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Creating Low-Poly Models

Blender is a sophisticated program that has gone through a lot of iterations to get to the point where
it is now. More and more professionals in different industries are investigating it as an alternative to
other well-known 3D applications out there, such as Maya, 3ds Max, ZBrush, and Modo. Also, Blender
happens to be a good starting point for hobbyists and people who can’t afford the licensing fees of the
aforementioned software. Additionally, Blender has a helpful and large community that creates courses
and tutorials. Blender Conference (BCON) is an annual event where you can meet professionals.
An important decision you must make before you start creating 3D content with any type of software
is where you are going to use your assets – this directly affects the style and workflow you will follow
to accomplish the task. One type of workflow is called low-poly modeling, with which you create 3D
assets that have a minimum number of details.
In this chapter, we’ll discuss why low-poly modeling might be beneficial compared to other workflows.
Following the advantages, you’ll learn how to create low-poly assets using different techniques. We’ll
conclude this chapter by introducing a few modifiers that might prove indispensable.
In this chapter, we will cover the following main topics:

• Understanding low-poly models

• Advantages of low-poly models
• Creating a low-poly barrel
• Automating with modifiers

Technical requirements
To follow the instructions in the chapters that involve Blender, you must install the necessary software
on your computer. The Blender website – more specifically, their download page at https://www.
blender.org/download/ – contains instructions and links for your platform. In this book,
we are using Blender 2.93. Although version 3.0 will offer interesting and exciting options to new
4 Creating Low-Poly Models

and existing Blender users, the current version is more than capable of creating game assets for your
projects and the topics covered in this book.
This book uses GitHub to store the code that will be used in the Godot chapters. However, the same
repository (https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Game-Development-with-
Blender-and-Godot) also hosts the Blender files used throughout the relevant chapters. Where
it makes sense, the repository will be structured with Start and Finish folders inside each specific
chapter for you to start over or compare your work as you make progress.

Understanding low-poly models

Simply put, a 3D model is considered to be low-poly when it uses the minimum number of polygons
to make its most characteristic features, mainly its look and feel. However, let’s take a look at them
in a little more detail.
In real-time applications such as game engines, your computer’s central processing unit (CPU) and
graphics processing unit (GPU) are responsible for processing the visual information you see on the
screen. In the last two decades, the trend has been leaning heavily toward the GPU side since GPUs
are dedicated to one main task: processing graphics.
GPUs have an advantage over CPUs in that regard, and they don’t discriminate between 2D and 3D
graphics. However, whereas 2D images contain pixel information, 3D objects are represented by data
that holds the necessary coordinate information that defines the object.
Although a cube is still a bunch of pixels after it is rendered on your screen, the data that defines
the cube is essentially eight points, which are called vertices. For demonstration purposes, in the
following screenshot, Blender’s vertex size setting has been changed so that you can see where those
vertices are more easily:

Figure 1.1 – The eight vertices of a cube

 Understanding low-poly models 5

Both cubes are the same object, but it’s possible to render the same eight vertices and their relationship
with each other in two different ways: one that looks like a solid object (on the left) and another that
looks transparent (on the right). So, keep in mind that vertices are data points that define the shape
of the object, not how it looks. Later in this chapter, you’ll learn how to make objects look different,
similar to what’s shown in the preceding screenshot.
Before we discuss what makes a model low-poly, we must understand a few other essential parts.
You’ve already seen that the vertex is the most crucial component, but there are two more concepts
you must be aware of:
• Edge
• Face

Let’s see how these two relate to a vertex. By doing so, we’ll be on our way to understanding what
makes a model low-poly.

Parts of a 3D model
An edge is what connects two vertices. It’s as simple as that. If you look at Figure 1.1 again, you’ll
see that not all the vertices are connected. However, when they are connected, it’s called an edge and
depicted by Blender with a straight line going from one vertex to the other.
A face, as you may have deduced, is a logical outcome when you arrange vertices – or edges – in a
certain pattern. For example, a cube or a six-sided die has six faces. Although Figure 1.1 makes it
look like you need four edges to make a face, there is a simpler way – that is, three edges are enough
to form a face. So, a triangle is the simplest face, also known as a polygon.

Low or hi, what’s the difference?

When you are designing a model, you are creating polygons. The density of the polygons in a model
is what determines whether a model can be considered low-poly. The following figure displays one
low-poly and one high-poly work sample, courtesy of Sketchfab users MohammadRezae and DJS_05:

Figure 1.2 – An example of a low-poly versus high-poly model

6 Creating Low-Poly Models

You can find a lot of examples of different polygon counts on websites such as Sketchfab.
In the industry, if you are asking for a model to be designed for you, you may want to mention that
you want it done in low-poly form. It’s often agreed that if you don’t mention this, people will assume
it’s going to have as many polygons as possible since you would want your models to be as detailed
as possible with plenty of polygons. So, the distinction is made when you are cutting those polygons
out, not when you are keeping them in.
Let’s focus on our default cube again. Is it low-poly or hi-poly? It might be both. Although we know
that only eight vertices are needed to create a cube, we could have had many more vertices along the
edges that connected the original corner vertices. However, it would not have made any difference
in the rendered result. That being said, it would have taken the computer a lot longer to render the
same visual result.
So, as mentioned previously, when your model has just enough polygons to make sense of the object
you’d like to design, you’ll have a low-poly model.
Although GPUs are fast and they do a fantastic job these days of rendering millions of polygons and
going low-poly may feel like you are cutting corners, there are good reasons why you may not want
to have that many polygons in your project.

Advantages of low-poly models

Here is a quick list of the benefits of following a low-poly modeling practice:

• Fewer polygons
• Small file size
• A certain artistic style
• Easy to prototype
• No or minimal texturing

Working with fewer polygons certainly means fewer things to change and worry about. Shortly, you’ll
learn how to create a barrel, and by the end of that exercise, your model will have close to a thousand
polygons. This number may seem high at first but imagine working with a hi-poly barrel model with
more than 10,000 polygons. So, if you are new to 3D modeling, low-poly modeling is a great place
to start.
Should you decide to alter your models, working with a higher number of polygons will force you
to be more careful. So, in essence, having fewer polygons is comforting since you will feel like you
have more control over your creation. Naturally, fewer polygons will result in a smaller file size too.
 Advantages of low-poly models 7

The artistic style advantage is a non-technical item in the advantages list. Nevertheless, it might be an
important decision. Let’s focus on Figure 1.3, for example. You’ll see why lack of detail doesn’t always
mean lack of imagination:

Figure 1.3 – Low-poly model landscape

Here, you can see just enough details to figure out that there is a church. Perhaps this church is looking
onto a town square. The mountain tops have some snow. Is this a peaceful town that’s appealing to
tourists for winter sports? Perhaps the townspeople are currently hiding in the church from a villain?
Our imagination fills in the details. Whatever the case and the game genre is, the low-poly aspect of
the 3D models doesn’t induce a penalty for creativity. In fact, in the last few years, we’ve seen more
games with low-poly assets making headlines.
If you are working in a small game development team or if you are the only developer, you’ll sometimes
want to focus on game mechanics first to see if the idea is fun. In situations like these, you’ll want
to prototype objects quickly so that you can embed them into your code. When the model you are
working on has a generic shape of the object you would like to design and has enough details, then
you might be done. That’s why it’s a highly sought-after choice among indie developers since you
can move forward quickly to the next model, then to programming your game. In essence, low-poly
modeling is like prototyping but it’s a few steps more refined than placing a cone for a tree, a cylinder
for a barrel, or a cube for a crate.
8 Creating Low-Poly Models

Last on the list is texturing. This is a process where you give a certain look and feel to your model. A
sandy beach usually looks yellow. If it’s a rocky beach, then the rocks will most likely have different tones
of gray. Thus, it’s about mainly applying color information to the surfaces of your model. Sometimes,
this color information will be complemented by additional data such as reflectivity, metallicity, and
roughness. We’ll discover all this in the next chapter.
It’s often said that most things in the computer world are a trade-off. Speed versus quality versus price
is a common example where you can most likely have two out of three but not all three. Despite all
the benefits a low-poly workflow provides, there are some limitations, but recognizing them will help
you to find workarounds or plan ahead.

Limitations of low-poly models

If your models need to show damage such as missing parts along an edge or some chunks blown out
of a face, then you need to introduce more polygons in those areas. This still won’t make it a high-poly
model, but you’ve got to consider additional polygons if you fancy some dynamic details.
Also, if you decide to animate your low-poly models, you’ll need to introduce more geometry by
adding more polygons in the areas where there will be bending and twisting (depending on the model
you are animating).
Additionally, since there are fewer polygons, you may have to be creative with the lighting of your scene
to give the illusion of detail. Although the color of the water in Figure 1.3 is the same throughout the
composition, the designer used a couple of clever methods to make the scene look more interesting.
First, the water’s surface looks fractured. This gives the illusion that there is some slight movement
in this water’s body. Perhaps there is a gentle breeze. Second, some of those fractures have a reflective
material applied. This makes the surface reflect the objects further ahead on the horizon.
We’ll look at ways to overcome these limitations in the following chapters, but for now, let’s learn how
to create a few low-poly models of our own.