Tip for body skin: normal map (Patreon)

Hello,

As you know I work with Blender.

Here is a little tip for the skin part (texture) of your characters.

What is expensive, in terms of machine resources, is often the number of vertices of a mesh. In simpler terms, the number of triangles or squares that make up the character.

However, to obtain beautiful curves, we tend to use and abuse cutting and this is very often the main mistake of beginners. The character quickly becomes too "big" and the machine rows to death.

On blender, to overcome this problem, we commonly use the subdivision tool which will cut/subdivide the meshes, which allows you to have beautiful curves while not bringing the machine to its knees.

Indeed, this option is easily deactivated and configured.

There is a problem when exporting the character to other 3d api (Unity or VR Chat for example). Either we export it without the subdivision and the character is... ugly.... or we export it with the subdivision and the computer... dies due to overheating....

Here's the trick:

The 1st thing to do is to play with the normal texture. This texture makes it possible to create slight reliefs (for example a fur). We can therefore create beautiful curves just with the normal texture!

But then you're going to say to me: "yes it's very nice, but how do I do it"?

I won't go into details, you will find a lot of videos on youtube that will do it. I'll just tell you the general mechanics to do, so you know what to look for :)

Once you have finished your avatar, and made the UV to properly apply the meshes (without taking into account the subdivisions) on a normal texture, duplicate it.

You will therefore have in your blender two identical avatars based on the same UV deployment.

Leave the 1st avatar without the subdivision (therefore low definition version, ugly, but effective), It will be this avatar that will be exported to the other applications.

On the other hand apply the subdivision to the second (without hesitating to upgrade to level 2 or 3 depending on the power of the machine).

The second avatar will present a nice curve. And you will transfer these beautiful curves to the normal texture of the other avatar! To do this you will use baking!

Here are the keywords for youtube: blender baking normal hd

Here is a link to a pretty well done video (not mine!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r-cGjVKvGw&t=654s

Of course, this same trick applies when you want to achieve more precise reliefs such as the visible veins on your avatar. Never do it with the meshs, but always with the normal map ;)

Have fun :)

Cordially,

Anthrius