Turn your high-poly mesh into a GAME-READY asset! 

TLDW: remove half the edges.

As an aspiring game environment artist. This was so damn helpful. It's hard to find these type of tutorials that aren't behind a paywall.

Quick tip @4:24 To select any kind of patterns of edges, for example every two, or every three edges, or any other pattern, just select two edges matching that pattern, and then just press, ctrl+shift+'+' on your numpad

Nice tutorial, I work in the game industry, as a mostly hard surface artist. This method is good if your focus is on high poly models using your boxcutter and Hard ops style workflow... I mostly find it better to work my models up rather than back. So, I would model my low poly, until happy with the structure and polycounts etc, Then duplicate the low poly model to make the high poly, and continue working it up. Either way, very nice workflow Josh, Im sure it will help alot of people, you've definitely helped me while learning blender.

It would be really helpful if you could make a real-time video where you make a game-ready asset from A to Z. Going in-deep with UV mapping, texel density, maybe texture atlases, in-engine tweakings and all the things we rarely see. Like your videos by the way, they're pretty useful.

Excellent video on this topic! I would like to point out something for people who will bake normal maps using flat shading in the whole model. When baking with flat shading all of your normals are gonna be perpendicular to their respective faces and since that's the direction that rays are gonna follow when baking the normal map, you are going to create 'gaps' at the edges without rays being traced onto them, therefore you are gonna lose details on the edges and get seams on your normal map as each face will try to bake onto the hard line. The solution to this is to mark as UV seams ALL of your sharp edges, with the disadvantage of using many more UV islands. A better approach is to use smooth shading so as not to have to mark so many edges as UV seams, however using smooth shading will give you 'averaged normals'', not perendicular ones and that's going to create skewing on your normal bakes. To prevent this skewing effect you can add support edges, add bevels + weighted normals or manually cut geometry where needed in order to keep their normals perpendicular to the faces and avoid any skewing. This is VERY important in 'hard surface' bakes. Don't worry about the bad shading in your low poly since the normal map will make the low poly mimic the perfect shading of your high poly independently of its own shading. Remember to always triangulate your model before exporting it since Blender has the triangulation into consideration and it bakes the normal map specifically for that triangulation. If you export your model to, for example, Unreal Engine without previous triangulation, Unreal will do its own and if it differs from Blender's triangulation it will create the so called 'X-shape' errors in your normal maps when applied, specially at low resolutions. Thank you for your videos Josh, greetings from Spain ;)

If you'd like to select every 2nd, or 3rd, or any pattern, select 2 points, and press ctrl+shift+ '+' on the numpad. It's a smart select, works really well. Detects patterns from 2 already selected verts, edges or faces.

this is EXACTLY what i was waiting for

Thanks for the tutorial. I'm a bit disappointed that you baked in Substance but I'll look for a similar video where Blender is used.

14:54 But smooth, beveled cube has, in teory, 24 vertexes in Unreal as well as flat, un-beveled flat-shaded simple cube. Only smooth un-beveled has 8 (should-it has 14 though) As far as I know that is because engine counts hard edge as double vertexes. UV seams does that too but not on top of it. So after UV unwrap, beveled cube still has more vertexes, but not that much more (36 if nicely unwrapped, 26 really messy unwrap, compare to 24 of flat shaded cube). Unwraped beveled cube from Blender to Unreal somehow import as 50 vertexes-probably because the default unwrap. If you do not have much or any seams, there is almost no reason not to bevel. For some reason, Bevel option "Harden normals" unfortunately multiply vertexes too, in my experience at least, so Weighten normals seems to be better way for low poly.

the shape edge is because there is not enough padding in your UV island if you add more padding it should not show up. hope this helps someone wanting to do more bakes (also for hard surface baking marmoset toolbag has a lot better tools to make bakes look a lot cleaner )

I: watched half of an hour hoping to see how to bake LP in blender Author: ok, lets bake in substance...

Hey Josh, thanks for this video, it was great. Maybe you could do a follow-up where you have an asset made up of a few objects, and/or a few materials? I have been struggling to build assets like this, then use SimpleBake to atlas them together, it's not very well described out there. Even further, adding decal machine on top and trying to atlas the decals and texture them is currently really tough going.. seems like most of the hard surface tutorials completely ignore the steps in getting to a game engine.

At 6:25 ctrl+alt click should select all the edges

Nice video. Just to point out, for hard surfaces, I mostly turn off "average normals" in the substance bake. That will get rid most of the blurry edges especially on panel indents. Try average normals on and off to see which gives the best result

So the Geo gets triangulated on export? I just feel like you should take care of N-Gons yourself instead of just triangulate them ... might also help with those janky UVs.

honestly 2.3k is really good for current gen and PC, I guess depends on the fidelity you are going for

these edges are too sharp for a game bake, and at this thickness the extra bevel on the bake is overkill, that would be great if you don't want to bake or skip the highpoly The sharp line will not be seen from even a short distance. If you go face weighting like this then the normal map is basically redundant, like this you are getting the vertex count of a face weighted model with the effort of a full bake for virtually no benefit (well outside of getting the the textures for texturing)

Modelling is one thing but UV perfecting is it's own beast. Project from view, project cube, project cylinder etc., can work very well for hard surface when selecting specific faces. If your normals are all good and you think about where to hide seams, things can look amazing once you get it into Substance Painter or other texturing methods. Great video, once again gives me confidence that I'm on the right path.

11:33 can u please tell, how did you do this symmetry ?

Do you mind using screencast keys? And pls.

Hey Josh, great video, but I have a question, what symmetrization tool are you using. It doesn't look like standard blender interactive mirror or something like this

How did u get a color gradient on edges of selected object? Front edges are green , then yellow and back edges are orange.

Last time I messed around with 3d modelling was around 2002 and now I am looking up tutorials to get back into it again. Hearing you call out the number of polys for the "low poly count" model made me go "wha...." How times have changed since back then that would be a super high res model.

Hi, great video and tutorial. Just have a quick question, how to you access that menu on screen for symetry when you can click on X,Y,Z? When I select my mesh, then go into Mesh>Symetrize I dont get that at all, the only thing I get is a small menu to choose from -X to X for example, which result is breaking and deleting faces from my mesh. Anyone has an answer, would appritate it a lot! Thanks :)

Honestly this is a bad practice. The best way is to model without using those add-ons.

At this point it would be easier and faster to just remake the asset using better topology.

Is this still relevant with Unreal Engine 5 and Nanite?

Ngons and boolean operation are usually banned for low polygon triangulated workflow , retopology is essential if you want to make your game able to work on tablet and smartphone device , using repeat and symetrise asset and texture are something to master the less polygon and texel resolution you use the faster and more object you can have , now on high end graphic card and game console it's became more permissive, but you need to keep as low as possible and bake high detail on texture to perform well especialy for high frame rate gaming.

isn't there any better, faster and more automatic approach to get the low-poly mesh? Especially when using Plasticity, and you need a low-poly mobiel game asset. Curios, if there are no better options today. Thx Josh, keep rocking and happy new year, cheers

Thx. Now, what I really like to know is 1.: If you use the one segment bevel, you don't unwrap it again? Cause it causes nerves to deal with tris or unclean quads from the bevel mod. doing UV`s. And I ask myself do you avoid triangles then? And 2nd: Do you need sharp marked edges for the bake? I have contradictory informations about that like some say wherever a hard seam is you need a sharp edge. And some say: always deactivate "average normals" in SP. Is there an easy way out? Thx man :)

It's sad to see so many questions and not one answer. People don't get it...nobody cares. I bet this video was only made for the money...someone paid and it was made into a little tutorial video for the client. Nothing in this world is free, pay Josh and he will take the time to answer you. I have questions too, lots of questions, but I don't mind playing dumb.

Is there not an automatic converter tool to bring a high polygon 3d Modell to an easier 3d model without to much lose from details? Maybe converts rounds in vetorgrafics, make the mashes bigger in flat big areals, kompress stuff. Offcourse you lose the individual flexibility after this step but you do design all with high poly and than converting for Unity oder other gameengine and only place it at the map (only make bigger the hole objekt but dont manipulate the details). Is there not a automatic way to convert this high polygon blender Objekt in a easier 3D obpekt without bisg optical loses? (Eg. if I make a sphere in Unity its an very easy objekt, very smal and quick to load)

I dont understand how you "just go ahead and run a symmetry". It seems super useful and quick without adding any modifiers or anything, you just hit a hotkey, and select your axis. I've searched for hours and havent seen anything else that works like this Edit: Ohhhhhh I see now. Part of Box Cutter or Hard Ops. Looking at those now. They do seem super useful.

Thanks for the tutorial, by the way your patron paged says it’s moved and comes up with a not found. Also are you having any sales on your courses? Sorry to ask that but just curious, thanks

There is a better way to bake the bevel in so that you don't see the edge, there is actually a shader node for bevel and you turn the samples up to 16...

Thanx a lot for the video! Can You please help me to understand one thing... there is a widely accepted view about ngons in models for games, that ngons is evil and so on. In this example as I understand a lot of faces are ngons, why is it ok in this case? Thank You

This is nice but incomplete. You just made the low poly version of geometry (of one part of the model) and baked height information onto it. What about other maps? Albedo, Reflection, Glossiness, Metallic... This is far from finished. Is there a way to use the same maps from already finished high poly model? Since you unwrapped the model during the process, it is not possible to use original maps. Is there a way to keep the original UVs? Or everything has to be done manually in substance after low poly geometry is made and unwrapped again?

I'm sure mine is a noob question, but why did you keep the faces where the barrels go? Wouldn't it be better to have a hole there?

hi, why didnt you triangulated the low poly mesh before exporting to substance? im asking cus you said to always triangulate mesh to game assets

Man i was thinking ok i will press one button and than the magic will happend, but the decimate modifier still sucks i guess xD...I must also say i'm so glad that there isn't an automated tool, because working on the 3d model is just so relaxing.

Congratulations on a great video! 🙁 I know where you can get more than 167 free spins.Best choice.Thanks for the content. Great video! Its fun to watch. Good job.

You can select every other edge in the bevel using ctrl+numpad +. Select 1st and 3rd edges and press ctrl-numpad+ multiple times, it will select 5th, 7th, 9th edge... . Especially useful for decimating cylinders - select 1st and 3rd edges and just hold ctrl-numpad+ until it loops Btw isn't it quite dangerous to dissolve first or last edge of bevel? Imagine a bevel on 90° corner. By dissolving last-bottom edge of bevel you will lift up a bottom face so corner won't be 90° anymore

6:12 an easier way to select all the edges along a side is to press ctrl + alt + shift while clicking the edge. This works fine even if for some reason the edges are different lengths and keeps you from accidentally selecting unrelated edges in your topology that happen to be the same length.

Think you just taught me more in 30mins than my university has taught me in 3 months...... Thank you :3

it is wrong to have a grid with 5 or more corners

Substance painter is good, blender baking shit josh. Finally Ryuu helped me to the solve the problem.

leaving another comment cause my guy, you are a life saver Ive been looking for cool tricks like this for ages :) Subbed ofc excited for more

Thanks a lot Josh - your tutorials are level headed and comprehensive. Very grateful!

Pretty good tutorial. The way you're beveling at the end is very wrong however! Youre wasting precious verts by doing it this way... The correct and industry standard way to go over this is to shade your lowpoly smooth. you can do this by putting a weighted normal on your object without turning on "keep sharps" It will look like dogfood when you export, but once you bake it out in substance, you will have the same, perfect bevels, without having to bevel your final output!

I'd only do a 1seg bevel on the 6 primary edges of the main "cube" of this object. It's reasonable to assume the camera may get close to those in basic use. They are also the edges that get worn for a real object. If someone kneels down to inspect the bevel of one of the cutouts and sees a hidden sharp edge, whatever. Beveling all those curves and flourishes just wastes polys imho. I'd also try deleting the entire top circles and baking those in. Once the barrels are "installed", you might not see much difference. They are right "in your face", though, so maybe not.

Very cool tutorial, interesting I just find you now. I wanted to ask about nGons and then you started talk about it.. amazing timing..

i always get visible seams in every baking engine.. its becase the engine do fliping of tangents in the part where seam is. There is no way to fix it. Only depends on what tangent space certan soft use to render it. Than it can be better. But the tangent space has to match baking an rendering engine. So basicaly the bevel is better in every situation if you wana have clean edges.

I have a question, should i join objects ( ctrl + J ) before or after applying modifiers?

the poly count numbers you are giving to us are all wrong because its not triangulated... your unwrapping just shows us that its not okay to reduce the model count like that, its horrible

28:50 - You can also use a fully smooth shaded low poly object to get rid of that sharp edge on the bevel without the need to add a 1 step bevel. However, that will mess up some other normals, for instance, those holes you have on the corners would not look very straight down if looking from the top, they would be good looking only if the camera is facing on the face of this smoother normal of the face. That is a solution for some of the cases. It works very well for very simple objects.

I cannot wrap my head around it... How is it okay to have so many Ngons? It should be quads, or I misunderstand something? Thank you in advance for the reply!

Or use nanite and add a zoom feature to your game😅

You look different from your thumbnail. I believe they call it, cat phishing.

You could save a few clicks with "checker deselect" under the Selection menu when dealing with those bevels.

One tip for baking in Substance from Blender, is to allways have the lowpoly be smooth shaded this way the Bake comes out alot cleaner and the shading of the low is going to be replaced with the shading of the high so it will look fine either way, try it I have found waaay better baking results with smooth shaded Geo when coming from Blender

About duplicating the name from object to mesh: Most software only have one name for the same object, but Blender has two names. When exporting, if the name of the object and the object data is exactly the same, it will get just that name; but if the object's name and mesh's name are different, they will be added, like "Amazing_Model_Cube.001". There is usually no problem with that, except that if you bake maps in Substance using the match names option... the names will not match ;P And that's why it's important. I remember making a little script when I used to work a lot with Substance to just run the script and automatically apply all the objects' names to their meshes before export :)

I can't give more than 1 thumbs up for this video... thanks a lot for this vid Josh!

hey i make hard surface models too! now as u know we have multiple pieces that make up an entire Hardsurface model! how do i go about baking Normals for them? individually or i should uv unwrap them then join em all together? how would you go about it please help im breaking my head here!

where can I download this example 3d to practice myself. thanks great video

Can you show how you UV Unwrap 1 segment bevel'ed mesh???

Hi Josh, great video! I'm just curious what addon do you use for symmetry?

how do i know how many poly is ok for a game depending on the asset ? lets say a weapon

Can someone point me to the video that he bakes in Blender cause I cant afford Substance Painter?

I am guessing this would be harder to do with organic mesh. Hardsurface seems s traightforward.

This video is 1 year old but I forgot, how did you merge that vertice that you slided along the edge on legs?

The biggest thing i learned in videos is people dont apply modifiers, they just keep it and applies if necessary. So they are always able to change the object if they dont like it.. In my case, i always apply modifiers, otherwhise i just cant move on...

I would like to know if you really use this workflow in a daily basis. What you do if you figure out you need to make changes to your model later? Do you need to repeat all the process of simplifying the model again?

Very nice, and aubstance make simple and better bake normal maps.......in blender you have, lot off steps and bake somtime dont be soo good..., very good video, i love more video for game asset, only that asset have value and this model can sell, i say that once again....great video keep going and good luck.......

don't forget checker deselect is a feature now lol idk when it was added but i'm grateful.

nice solution for a perfect flat surface but...try same on curved model -.-

do you have any dvideos or tips on retopology a female body in blender 2.79

How about only manually bevel part of the asset? Imagine putting it in the game, lots of assets are only showing at certain angle, for example a chest you look at it in the front to open it, this way can save a lot of geo.

I use limited dissolve and or decimate and then just add loop cuts etc where its needed where the texture is being affected by bad top. As long as the mesh is holding enough form so to not affect the texture. Im happy. great vid btw.

I wonder if Checker Select and Symmetry are available in 3ds Max? Probably on the modelling ribbon bar,

u can use "select next element" function (shift+ctrl+numpad+\- default. Better change to ctrl+middlewheel up\down)

The slowest tutorial of all time. You keep repeating yourself so many times.

6:25 whaaaaat that's an awesome shortcut that I wish I knew way sooner!

Finally found a video explaining this process. Really great stuff, thank you!

Josh, how do you select the complete edges with just one click? Not the single ones but the ones with several edges

I watched for 22 minutes before you're like "now we're gonna go over to substance" and i'm like "fuck, that's 22 minutes wasted, i'm here for the Blender with no intentions of spending money on substance"

this was super helpful and made me understand more of 3d.. as a student x) ! awesome video

"...bevel bakes, it's a normal thing." I see what you did there and I love it

Correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like for the mesh simplicity sake one segment bevel needs to be added manually to some dominant edges that are clearly in front of players eyes. There is no point in beveling details that are hard to see or those edges on some small details. Your model is a good example of the complex structure where one segment bevel is not necessary inside the model where players can't really see if there is a lovely beveled edges inside the model while as a developer you will be able to create more optimized and less heavy mesh saving on polycount yet keep detailed and more sexy shape where you exactly need it.

yea no i cant see the poly count on my own cos of the fucking promo banner

What if you want to use a displacement map for example? Would you have to retopo the whole thing to have square-shaped quads rather than ngons/triangles? What would be the workflow if one wants to sculpt organic scratches at the surface also? Wouldn't a quad topo be better? or instead keep it this way and sculpt with dyntopo and bake these scratches?

what shortcut does he use to symmetrise like that? please help

What do you do after you bake it and texture it?

It seems that whenever I search a simple but accurate and complete explanation of 3D modeling I always land on your videos. So thank you! I am now trying to create maps for VR , specifically modding BoneLab on Oculus. This is fairly new so there are not many (if any) complete videos that show how to model in Blender and take to Unity . Do you have any videos that would address this?

What shortcut did you press in order to get the results at 5:30 & 6:50?

My blender crashes when i use textures made from substance painter. Even if they are in low res. My pc runs on rtx 2060.

You can get rid of some of the normal issue especially the one on the top if you disable "average normal" in substance. At least that is the source of baking issues for most of my bakes in the past.

Did you Ever triangulated your topology ?

Bro, are you using Blender Vanilla version?

man you covered all the questions around the topic i really apreacaite that thanks a lot that was really helpful