Creating Game Assets in Blender

[@KaizenTutorials]

🎉I've created a Discord server for everyone who loves Blender, 3D and creativity. Come hang out; discord.gg/BXKa8akYuk Also if you enjoy the content please consider becoming a Patron to help support the channel; www.patreon.com/kaizentutorials

[@Cr3reeper]

is this rare

[@KaizenTutorials]

Is what rare?

[@codehyperbole]

its not working kaizen

[@KaizenTutorials]

What’s not working?

[@codehyperbole]

@@KaizenTutorials I couldn't not enter your discord channel for some reasons

[@jamescampionn]

one VERY IMPORTANT thing this video misses: make sure to set the image type correctly when baking! only base color should use SRGB, all other maps should be set to Non-Colour data (or Generic Data if you’re using the AGX color transform). if you don’t do this, your images might not act like they should when you try to use them in a texture

[@KaizenTutorials]

Very true! If you use the Principled Node setup shortcut of CTRL SHIFT T it does this automatically using your texture set! :-D

[@Tertion]

The same goes inside Unreal, where all your non-color maps (including channel-packed ones), should have a compression mode set to "mask (no sRGB)"

[@lucutes2936]

ohye

[@valenciasainz]

Tips: • When you add a new image texture for baking, make sure you **Deselect** *Alpha* if it's not an alpha map. • Use *channel packing* for single channel maps to save more texture data. • *Sharpen Diffuse Maps* in compositor for extra crispy details. • You can set *Operator Presets* in blender export so you don't have to change export settings every single time.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Good tips!

[@Smeaf]

This is a GREAT in-depth workflow from start to finish! Awesome work man!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you Smeaf, appreciate it as always!

[@mridulsarmah5974]

One Important thing that I would add is most of the time, low poly mesh is recommended to have triangulated topology than quad topology for game engines to process them correctly. Also unwrapping a triangulated mesh totally works especially when you decimate a sculpted mesh rather than retopo it from scratch.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Yeah good stuff! Doing triangulation yourself is always better than letting an engine do it for you btw, as you have no control over the result when the engine does it!

[@mszczesnik]

Awesome tut! As a game dev, I need to be picky about one thing, though - the UVs, OMG :). I know it's out of scope for this tutorial, but it's a pretty bad practice to have UVs like that - you lose a lot of space on the texture.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Hhaha thanks! Yeah the UV's use very unoptimal space. It's probably better to add a lot of seams in hidden areas so the automatic pack islands works better, or manually move them. The texel density could be a lot better! But that's something that might deserve a video of it's own.

[@NightVisionOfficial]

Bruh, i was about to do the same comment xD. It's a no no, and an ouch, watching those UV's, i'm sorry ​@KaizenTutorials , but it's only for the community sake xD

[@voytechj]

Not sure about Unreal engine, but in Blender normalmaps use righthand coordinate system (+Y up). Some game engines use lefthand coordinates (+Y down) and you have to check that. Its simple, move light close to an object, move light around and check if shadows are correct. If something is not right invert green channel on normal map or in blender change "Bake->Influence->Swizzle G" to "-Y" before baking.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Yeah Unreal requires you to flip the Green Channel for the Normal map to work properly! That's why I added links to how to setup these assets in both Unity and Unreal, since they both have their own workflows!

[@samuelwallace6051]

Incredible tutorial. Helped me a ton. Cant wait to watch and learn more from your Channel❤️

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! Glad to hear this was useful to you. 🙌

[@TheRealPowerDoge]

10:02 Also when baking diffuse you need turn metallic to 0 on your high poly, otherwise you'll get black image

[@KaizenTutorials]

Good tip.

[@greenrabbit4075]

This is pure gold my man! Thank you!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Glad you like it, thanks!

[@lokosstratos7192]

lol that commercial was so smooth i didnt realize i was watching it

[@KaizenTutorials]

Hahaha thanks! Appreciate it 🙏🏻

[@PrinceEagle]

Once again thank you for an awesome video!

[@KaizenTutorials]

My pleasure!

[@mr.coffeecup1331]

What a great tutorial! Thank you very much! P.S. I just wanted to ask, one thing. I remember watching a tutorial long time ago about UV unwrap and I remember them using a "Smart UV project". Since then I've been always using this function for unwrapping. And so I wanted to ask if it has any disadvantages that you don't use it in the video?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! Smart UV project is perfect for a quick and dirty unwrap. But it adds a TON of seams and will usually not look good at all when not using procedural materials. So for proper game models, especially ones people will see a lot, manual unwrapping is the onyl way to go! :-)

[@mr.coffeecup1331]

Got it! Thank you for explaining!

[@logans3365]

I just finished my donut in blender and decided to give Unity a go, then I had the bright idea to import my donut to Unity. After watching this video I do believe it’s time to take a break lol

[@KaizenTutorials]

Haha, well taking a break is always good. But you can do it, exporting textures and importing your asset into a game engine is easier than you think! Good luck

[@BobTheBuilder294]

Why is it like a 47 step process? Why don't they just add a Bake All option?

[@KaizenTutorials]

i’m not sure. I think it’s probably because they want control over it. Also baking can take a LONG time. So by baking ‘all’ it will take even longer. So maybe thats why!

[@druvingame]

Can you also create a tutorial for creating material like 3d games like clash of clans inside blender if its possible in it.

[@KaizenTutorials]

I can think about it yeah, thanks!

[@infographie]

Excellent

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@ConsolasEight]

I was assuming that a baked texture is less data intensive than one using all the nodes... or am I wrong about that? If I make a 3D model of something using procedural textures for use in Blender, is it worth me baking the textures for the object or am I more or less better off just using the model as is with all the nodes? If I made a scifi cargo pod - an elongated cube with industrial-looking ribbing, blue in colour and dirtied up using your procedural texture technique - would it be worth my while baking the texture or might I be just as well using it as is...? Maybe a bit of a complicated question, sorry :)

[@KaizenTutorials]

It really depends. Baked textures, or images if you will, are more VRAM intensive than procedural textures. But procedural textures are quite heavy on your CPU/GPU overall. If you're working in game engines baked textures are your only option. In Blender I think it boils down to your hardware + scene. For the sake of an experiment you could try both!

[@ГеоргийМурзич]

I've always though that you need to unplug Metallic and set it to 0 for proper Bake but your model baked fine even with Metallic on, interesting

[@KaizenTutorials]

Not as far as I know. The input (float values) override the set number in the Shader, so it's always going to output those numbers. But maybe back in the day this used to be the case? Don't know, I just know this works haha!

[@peterpmd]

Thank you

[@KaizenTutorials]

You're welcome

[@popugaychick8279]

Super cool! tnx😘😘😘😘

[@KaizenTutorials]

You're welcome!

[@vicious3981]

you didnt show us how you made the high poly model. usually creating two types of model would take a lot of time, i wanna know you could do it easily

[@KaizenTutorials]

In a proper game asset workflow you almost always make the high poyl model first and then create a low-poly to bake to.

[@joshuaimmanuel1609]

hi, any one care to explain why he uses triangle instead of square on his low model ?

[@KaizenTutorials]

I use quads, but convert them to Triangles in the end because exporting an asset will triangulate automatically. I don''t like having no control so instead I triangulate myself and change some stuff if needed.

[@untrollable3212]

can you please help me? i do not know what to do i have made 132 low poly weapons and dont know what to do next or how to proceed like how to unwrap them or paint them cuz they are simple weapons so they dont need high detail so i made them low poly but have just been stuck at this point (trying to make them low poly assets{like a simple sword}). do you have a video that will help it will be a pain but i will scrap them all and do them all over again if i have to but i would like to do them right this time because the videos i find show you how to unwrap a model bring it to substance painter paints it and expects you to know how to put the details on a low poly and ends the video there. like do you know of a great course that will teach you how to make a game from making assets to painting them to building your own game?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Aah! I don’t really have a good answer for this. I think looking at my texture painting tutorial + the create game assets video and then some lownpoly asset modeling from other tutorials should bring you along the way.

[@Asadkhan-jt1jb]

nice

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks!

[@apummy4930]

If i Bake Materials form a Object with more than one Material Slot, how can i Bake all Materialslots on one Map?

[@KaizenTutorials]

This is one of those things where Blender is not the best tool. But you can do it. Ryan King Art has a great tutorial on this; kzbin.info/www/bejne/rXiZgIFurL-MgsU

[@apummy4930]

@@KaizenTutorials Thanks. But i already found a way for my Bakes. But i will watch it :)

[@apummy4930]

Look! In This Video he explains how to Bake Different Materialslots at onece! kzbin.info/www/bejne/m3aad5iaebxld6s&ab_channel=RyanKingArt

[@KaizenTutorials]

Nice!

[@pangtundure]

I don't have a high polly mesh how do i bake it ??

[@KaizenTutorials]

If you don't have a high-poly mesh you can skip the step for baking the high to low and instead just bake the textures directly. It still works the same as in this video, or as in this one; kzbin.info/www/bejne/fWbWoHx-qZyinLc

[@pangtundure]

@@KaizenTutorials I've baked it bit it looked ass without the high polly model and I don't know if I'm supposed to modify the model in any way

[@WinTVCH]

How about Import an Asset in to Roblox Studio?

[@KaizenTutorials]

I don't know how Roblox Studio works, but yeah you could create assets for any game using these methods! Just need to find the proper export settings for Roblox.

[@schnitzelhannes6431]

Well blender cant do that because it isnt gay enough for roblox users

[@WinTVCH]

@@schnitzelhannes6431 😎🗿

[@musluktandokulenkarabatak]

Just reduce the polygon size as much as you can, keep every face positive. If you are using Subtance Painter, export textures as "Roblox SurfaceAppearance" from software. Preferred file type is obj or fbx, use fbx if you rigged it. That's all

[@PyubX]

Can someone explain in laiman terms what exactly this does? Makes the low poly mesh look hi poly, but how? Makes for example an actual extrusion into a texture that LOOKS like it has depth?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Simply put this tells the shader for an object (the material) how light needs to bend creating shadows and highlights. This creates the illusion of depth and geometry where there is none. Sounds magic, it kinda is haha. But it has its limits. You can't have a full blown 3 feet deep hole this way, the illusion will break. It works best for smaller surface details with limited depth.

[@valenciasainz]

The UVs almost game a heart attack. 😄 (It's fine, cause it's just an example/tutorial)

[@KaizenTutorials]

Hahahaha I know right 💀😂

[@safwanm3377]

Hey, can you make a tutorial on getting cool camera motion , based on background music, like smooth and flowy transition using 3d camera, Literally no one had made any tutorial on that

[@KaizenTutorials]

Hey! I have a video on exactly that. It’s the one about product animation.

[@DailyPaily]

And i must do it with every asset, ok....

[@KaizenTutorials]

Yep, that's why makign games is a VERY big amount of work, done by hundreds of people!

[@thewolf2296]

Man thank you for explaining the subject with so much clarity! I watched a couple tutorials on how to create game assets before stumbling on yours and it got me pretty scared as the process seemed way more difficult than it actually is! 😅

[@KaizenTutorials]

Glad to help :-D

[@valenciasainz]

Imagine if Game Engines supported procedural textures from all 3d softwares? That would be a *game changer.*

[@KaizenTutorials]

Oh yeah that would be sick!

[@technoober8352]

Is there a way to improve speed of baking? What if I'm an Indie game dev and want to bake 100s of models?

[@KaizenTutorials]

The speed improves with the sample count, but mostly by setting a lower size. If you want to create background models and non-hero asset props you can usually get away with 1024x1024 textures, sometimes even less. This will make a huge difference in time spent baking! But yeah like I said there's a bunch of tools which are better at baking than Blender. Overall creating Game Assets is a time consuming process and baking will always take a chunk of the time spent on a model.

[@dwarfda]

For future reference, a very useful tip which this extremely basic tutorial hasn't mentioned, you'll most likely improve your baking times enormously by using GPU for it. First you need to enable it in Preferences -> System -> Cycles Render Devices, choosing option depending on your system and GPU and selecting your GPU, then in the Render Properties tab where you change the Render Engine, make sure you have Device set to GPU Compute.

[@wolfpawz321]

I’m confused; what if I want to paint in substance. ? Where will the textures go if the textures are already baked.

[@KaizenTutorials]

if you want to paint in substance you can basically skip the baking step. So create the model, create a low poly version if necessary, uv unwrap it, bring it into substance, bake high to low, texture it, export textures from substance, import into unreal, apply textures to low poly object (or just the high if you didn't make a low)

[@LifeCodeGame]

This video looks great! I'm excited to learn how to create game assets in Blender. Thanks for the helpful links and discount code!

[@KaizenTutorials]

You're very welcome!

[@4115steve]

thanks for taking to time to make a detailed video of this. Great work

[@KaizenTutorials]

My pleasure, thanks for the kind words!

[@zorika6554]

will this worked with projection mapped, baked, textures?

[@KaizenTutorials]

uhm I haven't tried, but yeah if the texture works in Blender you can bake it down for use in other engines, for sure!

[@ARANDOMOPENAIUSER]

One of the best Blender asset tutorials I have ever seen!

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks a lot!

[@SharpWind]

as someone who works in game production professionally, that UV unwrap gave me PTSD, please dont do it this way...

[@KaizenTutorials]

Haha it's not the best I agree. It's functional and works for this procedural texture, but yeah could be a lot better. What's your professional input on UV unwrapping?

[@SharpWind]

Dont worry, it was a bit of a joke :) The very best approach would be to manually cut and unwrap your model, so you can optimize the amount and placement of seams, as well as plan for an even unwrapping to make use of as much of the UV tile as possible, to harness the extra resolution from your texture An additional bonus is being able to optimize the amount of cuts (as in the software's term, that's a duplicated vertex and adds to the memory in more populated sets), effectively even optimizing your model while you're at it! For a quick unwrap, your method is perfectly fine (we all do it), but for game assets specifically, optimization is key, and squeezing out every last pixel of the UV map goes a long way towards a high-quality model, which can also run realtime in a computationally-expensive environment Sorry if my original comment sounded condescending, i was trying to be funny :)

[@lucutes2936]

11:55 important Unreal setting memo

[@141Jamison]

Im trying to learn blender. Ive never been more overwhelmed from a vidio.... I got a hella long way to go 😅

[@KaizenTutorials]

Awh sorry! Don't be just yet. This is a rather quick version of the process. There's a ton of videos explaining each individual step in great detail. Just keep at it and you'll become great one day! :-D

[@ghazi1832]

Taraaataa, i watched this video 5-9 times cuz i want to memorise (baking) and i previously stucked on blender to unity, everything was white lol. and i does too bad texturing i have to watch how to Create professional material 7-15 times then i can :) FUN+

[@KaizenTutorials]

Haha thanks! You're helping the channel and learning at the same time. Love it!

[@abdessamadhasnaoui6887]

thank u so much talking about advanced materials I m asking about if those smart masks ( that u made on the scifi box) are reusable with further tweaking (I mean can I just copy the node tree of any mask and use it on a different object?)

[@KaizenTutorials]

You’re welcome! Yeah you can just import the material in a new project, or even easier put them in your asset library in Blender. Also very convenient to group nodes using CTRL+G.

[@DodgerEcho]

Thanks you 👍

[@KaizenTutorials]

No problem 👍

[@rachaelbraun]

Thanks for the detailed video - this makes so much more sense! If I wanted to model in Blender and texture in an external software like Substance, would I texture the high poly externally, import it back into Blender, and then bake the high poly details onto the low poly model? Or what would that workflow look like?

[@KaizenTutorials]

You're welcome! Thanks :-) Well if you want to texture in a different software the process still goes as I describe in the beginning of the video. Create a highpoly mesh - create a lowpoly mesh - bake highpoly to lowpoly in your preferred programme - take lowpoly + bakes (AO, Normal, etc) into texturing software - set up textures - export texture set - import asset + texture set in engine.

[@rachaelbraun]

@@KaizenTutorials Ohhh I see now, thanks!

[@Kyoshi267]

bro finally i found someone who can answer all my questions without i ask them

[@KaizenTutorials]

That's awesome, thanks~!

[@ShrikeGFX]

that bake and normal map looks really messed up, there must be something very wrong

[@KaizenTutorials]

it's not the best no, but it only serves as an example to showcase the workflow and isn't aimed at the quality perse

[@ShrikeGFX]

@@KaizenTutorials this implies more like an issue with the workflow and some setting or setup. The bake just has very strange aliasing, its not like the model is "low quality" or anything, a bake dosnt look like this. Maybe some ray distance or something like that. Try do a bake with XNormal for comparison and you'll see (or marmoset if you have it, hands down best baker)

[@eyyikzthecounter9929]

You keep changing the thumbnail, I thought i was a new video 😢

[@KaizenTutorials]

Haha yeah sorry! I'm trying to find a new, better thumbnail for this video since it's underperformed.

[@IR-RA]

My maps don’t work :( It is a pure green color but I checked where the faces are looking and I see my object completely in purple color so should be okay however the maps don’t look the same. In fact I don’t even see my object on the normal’s map. It is a bunch of yellow with green looking weird

[@KaizenTutorials]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but you have to make sure your objects are in the same position, preferrably at the 0 location in the world. Maybe that helps!

[@IR-RA]

@@KaizenTutorials they are

[@simphiwedlamini.]

I'm so f***ing lost

[@KaizenTutorials]

Sorry to hear that!

[@WektorGH]

9:16 compresion doesnt matter here?

[@KaizenTutorials]

Well it does ofcourse. But I've had 4K textures with 90MB normal maps, which can be a bit harsh on engines aswell. But yeah you're better off without compression.

[@SVgamer-mv6hw]

It is best to make shaders directly in the engines.

[@KaizenTutorials]

Yep, you'll need textures for that though!

[@SVgamer-mv6hw]

@@KaizenTutorials There is a shader graph tool in unity, so I thought it is similar to make smart shaders like you make in blender, but now in unity using shader graph. Even unity have other features also like camera buffer.

[@ravendaee]

This tutorial is pure gold, thank you so much

[@KaizenTutorials]

Thanks, glad you liked it!