Game ready bevels in Blender!

In this video, we'll discuss mid-poly bevels in Blender and why they are a must-have for hard surface game assets.
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[@ng430]

I'd love to see more game-ready mesh/bake tips and tutorials! It's very helpful honestly ♥

[@Arcelux]

This!

[@SkeleTonHammer]

I'm a game developer and I have to agree with Josh here, I'm actually tired of seeing modern games being released with sharp 90 degree geometry. There's literally no reason to do this anymore - we're not designing games to be played on a Nintendo 64, there's no need to obsess over adding a few dozen triangles here and there. And even slight bevels catch light in a way that adds realism, since you almost never see razor sharp 90 degree bends in real life. I use 1 segment bevels for very tightly machined objects, and 2 segments with slightly larger bevels for things that would be "rougher", less precisely machined, or on a larger object. We've been in an era for quite some time where polygon counts are not going to be the bottleneck for your game, it's far more likely to come from post-processing/shader effects or from your game's logic bottlenecking the CPU. Set yourself free and BEVEL EVERYTHING. When it comes to game geometry, beveling combined with weighted normals are your best friends for modern game development.

[@JoshGambrell]

Agree 100%. Have you dealt with any strict requirements in which you choose hard edges over 1 segs? Games like Alien Isolation, for example, have a combo of both sharp edges and mid-poly. I've noticed the sharp edges are for the filler objects in the scene and mid poly's for the more noticeable ones

[@SkeleTonHammer]

@@JoshGambrell Only in circumstances where the object is too small on screen to justify a bevel (because the bevel itself would be too small and light interaction would be lost at most resolutions), possibly if the angle is too acute and is supposed to represent a sharp object (like the edge of a sword), or of course if a bevel would catch no light because of its placement. It's also going to be much more important to do good, smooth, well-shaped hard surface modeling as ray tracing becomes more of a thing. I've noticed that the same problems you get with shading distortion in Blender Cycles is the same kind of distortion I see in, say, Unity with DXR when my mesh isn't built with distortion in mind.

[@fgmenth]

Doesn't that depend on the platform though? For PC and Consoles? Sure! But for mobiles you kinda have to take polycount a bit more seriously. Plus, it may also depend on the type of model you're making. Say if you're making a background prop you don't really have to detail it much (if at all)

[@JoshGambrell]

@@SkeleTonHammer That's what I figured! No use for assets from afar (hence why cities for example use image planes and not actual buildings).

[@GetBuckAU]

@@fgmenth Of course background, non interactive objects dont need the high detail. What old mate is talking about is everyday game assets, most engines (if not all) can happily run higher poly assets to your front, whether that be weapons, vehicles, or general items.

[@PigeonSlayer]

The cube would have baked properly if you had the UV shells separate for each side and hardened the edges around your UV shell borders. Try it and let me know ;) I bet you had the usual "T-Unfold" cube and thats also why you have those baking issues Josh. Correct me if im wrong, but i did test this one out multiple times. Awesome video anyway :)

[@renatozaki]

dang josh is on the grind with these uploads lately, thanks for helping us future game developers with these simple to follow tutorials :D PogChamp

[@JoshGambrell]

Happy to help ;)

[@tamasorvos8882]

Brilliant content once again! Would love to see more game asset tutorials.

[@zofo264]

Would love to see how to bake in Marmoset! Thanks for this info Josh!

[@peeriehooman1696]

Thank you for all the info, best time of the day

[@Krecik1218]

Josh, I don't know how Substance make unwrap, but to have nice looking 90 deegres edges, you need to split your UV's where you have sharp edges. So in this case, every face of your cube should be separate UV island. It will never be 100% perfect, but for most object you won't notice it (ex. weapons). Mid-poly bevels are fine for bigger objects when you will really notice the difference. That's just my opinion

[@JoshGambrell]

Even if you increase island margin it is still visible. Personally, I will not use hard edges unless it is an object that can’t be seen up close.

[@noobcola]

Wish I saw this video years ago when I baked a high poly bevel over a hard edge. Was wondering why I could still see a sharp edge even though I baked rounded normals over it

[@yeabseraendalkachew9591]

Thank you!!!

[@huntzilla360cave3]

TY!

[@chlbrn]

For the problem at 4:27, you need to check if UV matches the shading. When you bake low res mesh, for hard edges, you need to separate UV islands as well, then you will get clean result.

[@notpumkin]

I really can't seem to find much on the subject of unwrapping bevelled edges. How do you do it, does it matter which side you place the seam on the bevel? What if you place the seams on the edges as normal then use a bevel modifier to bevel without applying it. Applying it would put seams on each edge of the bevel.

[@sebastian.84]

bake you can easy do in Blender too, with bake functions and cages and everything ! Another 'Let's Blender - to other programs migration' video !

[@mooonroe]

I would like to know if a more complex shape, then first you need to make UV and then apply bevel or first bevel and then do UV?

[@MR3DDev]

I wonder if with current gen and UE5 nanite thing we can just do mid poly stuff and forget about low poly.

[@andreasyono7116]

but what if you want to create lods? with the single edge technice u miss the information for the size because u cut the edge with a bevel. i would do suport edges and bake the normal (lod0), for closeup, then i would delete supporting edges (lod1) for distance view and still have the baked normal and the right size,(no popping) for the objet on mid range distances. it also depends on the size of the object if its just a small props you can get away with hard edge and normal but also depends on the game....but that my XP working for games

[@kobeguy]

Hello! at 0:22 did you set it to smooth shading? Thank you in advance

[@naveenthikshana4223]

💯 truth josh

[@yanko694]

which course would be best for beginner in Blender?

[@JDReach]

1 segment bevel is not required. Observe how the models of large video game productions. At 4:33 you just needed to do a smooth shade without angle limit. 1 face (2 triangles) , for each edge impacts the game performance.

[@JoshGambrell]

Shade smooth, separate island margins, it doesn't matter, the result is still garbage at best up close. From afar it isn't as big of a deal, but for primary detail 1 segment FWN strategy is essential.

[@JDReach]

@@JoshGambrell yes, maybe the complete smooth is not the best way, but there are various ways to eliminate the sharp line, bevel is not the way in my personal opinion, that's all, it makes the model too heavy, i make 1 segment bevel only for bigger bevels.

[@tetsutoyabuki8678]

I tried bringing in a 1 segment bevel mesh into Unreal Engine 4.27 and it looks fine initially but after baking lighting, the beveled edges either look too round or too sharp. Anyone run into this issue?

[@Youkai_graphics]

I usually use 1 segment bevel for most of my 3d models, but I dont know if should i bevel or not? for example a simple bench, It sure hell does looks better with bevel, ive asked some other 3d modeler, they said I should make it as low poly as possible, told me to bake high poly to low poly. But in todays standard, i think it can handle higher poly right?

[@JoshGambrell]

Yea, I would go based on what your company requires you to do. Most game engines aren’t going to be killed with a few extra thousand polys here and there from a bevel. It’s balancing performance vs. quality.

[@clementkirton]

I commented last time too when you talked about the 1 segment bevel when you show that a hard edge makes the seam line and I'm only posting again because I don't want people to think that it's because it's a hard seam when it's not. and on some models, if you add a 1 segment bevel it can add a lot of tris that's unnecessary. the reason you are getting the error in the bake is that your UV's are not right if you give the UV's the correct padding the Normals can bake without affecting each other and then you will get the correct normal and it will not have that seem. Here is the video I did for someone in the comments last time showing the difference between the hard edge with all smooth shading( gives artifacts in the reflection and lighting ) and then the 1 segment bevel ( looks the best but added Geo) and finally a Hard-edge with auto smooth shading with the Uv's correctly padded. kzbin.info/www/bejne/eKq2m6uvjbhskJY I did it in marmoset but same applies to baking in Substance

[@JoshGambrell]

Well it was a quick Smart UV Project. I usually unwrap manually. You can adjust island margins to fix it.

[@Wzxxx]

Would be great if You described it with some details. Sadly there is no comment on your video. That is interesting topic for me as i am trying to get good bevels and normals for export to a painting software. In Blender looks perfect but not in other software.

[@Obyvvatel]

Don't hard edges produce duplicated verts in game engines? Eg a default cube in Unity is not 8 verts to keep shading flat

[@bohdan_lvov]

4:04 you can invert selection by holding ALT and clicking

[@JoshGambrell]

Awesome tip, thank ya!

[@FesterThanLight]

You can get rid of the hard edge after the normal bake by setting the shading of the mesh to "shade smooth" in Blender, then the normal maps will have complete control of the shading. no need to add more geometry.

[@JoshGambrell]

It helps, yes, but the hard edges are still very visible. Normal map bakes cannot make up for mismatched curvature, so that is the limitation and why i like mid poly.

[@sockenschock3964]

@@JoshGambrell I know, I´m a little late to the discussion, but I actually have to disagree. If done correctly, the hard edges are not visible at all, the only thing that will still be noticeable is the lack of geometry in the silhouette. But setting the low poly to smooth, slightly increasing the scale of the high poly cube so that it completely wraps around the low poly cube´s edges and also slightly increasing the Max. Frontal distance during Bake in Painter completely fixes any artifacts on the edges, at least in my workflow. Maybe give it a try :)

[@maentesinc2100]

Been looking all around the internet for this but how do you have the edges looking as though they already have a tiny bevel before you actually add one?

[@JoshGambrell]

Turn on the cavity option, and check my recent viewport display video

[@vendavalh00_]

Can you makr more videos about gamr assets? Please

[@hectorescobar9450]

Hi Josh, as a games artist myself, I can tell you that you are actually wrong this time. Baking the bevels is still the best way to do it if you do it correctly. - Make sure your hard edges also have a seam - Make sure the low poly edges sit inside the highboy bevels, so the rays can properly project the bevel - Use marmoset instead of Substance for baking another reason why you want to bake your bevels is that some engines do not deal well with elongated polygons such as UE4. You can check out my Artstation (Hector Alexander Galindo Escobar). None of these models have real bevels in them.

[@Wardson]

Given that next generation is now and we'll have let's say UE5 which is capable of handling billions of triangles in a scene, do you think we should stick with a level 3 segment bevels as well as high poly mesh details? I kinda have this feeling where low poly will be a thing of the past really fast. It is also going to save a lot of time trying to retopo the high to low.

[@JoshGambrell]

I’m not switching workflow until UE5 and I know all the ins and outs of nanite technology. But yes, I do think low poly will be obsolete one day

[@Wardson]

@@JoshGambrell Understood. Thanks!

[@xylvnking]

low poly will always have a place stylistically and be relevant, but in the same way modern pixel art uses lots of techniques and tricks that are only possible today which 'betray' the traditional pixel art but make modern stuff easier to make and usually better to look at

[@IGarrettI]

mid poly requiers weighted normals. other than that, awesome

[@dukevera4216]

substance vs quixel? What is better? or is it neglegable?

[@JoshGambrell]

I prefer Substance. More robust, smoother performance, baking. Quixel is free and very good as well

[@dukevera4216]

@@JoshGambrell thank you for taking the time to answer!

[@marioklos]

Hey guys but what about UVs? It's easy to unwrap object with sharp edges but 1 level chamfer makes it too complex and time consuming to unwrap. You can decide to mark seams and unwrap before applying 1 segment bevel modifier but that means your UVs will be destroyed after applying modifier. You'll have to redo it or you're stuck with ugly unprofessional unwrap that introduces stretching and overlapping pieces. I see only two solutions if you want clean unwrap: invest extra time in unwrapping after adding chamfer or add even more geometry with 2 segments bevel and unwrap with seams marked in the middle of that 2 segments bevel. Any advice on that? Thx

[@JoshGambrell]

I’d recommend getting our course on hard surface unwrapping, it’s short and discusses various techniques: www.blenderbros.com/offers/QNYtmfNL/checkout

[@marioklos]

For anyone interested in solving this issue I have to tell you that you'll not find the answer in blenderbros course ;( That said I'll still recommend it for the price, I picked up some good tips and tricks and really enjoyed it :)

[@justinvoye8967]

Did you ever come up with a solution for this? Even if you export a live bevel your UV's will be slightly messed up on the corners in Marmoset. If you apply the bevel you get the same errors on the corner in blender. Not sure what to do.

[@marioklos]

@@justinvoye8967 to make sure that texture continuity is not broken around the edges I unwrapped my low poly model after applying bevel/chamfer. Then make sure all UV islands are aligned and not rotated. That way your texture and baked maps will flow between them nicely. Turn on synchronized view in UV space to check if your split edges matching. For example: Plane split (mark seam) in half will give you 2 square UV islands. Right vertical seam on one island should be aligned to the Left vertical seam on the second island. Another example: With default cube there is default cube unwrap created. Mark all edges as seams, unwrap and arrange your UV islands exactly in the same way as default unwrap. The only difference should be some gaps for padding between them. I hope that helps.

[@justinvoye8967]

@@marioklos Thanks for sharing Mario, I also saw your post on blenderartist thinking about the same thing I am. I think the bottom line is when you export a live bevel it will add additional geo to your model, thus changing the border around each UV island. Sometimes this isn't a huge deal depending on the angle, other times it will cause certain corners to fold and skew causing very small errors on the UV's. You can try and repair these small errors but then your applying the bevel before export and at that point you might as well consider unwrapping the bevel. In the past I've always baked bevels and split my UV's on 90 degree hard surfaces (older method). This also can produce a small hard edge line on the low poly depending on the angle and how close you are to a model. For a change I wanted to give this 1 segment bevel live export a try. At the end of the day I think it really depends on your application, it may not even matter if the model is completely textured and rendered in Blender, but we're talking about game ready models here. For game ready models I'm not sure this method is technically correct as there are clearly errors in the UV's and I agree with you that this looks unprofessional. I don't see many discussing that exporting a live bevel adds additional geo to the UV's, and it's potential to cause errors. One thing to remember is if we're using a 1 segment weighted normal bevel on a mesh, we aren't using a normal map for the edges, meaning the rule of seams on a hard edge go away; the normal maps will only be used for detail on flat surfaces. I'd love to see what others have experienced using this technique and if they run into issues, thanks Mario.

[@florianbuchgraber864]

How do you unwarp a one segment bevel I get the problem that CG Cookie describes in this Video at 9:36 kzbin.info/www/bejne/iGrKaHmjp8hsZpI

[@mayarbalah2348]

can we make a fake bevels?

[@danwellsanddangmtb2302]

Just letting you know, at 3:18 and 5:07, we can’t see the windows.

[@JoshGambrell]

Yeah but it was just an export/segment adjustment.

[@Gelonyrum]

You're getting those ugly edges because of incorrect UVs unwrap, you're not making any margin between UV shells, I've made a little comparison of bake with manual UVs and Smart projected UVs and a little tuttorial how to unvrap a Cube properly in the end of the video, hope it will give you some useful info. Also if you're marking hard edge ALWAYS mark it as Seam too, otherwise you'll get those ugly normals bake on edges. kzbin.info/www/bejne/eKK9ZIx7fKxpg6s

[@JoshGambrell]

Like I said, simply increase the island margin. You’re still going to get visible hard edges regardless, but yes, you are correct.

[@norbertnagy4582]

Where is alien isolation ? From the file browser ? :S Dont say you uninstalled it :( ....

[@omri1324]

Why bake bevels onto a low poly mesh when you can use weighted normals on a chamfer for same results?

[@JoshGambrell]

I hope this was rhetorical, because that is literally what I explained in this video. Lol.

[@kruz3d573]

To save more poly. 1 segment bevels with weighted normals are actually causing some performance issues now adays, The industry is leaning more and more towards this method Star Citizen, Cyberpunk, Assassin's Creed Valhalla. while I do agree the quality is amazing, But at what cost? When you do the same method for your bevels for a huge scene it will start adding up too many poly's and kills there performance. I still prefer baking the bevels, Much lower poly and optimized!

[@omri1324]

@@kruz3d573 But Josh bakes the 3 segment bevels on a 1 segment bevel anyway.. baking on a sharp corner doesn't do a good job. So why bake a high poly bevel to a chamfer when you can keep the chamfer and add weighted normals for the same result?

[@omri1324]

@@JoshGambrell You explained why bake high poly bevel on a 1 segment chamfer, I'm saying why bother baking at all when you can slap a weighted normals modifier for the same results?

[@kruz3d573]

@@omri1324 Mister Omri, 1 Segment bevel still adds up a lot of poly's when you actually do it for every object in the 3d scene. So, baking from a 3 segment into an object without any bevels will actually reduce the poly count a lot more. 1 segment bevel with weighted normals are becoming the norm these days because more and more studios using that method in their pipeline and Cyberpunk and Star Citizen is a good example but look at the performance of their game. It's trash and It's all or say, MOSTLY because of the method they have used aside from the coding optimization and other parts of the process. 1 segment bevel with weighted normals which does add details but it actually starts adding up on a huge scene and chokes the performance. To each their own to be honest, at this point It's a matter of preference if you want your game to be super optimized then avoid the 1 segment bevel with weighted normals, If you want your game to look absolutely beautiful, then be my guest and use the weighted normals method. or else, add fewer objects in the scene while you are going with 1 segment bevels and weighted normals. And If you want to add more objects into your scene or in the game, then bake from a 3 segment bevel with proper UVs So it would look almost just as good. (ALMOST) but the polycount will be lower.

[@chrissem5200]

You Twitter Fan?

[@ThanatosTheDH]

Why don't you care for baking in blender as much anymore?

[@JoshGambrell]

It’s too finnicky man, Marmoset or Substance is better

[@HalkerVeil]

So use Blender... not really, use Substance... but not really. Use Marmoset. *Closes video.*

[@R4venshore]

Good showcase, but not entirely correct. Realistic new games, that lack actual game spirit and rely on graphics, like most console junk might be like this. But go to any game studio that has traditions and really good game artists and you'll see that you are very wrong. Take for example Overwatch, which looks pretty good, but it's almost entirely straight edge simple geometry. It's just really hard to notice, unless you are doing it on purpose, because of how good the artists are. Real life objects have layered textures, scuffs and marks and chips around the edges, which can hide the edge really well. There are no rules if the artists are really good. They can get away with anything. You need to take a lot of things into account, pace of gameplay, style and most importantly how close will players typically be to an object - what does that extra geometry actually bring to the table.

[@guestuser117]

true, out of all the games i've played in the last 25+ years, I've never paid any attention to the background objects, especially the edges.