and bottom) but it does look like it works well here, and 1456tris isnt half bad either.

There are a few things going on here. First the sides of the main part is increased to 48 sides. Then the window is decreased to 12 sides. Then the window is cut out from a section of a 96 sided base which is reduced to 48 around its sides. This gives that little bit extra curve tho doing it this way is a bit overkill. Then the top and bottom are completly seperate 24 sided pieces that are intersecting slightly with the 48 sided base (the important thing here is that the top is intersecting at an angle of 90 degrees otherwise it would be very apparent that they are not attached. I forgot to mention that i in addition to extruding that extra edge inwards on the 48 sided piece i also scaled the original edge outward a little bit and the outer edge of the 24 sided top down a bit)

Obj is here

there will always be some minor artifacts in these types of topologies unless you perfectly match the cutout with the base topology(for 16 sides on that scale that would be in the order of 96 sides) or use detached geometry for the windows. i think most of the solutions posted in this thread would hold up ingame with textures and especcially with a diffuse shader. you can test it quickly out by using a autounwrap(like cylindrical+planar for the top if your sw has those) applying a simple tiling texture and checking it out ingame

Edit: damnit... screwed up the window spacing again. But the workflow should be fine. I did try a few other types of flow. Some that where posted here and some i thought of myself. but this was the one that i found made the least artifacts. One problem as i found during expetimentation with blender and 3dsmax is that they both use by default polygon based objects (as opposed to mesh objects) and the shading interpolation is slightly better on those. But when you export to unity(atleast as obj) they get converted to mesh objects. The result is that inside max/blender the objects can look very good but once in unity they do not look quite as nice anymore. Luckily max can also handle mesh objects so what i did was convert a few different examples to meshes and check out how they looked in comparison to one another. Lets just say the difference was much more than i originally thought. Not sure if blender handles mesh objects internally or not.

Edited October 10, 2015 by landeTLS

[InsaneDruid]

Hey Beale, try my Flow with the Trick mentioned above. Basically, its modelling a ultra-high resolution shape that has no windows (just the frustum shape of the capsule) and then shrinkwrapping the low poly mesh to it. There must be a modifier to apply too the modifer stack or something that does this in max. Like something like this:

Without the shrinkwrap trick I have more visible artifacts, too.

@landeTLS: I think your workflow creates exactly the effect I mentioned with my shrinkwrap approach: the verts of the windows arent located on the surface of the lower res base topology.

EDIT:

@ NecroBones: Good Point. That's why, for example, I made special parts that adapt between 24 and 48 faces on my Proton. Its even more prominent when 24 face stock parts are mixed with, like 32 faces or so.

Edited October 10, 2015 by InsaneDruid

[CaptainKipard]

Short answer is you will always have artifacts, stretching and facets.

What are facets?