Making hard surface models for games

bOBaN · April 21, 2022, 1:43am

Recently I partner up with author’s of popular mods for Empyrion Galactic Survival (EGS) called Reforged Eden. I used the skills that I learnt in courses (and the ones I obtained on my own) and started making new and replacement models for the game/mod. Here are some showcase of what I’ve been working on.

Mobile food processor

The item functions as a cooking station that can be placed on small and hover vessels. There was no such item in game. The closest one is the food processor one can place in bases and capital vessels. It looks like that:

I created one that looks as follows in Blender:

And a few other angles

and in game:

I was just getting a handle on how to go from Blender to EGS, so it’s not perfect, but it fits the game quite nicely.

Constructors

Next I worked on large and advanced constructors. Those are machines that are used for crafting other blocks. They differ by what crafting recopies they allow to build. You could think about them as futuristic 3d printer / universal fabricator kind of device. The in-game models for those aren’t great:

I made this versions for large constructor (render in substance):

And this version of advanced one (in game):

Next project was small constructor. Original one:

My replacement model (rendered in IRay):

And a few renders of it from other angles

And after lot of fiddling we managed to add some function in EGS, like damage states and particles effects:

Anvil Core

I’m also engaged in one of the EGS online communities (Anvil). I’ve made a custom model of a “CPU Core” for this community

And in game version (note, the hamster model was open source one found by other community members, which they used for quite a bit - I just lower it’s poly count and added eye-piece):

Armor locker

This was my last item I made. The function of the item is to store your armor and armor boosters and also allows you to equip the armor. The original like that:

This one was quite challenging, as I also needed to re-model some armor parts in game to put it on the shelves and keep it low poly (the end result model has ~4k triangles). The reference for a helmet:

My results render in Blender:

And in-game view:

Why?

Why am I showing this? First, I hope it will serve as an inspiration for you. Second is to encourage you to try similar approach. Find a (modable) game you like and make some models for it. Ideally - partner up with someone who already makes a mod for this game and needs help of a 3d artist. You will learn a ton that way (I am certainly learning a ton). You will need to think about all the things that are needed for modelling game assets (like polygon counts, file sizes, adapting style to so that the models fit in existing game and lore). You will get great feedback - not from fellow students (which is great), but also from gamers. Last but not least… it brings a great joy to see that your work is actually used in game!

NP5 · April 21, 2022, 10:42am

Very nice items and a fun thing to get involved in.

Difficult to find a game that fits those parameters? Guess I just don’t play games much any more, well at all. They are all the same after a while, actually only really the models, graphics that change.

bOBaN · April 21, 2022, 11:21am

Thanks! And yes, it’s quite a lot of fun

I don’t think it’s difficult. Many games actually do support modding (official or unofficial). I think ideal situation would be to already play a game and check if it has mod support - ideal because you as a player already should have a good feeling of the game, what’s missing, what can be improved, etc. Otherwise one could check on sites like https://nexusmods.com or https://www.moddb.com/ or on steam workshop.

StaceyPecan · April 21, 2022, 2:18pm

Brooo that’s awesome and quite inspiring! I know that the time to get to the same point differs for different people but… How long have you been doing 3D? I am an aspiring gamedev and I am thinking if I should make my game 2D or 3D. I know that 3D would be harder because I basically started only a month ago and still have TONS to learn:).

bOBaN · April 21, 2022, 3:05pm

Thanks!

My first blender post here is from Nov’19. So I started learning at around that time. On/off due to RL and doing other courses as well (unity and unreal related ones, also from different instructors).

I don’t think it’s huge difference in difficulty. I would think do what is keeping you more interested and motivated. I would say the more important thing for first game(s) is to keep the scope small. Rick & Tim and others from constantly reminds about that in their communication with students. But let me give you my example. I made a pong in unreal… it was supposed to be a weekend-long project. It took a month IIRC. And I have a backlog of features for additional 3 months of dev time.

But learning all of this is fun So keep going and have fun

Avocado · April 21, 2022, 9:05pm

I was scrolling through latest and recognized these thumbnails! Nice!

Cathy_N · April 25, 2022, 1:30pm

That’s so insanely good! I feel like I could never come up with anything like that. I have no imagination when it comes to sci-fi themed hard surface objects or mechanical objects in general…

When I finish the courses I purchased I really want to try making mods for certain games. The problem for me is that I wouldn’t even know where to find the person who could do the coding as my coding skills are close to non-existent. I play a lot but I am never involved in any communities so I feel like I will have to learn to do the whole process myself. I have experience importing props into games but I never did anything that would have any sort of physical use within the game.

Anyway, that’s so inspiring! If you have any spare time and the desire to - could you share your workflow in a form of a tutorial? If you make a new model, could you use it as an example to show what steps you take to import it into the game and what things to look out for (geometry, polycount, scale, coding etc)? I understand that’s a lot to ask, so no pressure if you can’t be bothered with that!

bOBaN · April 25, 2022, 2:50pm

Thank you! You have sculpting prowess though But overall, I think those skills can be learnt… it just a matter of effort put into it. aaand if it bring you joy!

It really depends on the game. If you want to make mods independently - some knowledge technical or coding would be required - but it also depends on a game. There are some games like the one Bethesda did (eg., Skyrim), where they give you whole toolkit (basically an engine) that you can use to add stuff to the game (and models with very little coding). Some games make it hard (basically someone must hack the game to allow for such things).

If you don’t want to get involved in community - yes, you would need to do huge amount of work. But you can get involved. Or do similar things to me - just write a message to existing mod author if he would like some help with some 3d models.

Obviously I’m not telling you not to learn coding :D. Its useful skill to have! And it’s fun (for me at least ). But if your goal is to just see your models in a game, I would explore other, more direct options

That’s good idea. Though making video tutorial would take me huge amount of time probably (as I never did it before).

now that I think about it… it would be quite intermediate or advanced tutorial. Not only because of the process along, but mostly because how I optimized the workflow for my convenience. E.g., I use a few paid add ons (hardops, boxcutter, uvpackmaster3), couple of free ones (like uv squares) and not only Bleder, but also Substance Painter. Or it would be whole course…

maybe I find a way to condense the knowledge to something manageable…

But overall, feel free to ask any specific question you might have about the whole process or anything really.

For the subjects you mentioned I can do quickly ‘tl;dr’ version.

I ask Vermillion (one of the mod author) what he needs. He provides description and concept.
I figure out how to model this thing (which is always a puzzle :D). And I gather as many references as I can for similar things.
I model high poly.
I reduce the poly count (not doing retopo - just remove modifiers and reduce geometry - for hard surface things it’s possible to get low poly without retopologizing).
I bring it up to substance for painting. When done I export textures.

And that’s what required. First model I made, I just delivered fbx + textures.

And of course I frequently ask for feedback (on each stage, multiple times).

Now I add two more steps

bring it to unity (EGS devs provided a project for modders, ) set it up there and export.
Set it up for placing in game (basically edit one xml file) to check how it works there.

This is basically because I want to check it in game asap . Plus I figured out that if I export unitypackage than Vermillion will have easier time including it in the mod. Also as I know a bit of unity I managed to figure out some additional features (with help of other modders), that are not supported officially by devs (like damage states, particles, animations, custom shaders).

Of course, it varies a bit from item to item as I learn new things specific to the game. Like for the “Anvil Core” I integrated a custom shader for the forcefield for the first time.

As for things to look out for that you mentioned:

geometry: nothing really, just make correct model. Hard surface models don’t even need to have great topology (and I sacrifice topology for lower poly count all the time).
polycount: I try to guess the polycount of item I’m replacing and stick to that. And I go as low as I can without sacrificing quality too much. In general I try to get below 5k triangles, but sometimes I can get much lower like <1k for food processor.
scale: basically modelling to human scale. I put UE mannequin in the scene (as I have addon that just spawns it in Blender) and I keep a few cubes on top of each other (1m, 0.5m, 0.25m)
coding: no coding required in this case

And some other things to look out for:

shading issues. I use shiny matcap and carefully inspect both high and low poly object before bringing them to substance. It’s very easy to have shading issues in a workflow that don’t care too much about topology
texel density. For size and performance reason it’s best to use as small texture size as possible. I paint it in 4k… but than mod uses 1k or 2k. Parts of the uvs that need to have more details (like a keypad) should have more pixels in uv space
uv unwrapping is very important. Sometimes it looks good in Blender and in Substance, but unity interprets it a bit differently. That’s esp. for none-flat UV surfaces (i.e., if you have a pipe/cylinder flatten by default in Blender it has non-square uv unwrap. You need to fix it… I use free addon for that called uv squares)
very carefully inspect baked normal map. Some very tiny issues that are not visible in Blender or substance are blown out and very visible in unity.
Unity is strange when it comes to PBR. Most of the time I have to lower metallic value to something like 0.7 for metals. This is totally incorrect in PBR terms (something is or isn’t a metal, with very few exceptions in RL)… but it’s how unity works…

Hope that helps and if you have any more questions - ask

Edit: now I see how much text is for ‘tl;dr’ version… so the ‘tutorial’ would be probably something like 50h of videos

Cathy_N · April 25, 2022, 3:45pm

Thanks a lot! I really appreciate that you took the time to respond in such detail! That’s pretty much what I meant by a “tutorial”! lol Realistically you’d need a whole dedicated YT channel to describe each step and technique so, yeah, it would probably take 50+h Something to think about in the future!

Yeah, I was thinking about Skyrim, Fallout or DAII just because the modding community is massive and all the tools are already provided by the developers ( well in Bethesda case). Ideally, I’d love to try making armour for a game like KC:D but as I said I had only made stationary props before so I have no idea how different the process is for such items.

been there, done that… I textured a wig, didn’t bake it, there were a lot of islands on top of each other, and then I couldn’t figure out what was causing texture distortion in the game for like 20 minutes. Oh and checking the normals was another thing that I had to learn the hard way as in that game mesh objects were one sided.

Anyway, I plan to learn Substance Painter and ZBrush, and refresh some basic coding knowledge before I delve into modding as I want to take time to learn to make quality game assets. So I’ll definitely come back with specific questions in the future! Thanks again, that was very helpful!

Sorry for all the edits. I was so overwhelmed with the abundance of new information that I forgot how to speak English! lol

bOBaN · April 30, 2022, 7:32pm

And now that season started (and existence of this model is no longer a secret) I’ve add another thing that I did for Anvil community: portable constructor model. Original model in game looks as follows:

Our (see below why not ‘my’) adaptation is:

Shots from different angles

This one was interesting as initial design was made by Zovya (also in Blender), but for different purpose: a logo for the community:

So I took the original model, made a low poly version of it and texture painted it.

And in game it looks as follows:

bOBaN · June 17, 2022, 8:17pm

So now I’m also back at this project. Doing another machine reimagined - Deconstructor.

This is how it looks in game now

There are 2 main issues with it. 1) It is technically bad model overall (if you look closely you will notice shading issues). 2) It doesn’t look like it serves it’s purpose (it’s more of ‘generic cool looking scify machine’ thing).

And this is current progress:

Images from different angles

It will take a while as this is big beast (bounding box of 4m x 4m x 4m)… and my primary monitor just died ( ) and I have to re-adjust my workflow to new setup…

ChrisSGCP · June 17, 2022, 8:24pm

All of it looks amazing.Love the Constructors and the Mobile food processor.
Armor looks soo cool!

ChrisSGCP · June 17, 2022, 8:30pm

I only started using blender two months ago.And I am studying coding along with blender.Looking through your works and models I am inspired beyond belief.Some day I wanna create something like this too!!You really know how to inspire someone!Don’t you?Thank you so much!

NP5 · June 17, 2022, 10:30pm

Certainly looks more like a potentially destructive cutting up machine. Perhaps some cutting guillotine blade or crushing hammer could be incorporated?

bOBaN · June 17, 2022, 10:44pm

Ah! Awesome! My goal was to inspire with those posts!

Ah yes, yes. Definitelly - I’m thinking about adding robotic arms (like those industrial ones) with various destructive appendages… like saw, laser, drill . Just need to do some research about those industrial robotic arms so that whatever I build will make at least some sense…

NP5 · June 17, 2022, 10:57pm

Robot arms might be over complicated, fussy. I saw it more like older machines. It has a structure as though it needs strength, to resist perhaps hydraulic force. If arms are doing destruction the frame has no need of the monumentality. But how about a big central cutting laser? Like a cut through anything bandsaw?

Zangk · June 17, 2022, 11:55pm

Impressive. There is quiet a bit of information between all of the different posts from users to you, @bOBaN, responding to them.

I am going to keep this page bookmarked for future reference.

bOBaN · June 18, 2022, 11:37pm

What do you have in mind? Do you have some images on how it would look like?

What I was thinking is 2 robotic arms on sides and one ‘hanging’ from a rod in the ‘roof’ part… but I’m all for going outside what I already did (I did robotic arms already for constructors, see above).

I’m glad you find this stuff useful. If you have any questions feel free to ask, will answer as best as I can…

I took the blockout model to the game… and it occurred that characters are tiny there! Like 145cm tall. I guess that was the way for devs do deal with a FOV issue - making character smaller. Needed to redo blockout in many ways. Here it is what I’m at currently:

And another meta-update. Copyright is an issue. Another author of a mod for Empyrion simply took my models and added them to his mod. Without obtaining license to use and redistribute them from me. That person is totally oblivious to copyright law and thinks that everything is for grabs if it is in free mod of a game. Took this matter with the devs. Hopefully, they can resolve it… if not, will have to issue DMCA takedown notice to steam . That part sucks of doing it… The lesson is: if you do models for mods, be prepared to make your models public domain (which I’m not doing) or for facing some legal issues…

NP5 · June 19, 2022, 12:20am

Something like that, static, so material is pushed through it to cut it up, or I suppose the beam could move in a tracked path inside your main frame, zig zag or figure of 8.

Presumably, your scale can just be resized once done to fit the game?

Hmm, these copyright rules are far too complex, it is not surprising people do not know about them. Especially in this enthusiast area, does it matter? It is not like a big company taking a model and selling the game for money, I assume mods are free?

bOBaN · June 19, 2022, 12:35am

Ah! Now I get it! That would require custom particles or shaders or both… don’t know if I can pull it off in a mod of this game though (it’s quite restricted on what modders can do).

ah, scale of everything - yes… but not relative scales. I modeled the first version to ‘standard’ human scale… and it looked like a kind playing with some big machine:

In theory I could scaled it down… but this is game about building stuff (among others) and devices should have specific volume to fit with other devices and block.

The mod is free, but the author that took my models do get money from players through patreon. So he effectively is getting money from my models.

Copyright is complex overall. But human decency isn’t. He could have simply asked and maybe I would agree to this (given proper credits). His mod was already removed from steam due to copyright infringement of others work (it was restored after he fixed the issues). Plus he was hostile when I pointed out on him that he doesn’t have license to use those models…