Blender Tutorial - Creating a Combat Knife Game Asset - Part 2 - Low Poly and UV Unwrapping

In the second part of this step-by-step game modeling series I'll walk you through taking our low poly knife model and UV unwrapping it in Blender. You'll learn how to specify how objects are unwrapped by manually adding seams to edges, how to modify and work with UVs, and how to look for UV stretching to make sure your textures will be applied without distortion.
Watch Part 1 here:
kzbin.info/www/bejne/gZSmiYBrr6iomZI
Watch Part 3 here:
kzbin.info/www/bejne/kKDLoKxrnsulaKs
This game development series is beginner friendly but you should have some basic knowledge of Blender before watching.
Stay tuned for more parts in this game modeling series!
Download the final blend file:
cgmasters.com/tutorials/knife_asset_part_2_final.zip
Download an add-on for UV unwrapping multiple objects at the same time with the click of a button:
github.com/ndee85/Multi-Object-UV-Editing
Check out cgmasters.com for more courses and tutorials.
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[@fleexie]

It's great to see a video were the UV Unwrapping is done like this instead of the fast method.

[@hummuschan6097]

this is the only video that helps me to understand what i needed

[@Nikola16789]

Using Blender 2.9, this tutorial is still relevant. 2.9 offers some shortcuts, for example you do not need to join objects to unwrap them together anymore, but it doesn't hurt. Yea, UI is different, so I wouldn't consider this a beginner friendly tutorial, but for anyone who invested more than 2 weeks into blender, it should work.

[@Ironpants57]

Pretty awesome! Quick tip! If you already unwrapped the objects before, you don't have to unwrap it again. Go into the UV/image editor and select all islands. Press CTRL+A (Average Islands Scale) and then do a quick and dirty pack using CTRL+P (Pack Islands). Adjust if needed.

[@blengine]

Ah great tip, especially for more complex models that would take time to unwrap again or have had their UVs edited. -chris

[@shadowsketch926]

even in 2.8 (the version of blender i am currently working with) this tutorial series is goddamn brilliant, thanks for making it, it really helps me understand the entire process for making game assets.

[@Dave_AI]

Fantastic tutorial, Chris. Quick tip: If you have multiple modifiers that you want to apply, instead of applying them individually, you can hit Alt+C >> Mesh from curve/Meta/Surf/Text.

[@blengine]

Thanks man, that's handy indeed! I didn't realize the convert menu worked with modifiers. -c

[@rbettsx]

That's weird, but handy!

[@orsouw6429]

it's cool if you really know what you're doing, but for beginners it's still best to apply 1 by 1 and to check your mesh after each modifier has been applied, so you can pinpoint what is f-ing it up

[@rbettsx]

Nicely done again. Short, sweet, and to the point.

[@A-D-S-P]

hi always good to learn blender will always surprise me thank you for your tutorial

[@limitlessinmind]

Very good explanation. Thank You very much

[@rishabhsahu2684]

your work is great i appreciate you

[@philmehrart]

Nice tutorial Chris, thanks. Looking forward to the next part!

[@rawtee8957]

Great Tutorial Can't wait until the next! Thanks again..

[@MrRationalThought]

Awesome tutorial, thanks so much for posting it! I've only done one of your other tutorials so far (Thor's Hammer Part 1) but I'll be doing more soon!

[@blengine]

Happy you're liking the tutorials! =) -chris

[@HARDstone3d]

So happy that 2.8 have multi-edit mode 🔥

[@blengine]

It sure is! :D Aidy.

[@HARDstone3d]

Of course with bugs))

[@blengine]

so many bugs! (and crashes) :D Aidy.

[@blengine]

In the meantime I also linked an add-on in the video description that actually works great for unwrapping multiple objects simultaneously. -chris

[@sams_3d_stuff]

Love the result on artstation man.

[@umair146]

Great tut....waiting for next tutorial...

[@noirwolfcreations8827]

this series going awesome..can't wait to bake the normals

[@orsouw6429]

then don't, best way to learn is to play around for a couple hours and do / figure it out yourself with the help of google. just make sure to backup lol this way you (hopefully? ) encounter errors, which then can with a google search, be fixed. this gaining you XP.

[@noirwolfcreations8827]

well i know how to bake normals (but i'm still trying to figure out the best way) :V i wrote that because i wanted to show him that i'm interested in the series and to learn more from him

[@blengine]

Yeah the next chapter will definitely help out in understanding the best ways to bake normals, especially since there's no software standard and normal maps can be interpreted differently by different software. I've been sorting all that out with help from Aidy, Martin, and google, so hopefully the next chapter turns out to be very insightful and useful for you. -chris

[@noirwolfcreations8827]

awesome man i used to work with Maya but i had to switch to blender so i'm still figuring things out for the software and your tutorials are helping greatly

[@rogermoore9742]

Great Job!!!!! Keep Them Coming

[@marioCazares]

Great series!

[@virginijasileikiene1989]

Thanks for nice tutorial.

[@ganapathym3664]

Thank you, Very Eager to watch the next video, but it would be very helpful if you teach us some tips and tricks in UV unwrap and give us better understanding about it

[@orsouw6429]

the best way to describe UV unwrapping is: take a box, now give it seams ( cuts) so that it can lay down flat on a piece of paper, with all sides (faces) facing up so you can paint on them here is an image of an uv-unwrapped box, i labbeled the faces so you can visualize the cube in your head. this is UV unwrapping essentially, just more complex with shapes such as knives. gyazo.com/ba6de639ac97efe450fbe63a6c01c261

[@blengine]

I'm sure we'll be doing more videos on UV unwrapping, but in the mean time hopefully this video from Aidy will help you: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mKPRknSCYraqnrc -chris

[@yelauer]

Thank you.

[@anttrails9554]

Hey i know you! You taught me to Blender @ Chris ;)

[@blengine]

Haha hope you're having fun with blender! Working on anything lately?

[@anttrails9554]

@@blengine Insect legs lol I am trying to make a Low poly Ant. :)

[@blengine]

@@anttrails9554 Haha, unexpected answer but I guess I should have known because of your name lol. Hope it comes out good!

[@anttrails9554]

@@blengine tyvm

[@TPolicarpo]

I love you bro

[@greyvirus444]

So, can we unwrap it any other way - quick way- and it's all good as long as it unwraps? + why do you rearrange the UV maps so tediously? Can't we just leave them as is? (I'm just trying to learn all the corners I shouldn't cut, as I like to half ass it if it works) xD

[@blengine]

The quality of the unwrap is important too. Its best to have your uvs the same shape as the faces of the knife. So if you chose sphere unwrap for example, the uvs will become distorted and this can affect texturing. The placement of seams is important too as this can affect the texturing process and also how textures fall on the surface between seams. For example if you choose to unwrap using lightmap pack(or whatever its called, I'm on my phone so can't check), then youre left with many many separate uv islands. This can lead to many visible seams in the texture, and could make texture painting complicated. But with just a couple of smart placed seams you get a quality unwrap that is easy to texture and will give you the best textuing results. -Chris

[@greyvirus444]

@@blengine I see! This is crucial step I should try to master. Thank you!

[@DiegoSilva-zm3ke]

To bake normals (selected to active) the low poly mesh must be inside or outside from high poly?

[@blengine]

I think ideally they should be as much in the same place as possible. But baking will cast in the face normals direction so if the low poly mesh is inside the high poly mesh then the low poly mesh will cast inside of itself and not see the high poly mesh. To work around this you can increase the "Extrusion" option under the "Selected to Active" panel in the Bake panel of the Render Properties. -Chris

[@TheSebledingue]

554/5000 Thank you very much for this series, sincerely. I use blender 2.79b, during Ctrl + J after unfolding the UVs, I still get a UV problem in the stretch. Do you know how to fix that? I specify that all the objects are unfolded on the same UV map, the one by default. I tried to apply the transforms with Ctrl + A in object mode and apply scale, rotation and even location. But nothing works .. Is this a bug in this version of blender? Also, should I pay attention to stretch in Area mode? You did not talk about it.

[@blengine]

Hey send the blend to me at [e-mail] and I'll check it out. Make sure to have the problem areas centered in view or highlighted somehow. Also what did you mean about stretch in area mode? -Chris

[@Jacur1980]

Really nice tutorial. My only point is that it misses information on why low poly model looks as it looks. I mean instructor does not say why we are skipping any of the details of the high poly, what geometry is "enough", etc. A bit of theory would be great here.

[@blengine]

Yeah that's a good point, I should've included some commentary on the purpose and theory of it all. Thanks for the feedback! -Chris

[@Jacur1980]

If you would make the similar tutorial with a gun prop, which has the "loop" around the trigger, screws in the, round holes in the body, etc. more problematic to unwrap and bake areas. Simply, more complicated model I would be willing to buy it. Have I already mentioned that I loved the tutorials?

[@scav3167]

What happened to your mic volume at 5:05 ?

[@TheToptenFacts26]

during knife uv unwrap my knife's UV is really wide, could this be a problem or is it okay if i just scale that UV down a bit, thank you

[@blengine]

If everything unwraps correctly then UVs should be as proportional as possible to the size of the faces they represent. If your UVs are stretched wide then something is off. If you want, you can send your blend file over to me at [e-mail] and I'll check it out.

[@TheToptenFacts26]

@@blengine thank you for your response, i have sent an email with files

[@blengine]

​@@TheToptenFacts26 Ah at some point you must've scaled your object in Object Mode, and whenever the object scale isn't 1x1x1 this can affect things like modifiers and even UV unwrapping. For example, if you scaled a plane in Object Mode to be twice as wide on the X axis, then its UVs will be twice as wide too. Luckily the fix is simple, with you object selected press Ctrl+A for the Apply menu, and choose to Apply Scale. This will reset your scale back to 1x1x1 without actually changing the dimensions of your mesh. Then when you go to unwrap it again it'll work as expected.

[@Penguinz4LOLZ]

Mine didn't really unwrap like yours did. Everything was the same it just sort of ended up in different spots than yours.

[@blengine]

That should be fine as long as everything unwrapped okay. I'm not sure why the uv islands ended up positioned differently, but could just be something like you unwrapping it from a different view or something, I don't know. -Chris

[@Penguinz4LOLZ]

I tried unwrapping it from a couple different views with the same result. I guess it's ok but I'm still gonna do the entire tutorial again in the near future. It will probably help to do it again anyways when it comes to my skill. Oh and by the way is there any way to get the normal map to look clean in Sketchfab? This is the result I get when I use a map that's been sampled down to 8bit from 16bit in photoshop: sketchfab.com/models/81c4cb6eea0c4f7c9322726ce3bdcfaf?image_compression=0 As you can see it's not really that great. Any workarounds? You might want to add it as a bonus step so that people can get a good result in a 3d viewer.

[@blengine]

@@Penguinz4LOLZ Sweet, awesome results. I see the normal mapping issue though. It's weird because converting in photoshop shouldve prevented banding like that when you convert. If you want you can send the model and 16-bit normal map to me at [e-mail] and ill check it out.

[@AIPTutorials]

Whenever I hit "F" to make a face, it actually creates two triangles instead of a single face. How do I fix this?

[@blengine]

Really? That's interesting. Send your blend file to me at [e-mail] and I'll see if there's something in the settings interfering with facing somehow. -Chris

[@AIPTutorials]

@@blengine Wasn't even thinking it could just be a settings thing till you mentioned it. I went into user pref and unchecked "fill" from the keymapping for the f key but left "make face/ edge" checked and now it works.

[@notkyle7749]

in the firts part of video, is this a method to retopology?

[@blengine]

We didn't really need to retopologize because of how we made the knife in Part 1. We pretty much already had the finished low poly knife, I just modify it slightly and then add some seams for unwrapping. -Chris

[@danh9676]

I must be wildly confused on what low poly means. I thought the low poly knife would have like 500 triangles max.

[@blengine]

"Low poly" is more of a relative phrase and just refers to an optimized version of a high poly model. A model being optimized depends on the target hardware, the complexity of the scene it's in, and how close to the camera the model will be. If this was just a background prop for example it might have just 500 faces or less to be more efficient, but if it's a weapon in an FPS then it might have more faces so it looks good up close to the camera. It's still considered low poly because it's still has a relatively low amount of faces compared to the perfectly smooth high poly version. -Chris

[@m3t4llic69]

Good tutorial, thank you!