Blender Tutorial - How to Make Low Poly Video Game Characters and Normal Maps From Sculpts
Why Blender Stack Exchange recommends it
Blender Stack Exchange answerers point people to it when they need to cut polygon counts on a high-poly mesh and preserve the detail with a baked normal map.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2015 to 2017.
What it is
A 2013 BlenderMania tutorial showing how to turn a high-poly sculpt into a low-poly game character using Blender's Decimate tool and MeshLab, then bake normal maps to keep the sculpted detail. It is a screen-recorded walkthrough of about 20 minutes.
What people said
Recommends Alex Ritchie · 2015-08 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Strategy to reduce polygon count of Comet 67P shape model using python”
[this video] Try creating a normal map out of the high poly comet. The above tutorial teaches how to do this, so far i only thinks this works in blender render unless someone else knows how to make it work in cycles (if that's what you want to use). Basically use the decimate to to remove polys from your mesh then add the normal map to create the illusion of all the valleys etc. Watch the video to understand what i mean/
Recommends Alex Ritchie · 2015-08 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Step-by-step to baking a model for export, so that it looks smooth but doesn't have all the faces of a subdivided mesh”
Baking can be used to create the image texture for example a character. It can also be used to create normal maps. The below video teaches how to remove faces from a high poly mesh but still keep the detail in it by simply adding a normal. [this video]
Recommends Carlo · 2015-10 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Workflow Question: How to get from a 3D scan to Aurasma Augmented Reality”
Decimate modifier [LINK] doesn't take in account UV maps. With the collapse option enabled it: ...merge (s) vertices together progressively, taking the shape of the mesh into account While mergin vertex, it likely happens that the UV mess up. You should create a new UV map for the decimated object and stick the original texture to it. Start from duplicate [LINK] ( Shift + D ) your mesh. Rename the source object "Highpoly" and the duplicated one "Lowpoly" (keep them in place, overlayed) Add and apply a Decimate modifier [LINK] with the wanted settings on the Lowpoly object The UVmap of the Lowpoly has now been destroyed in the decimation, you must re- unwrap [LINK] your model. Bake the origin
Cites Tyler · 2017-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Bake normal map for different shape keys?”
So I've followed the instructions in this video link exactly with my blender character: [this video] The problem is, my normal map isn't showing up on the low poly model. Is it possible that it's not visible because I've already implemented shape keys on the low poly model? Here's how the low poly model currently looks: [LINK] This is the high poly model (notice the added brow wrinkles and smile lines): [LINK] I copied my high poly model from the low poly with all of its shapekeys, and sculpted each individual shape key of the high poly model. Any ideas where I could be going wrong?
Cites Mentalist · 2017-08 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Baking details from a high-poly onto a texture of a low poly model”
The first thing to understand about this answer is that it's not really a new answer. This question has been asked and answered before plenty of times before - but it seems the part you are getting stuck on is how to bake from multiple objects to a single target object , so I will address that. Before going any further, here are some resources to help you learn about texture baking in Cycles: Resource 1 [LINK] Resource 2 [LINK] Resource 3 [LINK] Resource 4 [this video] In your situation, you are aiming to bake from multiple Selected objects to a single Active object. What does that actually mean in Blender? Let's examine. A Selected object is any object that you have selected, and it will be high