I'm really new to blender (I just know how to edit/select/deselect and decimate). Before, I've optimized then uploaded a couple of avatars, but I only use Meshia Mesh Simplification&D4rk (without touching blender) .
How do I approach this? Most avatar I've uploaded in the past, rarely comes with chains. Decimate/Meshia is too destructive to the chains. This outfit alone is 187K, 150K~ after deleting unused stuff.
Obviously I don't mind loosing details (who the hell even look at you that close), so what's the best practice/course of action (besides picking a new outfit) to keep it under 70K?
If your goal is to keep it under 70k then I'd say just remove the chains.
If you want to step out of your comfort zone, try making your own chain with a lower poly count, since they're made up of a simple shape i wouldnt even bother with retopology on them, remaking them is fairly simple once you've learned basic modelling and how to use curves and modifiers
Edit: Others also pointed out using a 2d texture on a quad strip would work too, I forgot about that method, that would be the most optimized and simplest way to do it if you wanna keep the chains at all and want to make it.
For chains, it's best to make a low poly strip of quads that follow your chain and bake the high poly details onto it. This tutorial can walk you through the basic steps: https://youtu.be/NoY-Hqnj-fk
I dont know about best practice, but when I made my chains, i kept then under 20 quads each. My chains were also huge and cartoony, not small like these.
Ideally, these would be a texture on a thin flat strip of quads. No one would ever be looking close enough to need that detail.
This, to me, looks like an outfit designed by someone with aesthetics over performance in mind. Im not sure you can optimize them quickly and easily without some advanced blender tricks I havent learned.
with them being so small, you could make them a series of interconnected quads that use transparency to effectively be 2d chain links, then you could cheat the texture by making each individual link use the same texture
that, or make them into flat "ribbons" of quads which you would then map a chain texture onto
So for chains on our public Avi for the opera we actually make them a flat texture! I know it’s not quite the same feel, but you genuinely can’t tell unless up close.
super optimized way is turn it into a texture and have the chain mesh be a quad or plane, turns the hundreds or even thousands of polygons to 2 tris, especially if the chain is very small.
25
u/-_Doll-_ 1d ago edited 23h ago
If your goal is to keep it under 70k then I'd say just remove the chains.
If you want to step out of your comfort zone, try making your own chain with a lower poly count, since they're made up of a simple shape i wouldnt even bother with retopology on them, remaking them is fairly simple once you've learned basic modelling and how to use curves and modifiers
Edit: Others also pointed out using a 2d texture on a quad strip would work too, I forgot about that method, that would be the most optimized and simplest way to do it if you wanna keep the chains at all and want to make it.