Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Tips and Tricks
When using the Append to Polygon tool, usually there is no need to go all
around the outside of the shape that is being filled. It is faster to click one
edge, and then click the edge opposite that edge and press Enter. This fills the
hole quickly as it figures out the other edges are included in the function.
Tips and Tricks
Notice that after filling the hole, there will be some black chunks across
the new planes that have been made. This is happening because the new
polygon has
soft normals
, which are great for organic shapes, but not so
great with rigid forms like this dock. To get rid of these, select the object
and choose Polygons>Normals>Harden Edge.
Step 13:
Rotate the front of the dock
.
Right-click the dock and choose
Vertex from the hotbox menu. Marquee select the vertices across the front
of the docs as shown in
Figure 2.14
. Choose the Rotate tool (keyboard
shortcut is the E key), and then (to move the axis of rotation) press and
hold the D key on the keyboard. Move the manipulator handles back
to the back corner of the collection of vertices that have been selected.
Release the D key and rotate the vertices from this new axis just defined.
Figure 2.14
Rotating a collection of points from a new axis of rotation.
Tips and Tricks
This rotation trick or moving the axis of rotation (via holding down the
D key or by pressing the Insert key) works in Object mode too. The axis
of rotation can be moved to wherever it needs to be for a given object.
In our case, it's temporary for a selection of components (vertices in
this example), but when done while in Object mode, the object will
“remember” this new axis location.
Dock Optimization
Step 14:
Optimize the mesh. In the process of outlining this shape, we
have quickly made some shapes that could be optimized. As pointed out
earlier, polycount is rarely
the
problem with slow games, but it is certainly
one of them. Especially if you are developing for iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod
Touch) or Android, keeping a tight grasp on polycount will be critical.
