How to edit the teeth mesh
Oct 9, 2017 22:43:18 GMT -5
orangemittens, inabadromance, and 2 more like this
Post by MisterS on Oct 9, 2017 22:43:18 GMT -5
Looking through the tut at times I neglected to include in the screenshots the different buttons I pressed on, this is them if I mentioned them and you do no know what I mean
When you do this tut I extruded the mesh off center so when you do it try not to do the same, however rather than taking all the pics again I'll show you how to fix things when you make a mistake like this.
If I have missed any steps or you do not understand me (either or both is quite likely) feel free to post on this thread
The normal plain teeth by default does not have its own texture, it uses the skin template so a big thanks to sammoyke for not only coming up with the idea to create a texture but for taking the time do so.
The texture psd can be found here
If you simply want the .png just use this one
Im going to be using blender and photoshop, I will not go into any detail regarding photoshop, that side of it will be a simple edit if any for this tut and can be done in any 2D editor, I will however try and explain the blender process as much as I can as to give people a few pointers that will be handy for meshing in general. My preferred 3D editor is not blender so I am no expert, its how I do things so there could be (probably is) easier/better ways. I am going to assume you have the basics of s4s worked out too. As with most of my tuts, I am not specifically showing how to make one thing, I am using that one thing as an example and hopefully what is learned can be put into practice for other things.
Well lets sink our er um teeth into it then :D
I made fangs as they are easy to show what to do and well it was easy to think of doing too. I do not have the vampire pack so I have no idea how EA made those ones, or even what they look like.
Ill just point out now, if you wanted to make a gap in the teeth, or a gold tooth, you do not need to edit the mesh at all, simply make the tooth black or gold, like wise if you wanted green or yellow teeth just hue and sat the color of the teeth.
Part one
So firstly open s4s under CAS select create 3D mesh, if you type in teeth the one I am using is the first one, and save it where you save these things. When you see it in s4s you will notice the Diffuse has a blank texture, simply import the the .png image linked above in there and save it before we get started.
Now export LOD 0 in the mesh tab and open it in blender. (Just double click on it)
First thing to do is to click on the head and hide it so we can see the teeth. Click on the little plus next to rig to see the head.
If this happens to you just hit 5 and then 1 on the number pad on the keyboard (not the top row of numbers)
So we get this
When ever I edit a mesh in blender I do a couple of things first to make life easier. Make sure you have the teeth selected in the 3D window and hit tab to go into edit mode then a to select the whole mesh.
Then hit ctrl v and select remove doubles, then hit ctrl f and select tris to quads, it will get rid of most of triangular shaped faces (this does not always work on some meshes without mucking it up a bit)
So this is our starting point
Next tilt the mesh back a bit and select those edges that are left and can be annoying, hit x and select dissolve edges
Just after you hit x tick this box, it will get rid of any loose vert associated with the edge we just got rid of
Dissolving the edges and doing the tris to quads is not a necessity, but I like a nice clean work space so its what I do, either way its handy to know.
Tip - if and when the gizmo thingy is in your way ctrl space bar toggles it on and off
Next select these faces (shift click to select multiple faces) and if you have not got the gizmo visible like I have not til now toggle it on and drag them down on the z axis (blue arrow) Don't drag it down as far as the pic, around about as far as the gum. (you will see how far in the next pic, dunno what I done there)
Then hit e (for extrude) and drag it down a bit more so we now have an edge running around the end
To unselect faces - if you press a it will either select the whole mesh if none is already selected, or it will unselect any part of mesh already selected If you just want to unselect specific faces hold shift while clicking on a face. Remember ctrl z is the undo button so you can just use that sometimes.
While keeping the bottom faces selected shift click the front and back faces of the teeth
And hit x and delete them so you have this
Then select the vertex tool and click on one of the front bottom verts, shift click on the other one and and press alt m and select at center and they will join in the middle
Do the same with the back two verts and the other tooth so both teeth look like the one I prepared earlier on the left
Then click on the three edges (remember shift click) and hit f and it will fill in, do both sides on both teeth
Still with the vertex tool selected click on back faces button and rotate your mesh, press b to bring up the bounding box and very carefully select these verts then use s for scale on your keyboard and just move your mouse and scale them so they are bit pointier. Deselect the back face button after you are done.
Tip - The further way the mouse pointer is from what you are trying to scale, the easier it is to control the scale
So now we have fangs
BUT - Numbut here made them off center. Grrrrrrrr
Now that was a legit mistake (I said something else to myself) so lets assume we all made a mistake like this and we will fix it without starting again, its pretty easy.
Part two - fix the giant stuff up and moving the UV into place
If you look at the UV map this is where we are at, honestly for something like this you could probably get away with it and leave it there
But lets learn and fix it properly. Now if you didn't stuff up like me you will have to do the UV twice, if you did stuff up the good news is you only have to do it once. So lets fix the off center fang first
Ill call this bit Fixing the stuff up, you can skip this whole section if you didn't stuff up :D
I will be a bit more brief in this bit as most of the steps were covered above
Highlight this fang and delete it (dentistry 101)
Select the four edges and f again to fill back in
Select the "correct" face where the fang should be and delete it
Now we are ready for the new fang, we could simply make it again like the first one but you will never get it exactly the same, so we will copy the other one over, now at this stage we will do the UV map first, then when we copy it the UV map will copy with it, saves us doing it twice in this circumstance.
Set your uv map up as shown in the first pic in this section.
Click these edges and select mark seem
Clicking here will bring up a menu that disappears when I try and screenshot it, but click on unwrap in said menu or hit e (make sure your mouse is in the UV editor before hitting e)
And you will get this
No we just move the uv back onto the teeth somewhere. The controls are s- scale r- rotate g- grab (so you can move it)
Repeat for the other fang, if you have one, unlike me :P
Back in the 3D editor window select all the faces of the fang an hit p and select by selection, you have separated the fang from the rest of the mesh and its now called s4studio_mesh_1.001 up in the right there. Make sure you are in object mode and have s4studio_mesh_1.001 selected and click on the little wrench icon there, select add modifier and select the mirror modifier and hit apply (once again the sub menu disappears when I try and screen shot it). If there is a modifier already showing up just hit the x in the corner of it to remove it.
And abracadabra
Nearly there.
In the side panel on the right where the meshes are named, click on s4studio_mesh_1.001 and shift click on s4studio_mesh_1 and press ctlr j and the meshes will join back together, if you have done it right you are just left with s4studio_mesh_1
Go back to edit mode, now select the the faces of the new fang and you will see the uv is right on top of the other one, you can move it if want, I just left it there because they are the same color anyway.
Now while still in edit mode, press a to select all the mesh (it will unselect the fang first so hit it twice) and ctrl v again and remove doubles, this essentially welds the fangs back onto the teeth.
Save it and import it back into s4s and zoom right in
Normally you then would decimate the lods but for this you may not need to bother, either use the same mesh for all the lods as there are not many faces, or what Im going to do is leave them, when zoomed out in the game its not likely you will see the fangs anyway, thats just me though do what you feel is best.
These fangs from this tut are on my site if you want them
When you do this tut I extruded the mesh off center so when you do it try not to do the same, however rather than taking all the pics again I'll show you how to fix things when you make a mistake like this.
If I have missed any steps or you do not understand me (either or both is quite likely) feel free to post on this thread
The normal plain teeth by default does not have its own texture, it uses the skin template so a big thanks to sammoyke for not only coming up with the idea to create a texture but for taking the time do so.
The texture psd can be found here
If you simply want the .png just use this one
Im going to be using blender and photoshop, I will not go into any detail regarding photoshop, that side of it will be a simple edit if any for this tut and can be done in any 2D editor, I will however try and explain the blender process as much as I can as to give people a few pointers that will be handy for meshing in general. My preferred 3D editor is not blender so I am no expert, its how I do things so there could be (probably is) easier/better ways. I am going to assume you have the basics of s4s worked out too. As with most of my tuts, I am not specifically showing how to make one thing, I am using that one thing as an example and hopefully what is learned can be put into practice for other things.
Well lets sink our er um teeth into it then :D
I made fangs as they are easy to show what to do and well it was easy to think of doing too. I do not have the vampire pack so I have no idea how EA made those ones, or even what they look like.
Ill just point out now, if you wanted to make a gap in the teeth, or a gold tooth, you do not need to edit the mesh at all, simply make the tooth black or gold, like wise if you wanted green or yellow teeth just hue and sat the color of the teeth.
Part one
So firstly open s4s under CAS select create 3D mesh, if you type in teeth the one I am using is the first one, and save it where you save these things. When you see it in s4s you will notice the Diffuse has a blank texture, simply import the the .png image linked above in there and save it before we get started.
Now export LOD 0 in the mesh tab and open it in blender. (Just double click on it)
First thing to do is to click on the head and hide it so we can see the teeth. Click on the little plus next to rig to see the head.
If this happens to you just hit 5 and then 1 on the number pad on the keyboard (not the top row of numbers)
So we get this
When ever I edit a mesh in blender I do a couple of things first to make life easier. Make sure you have the teeth selected in the 3D window and hit tab to go into edit mode then a to select the whole mesh.
Then hit ctrl v and select remove doubles, then hit ctrl f and select tris to quads, it will get rid of most of triangular shaped faces (this does not always work on some meshes without mucking it up a bit)
So this is our starting point
Next tilt the mesh back a bit and select those edges that are left and can be annoying, hit x and select dissolve edges
Just after you hit x tick this box, it will get rid of any loose vert associated with the edge we just got rid of
Dissolving the edges and doing the tris to quads is not a necessity, but I like a nice clean work space so its what I do, either way its handy to know.
Tip - if and when the gizmo thingy is in your way ctrl space bar toggles it on and off
Next select these faces (shift click to select multiple faces) and if you have not got the gizmo visible like I have not til now toggle it on and drag them down on the z axis (blue arrow) Don't drag it down as far as the pic, around about as far as the gum. (you will see how far in the next pic, dunno what I done there)
Then hit e (for extrude) and drag it down a bit more so we now have an edge running around the end
To unselect faces - if you press a it will either select the whole mesh if none is already selected, or it will unselect any part of mesh already selected If you just want to unselect specific faces hold shift while clicking on a face. Remember ctrl z is the undo button so you can just use that sometimes.
While keeping the bottom faces selected shift click the front and back faces of the teeth
And hit x and delete them so you have this
Then select the vertex tool and click on one of the front bottom verts, shift click on the other one and and press alt m and select at center and they will join in the middle
Do the same with the back two verts and the other tooth so both teeth look like the one I prepared earlier on the left
Then click on the three edges (remember shift click) and hit f and it will fill in, do both sides on both teeth
Still with the vertex tool selected click on back faces button and rotate your mesh, press b to bring up the bounding box and very carefully select these verts then use s for scale on your keyboard and just move your mouse and scale them so they are bit pointier. Deselect the back face button after you are done.
Tip - The further way the mouse pointer is from what you are trying to scale, the easier it is to control the scale
So now we have fangs
BUT - Numbut here made them off center. Grrrrrrrr
Now that was a legit mistake (I said something else to myself) so lets assume we all made a mistake like this and we will fix it without starting again, its pretty easy.
Part two - fix the giant stuff up and moving the UV into place
If you look at the UV map this is where we are at, honestly for something like this you could probably get away with it and leave it there
But lets learn and fix it properly. Now if you didn't stuff up like me you will have to do the UV twice, if you did stuff up the good news is you only have to do it once. So lets fix the off center fang first
Ill call this bit Fixing the stuff up, you can skip this whole section if you didn't stuff up :D
I will be a bit more brief in this bit as most of the steps were covered above
Highlight this fang and delete it (dentistry 101)
Select the four edges and f again to fill back in
Select the "correct" face where the fang should be and delete it
Now we are ready for the new fang, we could simply make it again like the first one but you will never get it exactly the same, so we will copy the other one over, now at this stage we will do the UV map first, then when we copy it the UV map will copy with it, saves us doing it twice in this circumstance.
Set your uv map up as shown in the first pic in this section.
Click these edges and select mark seem
Clicking here will bring up a menu that disappears when I try and screenshot it, but click on unwrap in said menu or hit e (make sure your mouse is in the UV editor before hitting e)
And you will get this
No we just move the uv back onto the teeth somewhere. The controls are s- scale r- rotate g- grab (so you can move it)
Repeat for the other fang, if you have one, unlike me :P
Back in the 3D editor window select all the faces of the fang an hit p and select by selection, you have separated the fang from the rest of the mesh and its now called s4studio_mesh_1.001 up in the right there. Make sure you are in object mode and have s4studio_mesh_1.001 selected and click on the little wrench icon there, select add modifier and select the mirror modifier and hit apply (once again the sub menu disappears when I try and screen shot it). If there is a modifier already showing up just hit the x in the corner of it to remove it.
And abracadabra
Nearly there.
In the side panel on the right where the meshes are named, click on s4studio_mesh_1.001 and shift click on s4studio_mesh_1 and press ctlr j and the meshes will join back together, if you have done it right you are just left with s4studio_mesh_1
Go back to edit mode, now select the the faces of the new fang and you will see the uv is right on top of the other one, you can move it if want, I just left it there because they are the same color anyway.
Now while still in edit mode, press a to select all the mesh (it will unselect the fang first so hit it twice) and ctrl v again and remove doubles, this essentially welds the fangs back onto the teeth.
Save it and import it back into s4s and zoom right in
Normally you then would decimate the lods but for this you may not need to bother, either use the same mesh for all the lods as there are not many faces, or what Im going to do is leave them, when zoomed out in the game its not likely you will see the fangs anyway, thats just me though do what you feel is best.
These fangs from this tut are on my site if you want them
