Newbie question
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Hi everyone, here is another stupid one(or maybe not?)After being discouraged by some other 3D applications I have tried SketchUp, and I get hooked. I´m still discovering possibilities of this wonderful piece of software, but so far I am doing well. I am mostly interested in modeling for games, and in doing so I try to keep the polygon count as low as possible. However, when it comes to faces and normals, there are a few things that I don´t fully understand yet. Is it really necessary to model everything inside a model in 3D? What I mean is, if we have a thin sheet metal piece, i.e a car fender or something like that, can it be exported as such, or do I have to create a "thickness"? ( by pushing/pulling it to let´s say, 0.3 cm )
Thanks in advance! -
Thats a really good question I would like to know the answer as well.
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Id guess it depends on your game engine of choice more than anything. If your game engine supports single face geometry you shouldnt have any problems. To be honest id be surprised if there were many game enginges that DIDNT support it.
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Thanks for your reply.
I was just curious, because I would really like to integrate my work with some other applications, especially those which support native sketchup files import. But making models just for games is not my only interest.
I found some info about tweaking export options in SketchUp Pro or converting via Deep Exploration, but they don´t come free.
What confuses me is actually the managing of very thin surfaces within SketchUp itself, like ship sails, flags, etc. Applying different materials to front and back faces produces odd results when rendered in Kerkythea.
I guess that little extruding won´t hurt. Although it does increase the number of faces, it could make it a bit more manageable. -
Your likely to get odd results in a renderer as for the most part they try to imitate reality and as such don't expect to get infinitely thin things. As you said it's best to add thickness when you want to render your models in kerkythea.
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And it works.Thanks again.
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Now as for Kerkythea (when we are at it); it used NOT to support materials applied on back faces (i.e. with a single plane in case of a ship sail for instance or even with thin glass material) but for a good while it (more exactly the su2kt exporter) has been supporting it so you shouldn't bother with giving thickness to a sail at all.
Just make sure that the material you apply on the back face is exactly the mirror of that applied to the front face. Generally SU takes care of this however.
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Thanks for the advice. After all, it would surely look better that way ( but that is only my opinion ). Extruding such curved surfaces is a bit tricky to me anyway.
Cheers!
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