2017-03-04 (Test tubes 001)

RMH Test tubes 001 by rmh3d on Sketchfab

Unity Asset Store Link ($2)

Latest asset to be accepted by Unity is the test tubes + wooden stand.

Yes, another break-time doodle …

Now, I like Sketchfab. Once upon a time, in the early days of selling models on the Unity Asset Store, I tinkered with Sketchfab, but it rarely displayed my models correctly; things flickered and there were strange visual distortions. But, Unity displayed them fine; so did Blender, and lots of other 3D packages I used. So … I decided there was something wrong with Sketchfab’s engine, and called it quits (it’s been nearly a year since I last visited the site); if it couldn’t display a simple model correctly, then what was the point? The research I did into the issue pointed me at some strange dark magic within Sketchfab’s codebase, and the devs didn’t seem to know what had happened, though they gave suggestions for anyone using Maya / Max. I mostly use Blender to model, and what they suggested I couldn’t translate across.

Woke up a few days ago, and thought: what if Sketchfab cannot correctly display N-gons? In my early modelling days, I thought N-gons were a silver bullet; suddenly, you could model anything in anyway you saw fit; it was like magic, and I used this magic a lot. But, no: N-gons are nothing but a tool, and should never be left in a production model. Most engines will triangulate them (which is why they displayed fine in Unity / plus, I’m mostly a hard-surface modeller, so the auto-triangulation would never be apparent, as animations rarely deform the model’s surface).

I tested this by importing a chunk of my newer, N-gon free models into Sketchfab, and despite their significant increase in complexity to my earlier stuff, every single model looked moreorless identical to what I saw in Unity. Problem solved: Sketchfab doesn’t auto-triangulate models, and cannot correctly display N-gons (or, something along those lines).

Would have been nice if the Sketchfab engine pointed this out — dude, N-gons aren’t supported. I wouldn’t have understood what it was on about, but that would have prompted research into the matter.

So, to sum up: Sketchfab is pretty damned awesome (now I understand its limitations).

2017-02-26 (RMH Vial 002)

Okay, I admit it — I totally forgot this blog existed (too busy sketching, assembling 3D models, texturing, and pondering over what to model next). Probably should be a New Year’s resolution (somewhat late, granted): Keep the blog updated! (and, remember the blog exists …)

RMH Vial 002 Group by rmh3d on Sketchfab

RMH Vial 002 by rmh3d on Sketchfab

It did pose a mild topology puzzle, going from a square to a circle in a seamless way …

The latest asset of mine to be accepted by Unity: RMH Vial 002. It’s just a simple vial thingy, seen a million times in various RPG-type games; but, like the RMH Vial 001 asset, the liquid inside is scaleable via its Z-axis, and because it doesn’t have a texture map, you can use Unity’s Standard Shader to customise it however you like.

It comes with 3 texture map variants (3 glass patterns with 3 cork textures, or just simple glass with 3 cork textures, all are prefab’ed).

The main thing here (for me, anyway) was, it was this point that I realised presentation is very, very, very important. Yes, it’s the part I have always disliked (despite having an art/photography background); but, if you spend a little time (okay, a LOT of time) correctly lighting / composing your assets for your Key Images / screenshots / videos, then everything looks a whole lot nicer, and it’s not such a stretch of the imagination to think that things that look nice, will sell better.

So, ended up with:

Fairy dull, but the upper right vial light is nice, and the corks have cork-looking textures this time

With a cute icon of:

And, a YouTube video to cap it off:

So … I’m not saying: MY GOD, LOOK AT THESE AMAZING SCREENSHOTS!!! OMG!!! But, I’m starting to get the hang of making things look pretty.

And, thanks Alex at Unity for pointing me to the revised image submission guidelines (link / section 2.4): this really made my workflow faster and provided very specific info on what the Asset Store Team are expecting from publishers.