How to reduce vertex count of the leaves when exporting the model?

Collaborations

Hi Chunck, 

Is there a way to reduce vertex count of the leaves when exporting the model? For the tree and dirt I can do normal baking to a low res mesh but for those leaves I have to convert particles into mesh,  which means currently on my Bonsai Tree there are 1000 pine needle objects with 605 verts each.  I can't add more particles since it will take too long for Sketchfab to process (this one took about more than 5mins).

Thank you! 

Update: Just thought if I can make a plane and show texture on its both sides, it could be good alternative to my cylinder based leaves. Any suggestions on how to achieve that?

  • Chunck Trafagander(chunck) replied

    Hey Benjamin! Beat me to it, haha. :D

    For your suggestion, that would ultimately fall on whatever Sketchfab allows, however it would likely be totally doable. I'm not entirely sure how they do transparency, (might be worth a look at their documentation!). You would create a UV Map for your pine needle plane so all of your planes use the same texture, likely with a transparent background, which Sketchfab would use in its engine. From there, I believe they allow you to check on "double sided" for your shader, which would allow you to see both sides of the leaves.

    Really, besides the UV unwrapping, the rest would likely be done in an image editor and Sketchfab itself, but I hope that helps give you some guidance! 

    -Chunck :)

  • Benjamin Lee(relidin) replied

    Thank you for the suggestion! I just want to lower the vertex count so it can be used in a game engine. The pine needles have been UV unwrapped at current stage and they do share same UV coordinates.  Will try out transparency and double sided shader as you suggested. Need to check how to make a transparency effect for PBR material.


  • Benjamin Lee(relidin) replied

    6 hours......DONE. Here's the result, found:

    1. If I create a plane in Blender, its texture shows on both sides, so I guess no need to for double sided shader, for now.

    2. I made a 4 plane leaf combined with opacity map. It works in Cycles, Eevee (Alpha Blend) and Sketchfab.

    Sorry, I'm too tired to type now, This stupid video explains everything.


      


  • mandietaber replied

    Thank you for the suggestion!