This is such bad ass knowledge thanks so much for putting this out into the world. Btw, if anyone is watching this series, I bought the trim sheet and geometry from Gumroad to really understanding what is going on, and I'd highly highly recommend it - at like $5 it's an absolute steal for the amount of knowledge jammed into it! it's one thing to watch someone else doing it, but to have it in front of you opened in your own software and being able to study its usage in detail is absolutely invaluable and puts everything Tim is saying in perspective and helps to really accelerate and solidify the learning. To not only take a concept I'd only heard of recently and to make me understand just how crucial it is as a technique in a couple of hours is a huge accomplishment. Tim, do you think you'll ever do a series on how you've blended trim sheet use with tiling texture use and vertex painting for maximum impact in large enviros? The last time I'd touched that stuff hands-on (as I'm a concept artist making forays into production now) was probably 15 years ago, a lot has probably changes since then :D
first off, thanks so much for the support and awesome feedback! I really appreciate it :D and yea I am still planning videos on tiling textures, vertex blending etc to cover all those in future :)
@@PolygonAcademy Fantastic! Subscribed! Best of luck with the growth of your channel - although given the quality so far, I don't think you need much luck. Btw, are you into MMA or wrestling by any chance? Are those cauliflowers I peep?
@@stylusmonkeydarrenyeow6204 hahah indded it is califlower but im not tough enough for MMA lol. thats from my brother whacking me with a ps1 controller in the ear one time we were fighting as kids hahah. everyone always asks about MMA tho :D
@@PolygonAcademy You should lean into it and just tell people that you got attacked by a shark whilst saving a baby dolphin or something equally as cool and far fetched. Great tutorials by the way. Would be cool if you could do an overview theory video where you go into how and when to choose doing tiled textures, trim sheets, decal sheets, and fully baked and where to mix and match. Trying to work out on models what needs to be tiled ,what should be baked in substance (unique non tilable stuff), what should be "floaters", what should be "trim sheet" and its difficult to know why and when to use this stuff. Even more confusing when I see a fully completed asset that mixed all these techniques into one. So a video going over a few different 3d models and you pointing out what techniques you think they have used and why or what you would use and why, would go a long way. Especially if you point out the different ways it could be done, as in "you could use X here but you could also use Y and when to use them depends on Z"
I am just achieved my gradutation and my professors never explained that. my mind exploded when i have seen this tutorial... Absolutely fantastic and helpful. Like and subscribed.
I come back here every now and then and rewatch the construction part. It still excites me and blows my mind how practical it is to standardize your trim layout. Thats so golden. It also makes this technqiue more approachable. I was always intimidated by all those complex and extravagant layouts, it's so nice to kow now that it is about simplicity and reusablity at this point, just to have the tehnicalities layed out in the most practical way, instead of getting creative at this point for no reason and thinking of inserting variations that only will make your life harder. Those come later when using the trim sheet, not during the layout. So great to still learn from this video. I always freak out now when I exchange a texture in my game project and it simply just swaps wihtout any hassle. And with this typ of sectioning, it somehow always falls into place and just fits as long as you are working with a power of two also with your geometry. But even when you diverge a bit. It's really powerful.
I only just found out about this channel recently and while I'm late to the party, I found it has been tremendously helpful and I'm super grateful for it! Actually one of the easiest videos to follow and understand that I've seen in awhile.
The part I always feared with trim sheets is knowing how exactly do you split that thing up. Some leave a blank trim space beneath, others blend it with decals in one corner.. Having it standardized really allows you to dive into the thing right in. Less thinking more working ! Thanks for the gold knowledge !
Hello Tim, Im a Junior 3D Artist and this was the first time I ever used Trim Sheets. That Video is really helpfull I made a Modular Castle with this Texture and Im quite happy with the results of this Trimsheet keep up the great work with these Tutorials 👍
Texel density could be a great subject for one of your next tutorial! Man everything you say is so interesting, you're like the real teacher we never got. Keep it up and thank you so much for doing these videos!
i watched all your videos for trim sheets. I appreciate these videos because i am in art school and my professor didnt show me in depth how to create a trim sheet for UV mapping. I didnt use the program that you used for modeling but it was easy to understand and just worked in Maya
awesome! im glad it helped, I am glad you were able to translate it easily to maya, once you grasp the basic concepts tools shouldnt really matter, they are just like tools on a carpenters belt! thanks for watching :)
Somehow missed the notification for that one. I think I've said that before, but whatever : most professional channel out there... which the content is entirely free. Please, set up a Patreon account, so we can show you how much we appreciate your help! Thanks for continuing this series!!
Really like your approach to teaching, almost every sentence you say has a new nugget of information that has a high and smart impact on the workflow. You also motivate me to learn the environment design properly. Thanks so much!
Tim, my man. I have been looking for something like this for a while. I figured out more or less the same workflow based on your previous videos (trim sheets were a new concept for me back then). It is really cool to get reasurance, plus optimisation of my makeshift workflow. Your content is really amazing and platform independant. I could adapt everything you showcase in max into blender as a poly modelling tool. All I'm trying to say is your contet is really helpful and really outstandingly awesome. It helped me grow a lot! Thank you brother.
thanks so much! I try to focus on the high level theory more than specific buttons in programs because I know there is a wide variety of programs out there and want to make it so you can apply the concepts whatever your work flow. thanks for letting me know!
@@PolygonAcademy you tend to explain everything really indepth. So far all my questions were answered. I am a beginner max user. I used to use Maya but my college uses max for the 3D lowpoly/highpoly classes. So I also learned a few max things! :)
Dear Polygon Academy, Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and experience via this incredible Trim masterclass series. This is by far the best quality content I've ever seen on Trim setups, be proud of yourself and thank you very much for giving a such a great learning content to the community. You are awesome!
Argh, thank you!! This could not have come at a better time for my 3rd year uni project aha! You are great at what you do and thank you giving us great insight into industry practice :)
Other tutorials: Just simply prep your mesh for sculpting and keep the geometry nice and clean. This tutorial: Actually shows how it's done and doesn't assume you have been making trim sheets since when other kids were playing with Legos.
Wow looks like you dropped a bomb with this series, Gametextures had done an amazing but rather long ass stream on the subject but this looks more focused and streamlined, plus it's just an added bonus coming from you and this channel. Can't wait to get cracking on this :)
I figured out where that one dislike came from, it's because you didn't teach the whole alphabet. Thanks a lot for the tutorial it's really helpful to understand trim sheets.
I've actually been looking for a good reason to start using ZBrush again so I decided to follow this tutorial all the way through. I'm using Blender though but recently came over from 3DS Max after almost 2 decades of loyalty lol.
Love your vids Tim and glad to see you back here on YT in full force. I just recently started a course on Game Art and Design and so far been let down by the quality (or depth) of the curriculum. So again thanks a lot for your time and efforts here on YT and keep at it! Addendum: oh and do please make a dedicated tut on texel density and making texture res correspond with scale! That has been bugging me for a long time now and can't get a straight answer anywhere ;)
yup will do! thanks for watching. there are a couple great resources on texel density people posted on artstation, just search texel density artstation on google and you will probably find it.
I think that this is super great that your showing the workflow that is actually used and needed for ones tool kit! I was wondering if you would feel comfortable enough to use ZModeler to make you initial base mesh instead of Max or Maya?
Greetings Tim.., a doubt when generating hard edges ..., you recommend using this process "Crease" ...., why not use Bevel or parallel edges to harden the edges ....,? Crease offers better behavior to create hard edges ....? Thank you, un Saludo
i use crease when going to zbrush because if you bevel the edges it adds more concentrated geometry there along the edges and can create issues in zb when you subdivide where there are a ton of tiny little polygons along the edge that are not relative to the polygon density of the overall model, and you can get some errors when sculpting damage on edges and stuff. you could bevel but I have found crease to work better for basic zbrush base meshes. you could also bevel them and then dynamesh in zbrush as well to get even polygon density but thats an extra step.
Yeahhhh this is good! So stoked about checking out the other videos. Had a question about lightmaps for the models that use the trim sheets. Do you auto generate them in UE4 or lay it out yourself? Thank you for the videos btw! All of them dropping at once is just pure joy.
part 4 of this series covers that in depth! quick answer, for most models I will try an auto generate, but for modular kits/trim meshes I usually do a quick cleaner uv 2 in max.
took one look at this and was like, yep, that's exactly how I plan my trim sheets. :) But a little in I realized we're pretty different. My pipeline is to sculpt all my normals in Quixel's Ndo, then apply Material IDs, then go to Ddo and create the textures with hand painting and screening where necessary, and finally export to TGAs. I then quickly combine the normals and AO to the albedo and merge them into one shaded map (so I can see shadow details when there is no shading information), which I take to 3dsMax. From there I apply my trim sheets. So to plan that, I slap together lowpoly blockouts of my environment (the whole thing) and I'll open photoshop and create a 4098x4098 black and white texture, which I import as a UV plane to 3DsMax. Then as i do my blockout and realize what trims I need, i just "sketch" onto that photoshop UV and slap it onto my greybox. That tells me as I go, what do I need, and lets me quickly iterate and plan how to minimize textures to just a minimum number of sheets, reusing what I'm making as I make it. The upside -- planning and asset creation are done simultaneously. Very fast. If I had concept art to begin with then I can rapidly produce results for a producer or art lead to look at and they tend to appreciate having "done looking" greyboxes the same day as they issued the ticket. I do too, it it helps me think more of the finishing details of the scene day one rather than crash face first into them day 30. The downside -- I have ADD, so the act of closing one program to open another sometimes jogs me out of my flow, and results in focusing on one task rather than the other and getting carried away. To prevent that I had to buy another monitor and place it next to my 3ds main window to jump back and forth. I also tend to get complacent with my existing trim textures and materials, because UVing is such an old and tiresome process I associate it with things being nearing completion, and that turns me off to iterating models and trying new things as I go. (ADD, again, robbing me of speed gains using this workflow, if I allow it to do so.) Maybe that helps! Off to work. :D
dope! sounds like a good workflow, totally agree on having the done looking greyboxes as fast as possible. really helps with project momentum. thanks for sharing!
Hey, are you still planning a potential series on Udemy or Skillshare or something? This advice is invaluable and surprisingly hard to find good info for online, would love so much to have a full in-depth course covering a whole scene or whatever you are able to do :)
yea still planning some courses for 2020 hopefully, they will be super in depth and should cover everything someone needs to know to make environments as well as light them properly.
Hey great tutorial! I just have one question about the crease. You creased the edges to export to Zbrush, but as I remember crease works just in the software you are. So why did you do it if you didn't use the Turbo Smooth? Thank you!
I am pretty sure it translates over to ZB when you add the crease and use FBX, it's been a while since i did it, but there are a bunch of tutorials out there where crease comes over from max/maya to zbrush.
ah I wish u was my 3d lecturer 4 years ago.. My 3d tutor in uni was doing his own thing and wasn't explaining anything, i don't remember he mentioned about trim sheet at all. 🙄
Great video! What commands are you pressing to remove the faces + edges from the back? I can't seem to do it as quickly as you. Is there a specific name for doing this?
Hey Polygon Academy, your work is great but I was wondering if you could answer me a quick curious question please. The methods here, as for most things in asset design for games is quite labour intensive and if you have a street to make with 12 unique buildings, different textures and designs altogether, and you're designing trim sheets for just one of the buildings, how long does your client usually give you to do this job? I'm just trying to gauge the average expected time for such a project when high-end results are also the expectation. Also, no prefabs allowed :p
For something high quality at current AAA standards, probably a few days per building if they are exterior only, and with some time for iteration and feedback factored in, as a single artist that would probably take 8 working weeks or so. This is also factoring in time to make high quality trims and tiling textures, depending on the amount of different surface types. Ex a street of all painted wood houses or all brick that share many textures is going to take less time than each building being a totally unique set of surface materials.
@@PolygonAcademy That's good to know thank you so much. So far mine as a solo artist took 3 weeks working non-stop. That's from planning to final version with about 35 materials and everything is made from scratch. Definitely a sacrifice in quality in some places but if you'd like I can show you so you can get a better idea of what it is. I kept feeling like I was taking too long. ruclips.net/video/FQvA_qIwDSI/видео.html any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Water is fluidninja asset, debris is an asset pack, the rusted machines are assets I found too. The rest is all mine. Mind you, about 80% of the textures were from quixel too. I had to make some custom shaders, textures and decals.
what are your thoughts on trying the sculpting part on blender ? would you say its possible to deliver similar results I am confused in weather I should pick up on blender sculpting or zbrush
I have never used blender so I cant really say. but I have seen people get good sculpting results from it, so I think it is probably worth a shot, even if simply to be able to make a comparison, and starting with the free option is always nice haha. try it out! zbrush is great to learn if you want to work in the industry eventually, but if you are just starting out, finding budget friendly ways of developing skills is also great. at the end of the day its the end result that usually matters, not which software you used to get there :)
Love all your tips! I’m new to 3d but am using Maya what tool would I use to make creases in Maya or is this something I can only do in Max. Keep up the great tutorials it’s really inspiring me and helping me understand video game production.
I think maya you can harden/soften edges, not sure if its the same, alternatively you could add some chamfers or supporting edgeloops like most hp modeling workflows :)
First i wanna thanks for such great tutorial series on Trim sheet but I have a question. Right now i am creating sci-fi environment, should i create modular kit with unique texture or should use trim sheet with with medium polygon geometry ?
There's a crease tool, select an edge, shift right click and it's at the top of the drop down or go to mesh tools in the top menu. Only see the results with smooth preview on.
Hey Tim, Thank you very much for the video series but i have a question when you export trimsheet_a on 16:00. You started with modeling bottom part as three seperate object. But did you join them together as you exporting to zbrush ? I watched carefully video on 0.25 speed but i couldn't catch up with that. Thanks again.
each trim was it's own obj exported from max into zbrush and also its own seperate obj once I exported it out of zbrush, I didnt attach them at any point :) hope that helps!
how would I go about making a trim sheet for high texel density? Like if I want 1600 px per meter? I understand making a trim sheet for 512 px per meter, because if I make a 4mx4m sheet that uses a 2048 map, that divides evenly into 4 areas on the sheet. But for 1600 px per meter, I'd of course have to use a texture higher than 2048, which is not an option. So the only thing that makes sense to me is to use a smaller size plane for the sheet, in this case a 1m x 1m plane, right? So wouldn't I only be able to fit one texture on that? Which I guess would then give me 2048 px per meter? Which then defeats the purpose of putting multiple materials on the sheet..
So the option would be to tile the trim more horizontally so its repeated multiple times in 1m until you hit your density. Or you could use a 4 way tiling texture that is not broken into strips so you dont have to worry about thickness, like how you would tile a 4 way tiling brick texture on a wall instead of using trim textures to make rows of trim bricks based on the geo etc. In this case i would be asking why you need such an high texel density per m, thats pretty unheard of for games. Most console games even ps5 are still 512px/m, maybe 1024/m if on pc you have the 4k texture pack option. The higher your texel density, the more tiling you will have to do and the more noticeable repeated details will be, its a bit of a tradeoff.
@@PolygonAcademy Hey thanks for responding, Tim! Recently had an art test and that was the desired density. I was really trying to figure out a trim sheet so I could save on materials but there was no material limit for the test so I just used tiling textures for everything. Yeah I kinda thought 1600 was a little high for games but it was for a studio that makes AAA fps games so I thought maybe they went a little higher for the density. Maybe that's just what they wanted on the test and not what they actually use in game. So basically it would be defeating the purpose of using a trim sheet to only put one texture on it right? Like it would be better to just use a 4 way tiling texture at that point?
@@frankie3351 yea at that resolution its probably better to use 4 way tiles and then face weigghted normals on beveled edges to fake the nice smooth edge highlights, similar to how alien isolation did most of their props
Man thank you so much for these videos, I can't tell you how big of a help they are to reference when I'm feeling stressed out with an environment project! I have a question about your 3DS Max keyboard shortcuts though. I haven't set any up myself and can tell it's slowing down my workflow but haven't the slightest idea which functions are worth setting up shortcuts for and am concerned I'll overwrite something important or get swamped setting up shortcuts for every little thing. Do you have any advice or resources on how to approach keyboard shortcuts?
for current gen i use 512px/m so a 2048 would cover 4x4m, i usually just chop the trim sheet into a combo of 1m, 0.5, 0.25m thick trims. but when you are uv mapping there will be some squashing and stretching in most cases, but a 10-20% texel density difference is not going to be noticeable.
No probably not. You need actual geometry to 3d print details if you want the actual shapes to show up. You could use this workflow with a displacement map that actually displaces geometry and save that out, but just using a normal map wont work for 3d printing. So the answer is, yes but slightly different workflow using displacement and actual highres geometry :)
what I do is I manually make ID's in photoshop and plug them inside quixel mixer and start doing the trim's there I guess this still another way to cut the production by removing the sculpting process. Tim any thought about this?
sounds like an efficient method. I just assigned different color materials in 3ds max to each mask i want and chose that in painter as the mask option, but your method sounds super quick as well
If I may also add my thoughts to this: The sculpting process nowadays is pure preference or dependent on the art style. You could also do your trims entirely procedurally inside Substance Designer. A lot of times it seems faster, but you are working hard to get the textures look as if they where handsculpted and more realistic, whereas with handsculpting, they get that certain level of life and quality from the get go, that, I would argue, would take equally as long to achieve procedurally. Danny Carlone is a great Environment artists who mostly handsculpts his environment textures and uses the resulting bakes as a basis for his substances, and it shows imho: www.artstation.com/danniecarlone . This can be hard to decide really. It also depends on wether your target texel density can even hold all this sculpted information, or if you jus work on our heightmaps directly, or if you even have a normal map. And also of course, if you are experienced at sculpting. In the end I think, to use everyhting together and how it fits has the most benefit. Not everything needs a high poly. But stuff needs to be "touched" and "interacted" with, to deliver that certain feeling of less "CGI-ness" , if you know what I mean. No matter the process. There needs to always be some form of sculpting your heightmaps(normals) for stuff to look good. Quixel is certainly a great tool for that, esp. when they hopefully have decent tablet support in the future and as well as working from scans speeds up some of this process as well. Just like the use of photos did in the past.
please upload few tutorials on UV editing the workflow btw I have a doubt here that shouldn't we UV unwrap here? I mean honestly, it's my 4th in college and after hearing about this trim sheets I feel like I'm today years old i swear
hey Tim How your Wrap mode 1 can be operate, with no uv square ? When you modeling your trimsheet plane, the uv are never unwrapped. How Zbrush can handle the wrap mode without uv ??
There is more advanced techniques for Trimsheet ? Pixel Stretching Techniques, color gradient, vertex paint, decals, details maps, Mega Textures , etc.
I find it difficult to grasp the concept of trim sheets when it comes to environment design... for instance, I know have to do an assignment for university in which I have to create a landscape with a small village. Where would I want to use trim sheets? Isn't it better to have big buildings and such as a unique asset? And what about small details like fence posts or lamps? I would still create all of those as unique assets... or is this not a smart move?
trims would be great on buildings for things like door frames, long sections of wood planks etc. the rest you could fill in with tiling textures. I have rarely seen large buildings being done as unique unwraps for games, its hard to get the texel density consistent and high without breaking the building into multiple pieces and then using massive 4k textures on them, which is not ideal for texture memory. with a couple 2k tiling textures and a trim sheet you can accomplish a LOT and get a ton of variety in your buildings. things like fence posts and smaller objects can be unique textures, but even then lots of the time they are made with basic tiling textures if they are not super important. mainly hero assets and super important props get the unique treatment because they player actually tends to look at them, while things like a fence post...not so much haha.
Its so i can import each object as its own subobject. In that version of zb i was using if it was all one obj it would be one object. Having them seperate makes it easier to work with and you can also easily subdivide them separately when certain ones need more polygons for detail instead of subdiving the entire mesh. You can separate the mesh after i believe, this is just the way ive always done it haha. If there is a better/easier workflow, use that for sure
@@PolygonAcademy That's fair! I've always just used sub objects but the same file for export. However, having them separate does make things easier later on if you need to reimport stuff after the fact. I soon realised this after watching a bit more. Thanks buddy, really useful!
This is such bad ass knowledge thanks so much for putting this out into the world.
Btw, if anyone is watching this series, I bought the trim sheet and geometry from Gumroad to really understanding what is going on, and I'd highly highly recommend it - at like $5 it's an absolute steal for the amount of knowledge jammed into it! it's one thing to watch someone else doing it, but to have it in front of you opened in your own software and being able to study its usage in detail is absolutely invaluable and puts everything Tim is saying in perspective and helps to really accelerate and solidify the learning. To not only take a concept I'd only heard of recently and to make me understand just how crucial it is as a technique in a couple of hours is a huge accomplishment.
Tim, do you think you'll ever do a series on how you've blended trim sheet use with tiling texture use and vertex painting for maximum impact in large enviros? The last time I'd touched that stuff hands-on (as I'm a concept artist making forays into production now) was probably 15 years ago, a lot has probably changes since then :D
first off, thanks so much for the support and awesome feedback! I really appreciate it :D and yea I am still planning videos on tiling textures, vertex blending etc to cover all those in future :)
@@PolygonAcademy Fantastic! Subscribed! Best of luck with the growth of your channel - although given the quality so far, I don't think you need much luck.
Btw, are you into MMA or wrestling by any chance? Are those cauliflowers I peep?
@@stylusmonkeydarrenyeow6204 hahah indded it is califlower but im not tough enough for MMA lol. thats from my brother whacking me with a ps1 controller in the ear one time we were fighting as kids hahah. everyone always asks about MMA tho :D
@@PolygonAcademy You should lean into it and just tell people that you got attacked by a shark whilst saving a baby dolphin or something equally as cool and far fetched. Great tutorials by the way. Would be cool if you could do an overview theory video where you go into how and when to choose doing tiled textures, trim sheets, decal sheets, and fully baked and where to mix and match. Trying to work out on models what needs to be tiled ,what should be baked in substance (unique non tilable stuff), what should be "floaters", what should be "trim sheet" and its difficult to know why and when to use this stuff. Even more confusing when I see a fully completed asset that mixed all these techniques into one.
So a video going over a few different 3d models and you pointing out what techniques you think they have used and why or what you would use and why, would go a long way. Especially if you point out the different ways it could be done, as in "you could use X here but you could also use Y and when to use them depends on Z"
@@PolygonAcademy LOL, maybe that's why you got to work in the game industry, he wacked the controller info so hard into your head :D
I am just achieved my gradutation and my professors never explained that. my mind exploded when i have seen this tutorial... Absolutely fantastic and helpful. Like and subscribed.
Cheers! Glad it was helpful, thanks for watching!
Right here... Is some Pure Gold Content. It's rare to see this much knowledge not hidden behind a paywall. Thank you, sir! You are awesome.
you're welcome :)
Absolutely!!
I come back here every now and then and rewatch the construction part. It still excites me and blows my mind how practical it is to standardize your trim layout. Thats so golden. It also makes this technqiue more approachable. I was always intimidated by all those complex and extravagant layouts, it's so nice to kow now that it is about simplicity and reusablity at this point, just to have the tehnicalities layed out in the most practical way, instead of getting creative at this point for no reason and thinking of inserting variations that only will make your life harder. Those come later when using the trim sheet, not during the layout. So great to still learn from this video. I always freak out now when I exchange a texture in my game project and it simply just swaps wihtout any hassle. And with this typ of sectioning, it somehow always falls into place and just fits as long as you are working with a power of two also with your geometry. But even when you diverge a bit. It's really powerful.
I only just found out about this channel recently and while I'm late to the party, I found it has been tremendously helpful and I'm super grateful for it! Actually one of the easiest videos to follow and understand that I've seen in awhile.
The part I always feared with trim sheets is knowing how exactly do you split that thing up. Some leave a blank trim space beneath, others blend it with decals in one corner.. Having it standardized really allows you to dive into the thing right in. Less thinking more working ! Thanks for the gold knowledge !
Hello Tim,
Im a Junior 3D Artist and this was the first time I ever used Trim Sheets. That Video is really helpfull
I made a Modular Castle with this Texture and Im quite happy with the results of this Trimsheet
keep up the great work with these Tutorials 👍
This is exactly what I was looking for, a lot of people skip over the theory of planning and etc.
Thank you so much :)
failing to plan is planning to fail haha. so cliche but true! enjoy!
you are one of the best 3d tutorials creator on this platform, thanks a lot!
This is obscenly useful, just starting my 3rd Year Game Art course and all the help i can get is worth so much, thanks!
glad to hear :) share it with your classmates if you think it can help them, appreciate you watching!
Texel density could be a great subject for one of your next tutorial! Man everything you say is so interesting, you're like the real teacher we never got. Keep it up and thank you so much for doing these videos!
cheers! I keep seeing comments like this and it scares me how school is underpreparing students! happy they helped, thanks for tuning in :)
i watched all your videos for trim sheets. I appreciate these videos because i am in art school and my professor didnt show me in depth how to create a trim sheet for UV mapping. I didnt use the program that you used for modeling but it was easy to understand and just worked in Maya
awesome! im glad it helped, I am glad you were able to translate it easily to maya, once you grasp the basic concepts tools shouldnt really matter, they are just like tools on a carpenters belt! thanks for watching :)
Somehow missed the notification for that one. I think I've said that before, but whatever : most professional channel out there... which the content is entirely free. Please, set up a Patreon account, so we can show you how much we appreciate your help!
Thanks for continuing this series!!
Cheers! I am considering it at some point :) if i do ill make an announcement 👍
Really like your approach to teaching, almost every sentence you say has a new nugget of information that has a high and smart impact on the workflow. You also motivate me to learn the environment design properly. Thanks so much!
Tim, my man. I have been looking for something like this for a while. I figured out more or less the same workflow based on your previous videos (trim sheets were a new concept for me back then). It is really cool to get reasurance, plus optimisation of my makeshift workflow. Your content is really amazing and platform independant. I could adapt everything you showcase in max into blender as a poly modelling tool.
All I'm trying to say is your contet is really helpful and really outstandingly awesome. It helped me grow a lot! Thank you brother.
thanks so much! I try to focus on the high level theory more than specific buttons in programs because I know there is a wide variety of programs out there and want to make it so you can apply the concepts whatever your work flow. thanks for letting me know!
Really nice video, exactly what I was looking for. There are not that many tutorials about trim sheets on RUclips. Cheers
hope this answers any questions on trims! thats the goal anyways. thanks for watching :)
@@PolygonAcademy you tend to explain everything really indepth. So far all my questions were answered.
I am a beginner max user. I used to use Maya but my college uses max for the 3D lowpoly/highpoly classes. So I also learned a few max things! :)
@@Chauxz sweet! thats what I like to hear!
Dear Polygon Academy,
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and experience via this incredible Trim masterclass series. This is by far the best quality content I've ever seen on Trim setups, be proud of yourself and thank you very much for giving a such a great learning content to the community. You are awesome!
You're most welcome! thanks for taking the time to watch, always happy to hear people enjoying the content!
I cannot thank you enough for the tutorials you put out!
no problem, so stoked to hear you enjoy them :D
You are back!!! Thanks for the video.
back at it! I might disappear from time to time but will always be back to resurrect the channel :D enjoy!
Omg I was struggling with a trim sheet this week and how to plan it out ! You are the best🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
cheers! hope this helps bring some clarity for your projects!
Argh, thank you!! This could not have come at a better time for my 3rd year uni project aha!
You are great at what you do and thank you giving us great insight into industry practice :)
cool! good luck on your project, hope this series helps you crush it!
Only just getting into this now and you present it in such a clear and easy to understand way. Thanks so much!
thanks so much, really happy to hear that :)
Awesome! You are back :D I was looking for a good trim sheet tutorial so long. Thank you, Tim.
No problem, enjoy the series :)
Other tutorials: Just simply prep your mesh for sculpting and keep the geometry nice and clean.
This tutorial: Actually shows how it's done and doesn't assume you have been making trim sheets since when other kids were playing with Legos.
thanks! glad you enjoyed it :)
I demand more videos on specific topics like this!
lots more to come, enjoy the series!
Wow looks like you dropped a bomb with this series, Gametextures had done an amazing but rather long ass stream on the subject but this looks more focused and streamlined, plus it's just an added bonus coming from you and this channel. Can't wait to get cracking on this :)
cheers! yea the gametextures vid is great as well!
Bro, this is exactly what I was struggling with! Yesss
sweet! always happy when my content comes out in time to help people out :D
I figured out where that one dislike came from, it's because you didn't teach the whole alphabet.
Thanks a lot for the tutorial it's really helpful to understand trim sheets.
Hahaha i knew it! 😂 thanks, glad it helps!
I've actually been looking for a good reason to start using ZBrush again so I decided to follow this tutorial all the way through. I'm using Blender though but recently came over from 3DS Max after almost 2 decades of loyalty lol.
Excellent explanation, I found it very useful. Thanks a lot!
Thanks for all the tuts man, i'm learning so much from you!
you're welcome, thanks for stopping by to check them out!
Yes! This is just what I was looking for!!:)
dope! go forth and make some cool art :D
@@PolygonAcademy I'm on it! :)
Thanks so much Tim for the trim tutorials. You are great.
you're welcome, thanks for stopping by to watch :)
This is nice concentrated piece of tutorial! Too much valuable info. Thanks.
He's back! Keep it up
Back at it again 😅
Thank you so much for this, this playlist is exactly what I needed! :)
you're welcome, thanks for watching!
This is amazing! I love all of your videos! It's awesome to get some tutorials from an industry professional!
thanks for the kind words :D
Dude... exactly what I asked for and MORE, this is amazing!
Thanks :) happy to hear that!
absolutely SMASHED the sub button. You're a legend!!!!!
much love! thanks!
This is exactly what i was looking for for my scene :) cant wait to go through it proper :)
Enjoy!
Love your vids Tim and glad to see you back here on YT in full force. I just recently started a course on Game Art and Design and so far been let down by the quality (or depth) of the curriculum. So again thanks a lot for your time and efforts here on YT and keep at it!
Addendum: oh and do please make a dedicated tut on texel density and making texture res correspond with scale! That has been bugging me for a long time now and can't get a straight answer anywhere ;)
yup will do! thanks for watching. there are a couple great resources on texel density people posted on artstation, just search texel density artstation on google and you will probably find it.
Thanks so much for this your tutorials are the best on youtube dude
thanks! really appreciate the love :)
Tim is teaching me how to Trim
You're awesome man, learned a lot from you so far, thank you
so pumped up for more videos
I think that this is super great that your showing the workflow that is actually used and needed for ones tool kit! I was wondering if you would feel comfortable enough to use ZModeler to make you initial base mesh instead of Max or Maya?
Im super noob in zb but im 100% sure thats an equally valid workflow :)
Wow, Thank you for this tutorial, I will watch the entire series carefully. Thanks a lot :D
cheers, I hope you learn a few things and enjoy :)
Sharing this with all my classmates! Thanks dude
thanks for sharing :)
He's back!
back again :) jolting this channel back to life :)
Why am I smiling? Fantastic
thats what I like to hear :) enjoy the videos!
oh, hell yes this is what i was waiting for
Get on it :) enjoy!
Such an amazin content! Hofeully there wil be more soon. Thanks
Greetings Tim.., a doubt when generating hard edges ..., you recommend using this process "Crease" ...., why not use Bevel or parallel edges to harden the edges ....,? Crease offers better behavior to create hard edges ....? Thank you, un Saludo
i use crease when going to zbrush because if you bevel the edges it adds more concentrated geometry there along the edges and can create issues in zb when you subdivide where there are a ton of tiny little polygons along the edge that are not relative to the polygon density of the overall model, and you can get some errors when sculpting damage on edges and stuff. you could bevel but I have found crease to work better for basic zbrush base meshes. you could also bevel them and then dynamesh in zbrush as well to get even polygon density but thats an extra step.
@@PolygonAcademy Perfect thanks for the answer ...Un saludo
Thank you very much Tim! Great tutorials! I'm learning a lot!
Was wondering if you are still planning on doing a video on texel density? I haven't found a video that actually discusses it in depth.
this answer may be a bit too late but check the texel density tutorial from AENDOM.
Yeahhhh this is good! So stoked about checking out the other videos. Had a question about lightmaps for the models that use the trim sheets. Do you auto generate them in UE4 or lay it out yourself? Thank you for the videos btw! All of them dropping at once is just pure joy.
part 4 of this series covers that in depth! quick answer, for most models I will try an auto generate, but for modular kits/trim meshes I usually do a quick cleaner uv 2 in max.
@@PolygonAcademy thank you! And my bad I'm still on part 2. Impatient x.x
@@SimplyCrazySid no problem in gettin' excited :D
took one look at this and was like, yep, that's exactly how I plan my trim sheets. :) But a little in I realized we're pretty different.
My pipeline is to sculpt all my normals in Quixel's Ndo, then apply Material IDs, then go to Ddo and create the textures with hand painting and screening where necessary, and finally export to TGAs. I then quickly combine the normals and AO to the albedo and merge them into one shaded map (so I can see shadow details when there is no shading information), which I take to 3dsMax. From there I apply my trim sheets.
So to plan that, I slap together lowpoly blockouts of my environment (the whole thing) and I'll open photoshop and create a 4098x4098 black and white texture, which I import as a UV plane to 3DsMax. Then as i do my blockout and realize what trims I need, i just "sketch" onto that photoshop UV and slap it onto my greybox. That tells me as I go, what do I need, and lets me quickly iterate and plan how to minimize textures to just a minimum number of sheets, reusing what I'm making as I make it.
The upside -- planning and asset creation are done simultaneously. Very fast. If I had concept art to begin with then I can rapidly produce results for a producer or art lead to look at and they tend to appreciate having "done looking" greyboxes the same day as they issued the ticket. I do too, it it helps me think more of the finishing details of the scene day one rather than crash face first into them day 30.
The downside -- I have ADD, so the act of closing one program to open another sometimes jogs me out of my flow, and results in focusing on one task rather than the other and getting carried away. To prevent that I had to buy another monitor and place it next to my 3ds main window to jump back and forth. I also tend to get complacent with my existing trim textures and materials, because UVing is such an old and tiresome process I associate it with things being nearing completion, and that turns me off to iterating models and trying new things as I go. (ADD, again, robbing me of speed gains using this workflow, if I allow it to do so.)
Maybe that helps! Off to work. :D
dope! sounds like a good workflow, totally agree on having the done looking greyboxes as fast as possible. really helps with project momentum. thanks for sharing!
I was just thinking abt this.. Right in time thankx!!
you got it :)
1 thumbs down? wth!! this is good tutorial!!!
Hey, are you still planning a potential series on Udemy or Skillshare or something? This advice is invaluable and surprisingly hard to find good info for online, would love so much to have a full in-depth course covering a whole scene or whatever you are able to do :)
yea still planning some courses for 2020 hopefully, they will be super in depth and should cover everything someone needs to know to make environments as well as light them properly.
Your content is amazing! Thank you very much!
You’re welcome!
dude, make a course, full course on building an env from start to finish, i'll pay good money for it. You r amazing
Ty for more videos! i need moar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! also thank you for all your help!
haha thanks for the passionate support :) appreciate it!
Hey great tutorial! I just have one question about the crease. You creased the edges to export to Zbrush, but as I remember crease works just in the software you are. So why did you do it if you didn't use the Turbo Smooth? Thank you!
I am pretty sure it translates over to ZB when you add the crease and use FBX, it's been a while since i did it, but there are a bunch of tutorials out there where crease comes over from max/maya to zbrush.
@@PolygonAcademy awesome, I'm going to look into it! Thank you for the quick answer.
Really great video - super useful, good job :)
thanks!
ah I wish u was my 3d lecturer 4 years ago.. My 3d tutor in uni was doing his own thing and wasn't explaining anything, i don't remember he mentioned about trim sheet at all. 🙄
ah that sucks! but glad you found my channel, hope it helps :)
Awesome content, you are awesome!
thanks! appreciate the love :D
Great work!!!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
@@PolygonAcademy Finishing up on it now it looks pretty good so far.
i have watched this video like a hundred times lol
Thank you bro, you save my arts.
haha cheers, glad it helped :)
Great video! What commands are you pressing to remove the faces + edges from the back? I can't seem to do it as quickly as you. Is there a specific name for doing this?
Think it was the defualt F4 to toggle edged faces? That and alt+x to make meshes transparent are my main ones
it would be cool to know which of these parts are separate models, just to understand cause I work in an other Software
Each trim line were all exported separately and brought into zb as their own sub-tools :)
Hey Polygon Academy, your work is great but I was wondering if you could answer me a quick curious question please. The methods here, as for most things in asset design for games is quite labour intensive and if you have a street to make with 12 unique buildings, different textures and designs altogether, and you're designing trim sheets for just one of the buildings, how long does your client usually give you to do this job? I'm just trying to gauge the average expected time for such a project when high-end results are also the expectation. Also, no prefabs allowed :p
For something high quality at current AAA standards, probably a few days per building if they are exterior only, and with some time for iteration and feedback factored in, as a single artist that would probably take 8 working weeks or so. This is also factoring in time to make high quality trims and tiling textures, depending on the amount of different surface types. Ex a street of all painted wood houses or all brick that share many textures is going to take less time than each building being a totally unique set of surface materials.
@@PolygonAcademy That's good to know thank you so much. So far mine as a solo artist took 3 weeks working non-stop. That's from planning to final version with about 35 materials and everything is made from scratch. Definitely a sacrifice in quality in some places but if you'd like I can show you so you can get a better idea of what it is. I kept feeling like I was taking too long.
ruclips.net/video/FQvA_qIwDSI/видео.html
any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Water is fluidninja asset, debris is an asset pack, the rusted machines are assets I found too. The rest is all mine. Mind you, about 80% of the textures were from quixel too. I had to make some custom shaders, textures and decals.
what are your thoughts on trying the sculpting part on blender ? would you say its possible to deliver similar results I am confused in weather I should pick up on blender sculpting or zbrush
I have never used blender so I cant really say. but I have seen people get good sculpting results from it, so I think it is probably worth a shot, even if simply to be able to make a comparison, and starting with the free option is always nice haha. try it out! zbrush is great to learn if you want to work in the industry eventually, but if you are just starting out, finding budget friendly ways of developing skills is also great. at the end of the day its the end result that usually matters, not which software you used to get there :)
Love all your tips! I’m new to 3d but am using Maya what tool would I use to make creases in Maya or is this something I can only do in Max. Keep up the great tutorials it’s really inspiring me and helping me understand video game production.
I think maya you can harden/soften edges, not sure if its the same, alternatively you could add some chamfers or supporting edgeloops like most hp modeling workflows :)
@@PolygonAcademy thank you again! Will definitely be supporting your gumroad!🍻🍻
First i wanna thanks for such great tutorial series on Trim sheet but I have a question. Right now i am creating sci-fi environment, should i create modular kit with unique texture or should use trim sheet with with medium polygon geometry ?
for modular kits, use tiling textures and trim sheets, along with some medium poly stuff for sure. it makes it way more versatile
Thanks for video.How about Ultime Trimsheet technique?
This is very helpful. Thank you
Awesome tutorial! I was wondering though, what’s the ‘crease’ equivalent in Maya? Is it ‘soften/harden edges’? 🧐
not sure but I know there is something similar, perhaps a maya gangster can chime in below!
There's a crease tool, select an edge, shift right click and it's at the top of the drop down or go to mesh tools in the top menu. Only see the results with smooth preview on.
@@NiallBenzie awesome! I knew there was a way, have seen people creasing with smooth preview on before, thanks for sharing :D
@@NiallBenzie Thanks for the help!
Hey Tim,
Thank you very much for the video series but i have a question when you export trimsheet_a on 16:00. You started with modeling bottom part as three seperate object. But did you join them together as you exporting to zbrush ? I watched carefully video on 0.25 speed but i couldn't catch up with that.
Thanks again.
each trim was it's own obj exported from max into zbrush and also its own seperate obj once I exported it out of zbrush, I didnt attach them at any point :) hope that helps!
Oh i see, then full trim consist of 7 obj file.Thanks for answer ^^
@@fernwehmind exactly, thats why i named them a-g to keep track
Awesome video
Thanks :)
Is it better to go 4k on textures and then scale down later? would you get a slightly better material out of that?
Yea thats an option, you can also set it to downscale directly in unreal so it uses the map as a 2048 if you need to save on texture memory
@@PolygonAcademy Thanks!
how would I go about making a trim sheet for high texel density? Like if I want 1600 px per meter? I understand making a trim sheet for 512 px per meter, because if I make a 4mx4m sheet that uses a 2048 map, that divides evenly into 4 areas on the sheet. But for 1600 px per meter, I'd of course have to use a texture higher than 2048, which is not an option. So the only thing that makes sense to me is to use a smaller size plane for the sheet, in this case a 1m x 1m plane, right? So wouldn't I only be able to fit one texture on that? Which I guess would then give me 2048 px per meter? Which then defeats the purpose of putting multiple materials on the sheet..
So the option would be to tile the trim more horizontally so its repeated multiple times in 1m until you hit your density. Or you could use a 4 way tiling texture that is not broken into strips so you dont have to worry about thickness, like how you would tile a 4 way tiling brick texture on a wall instead of using trim textures to make rows of trim bricks based on the geo etc.
In this case i would be asking why you need such an high texel density per m, thats pretty unheard of for games. Most console games even ps5 are still 512px/m, maybe 1024/m if on pc you have the 4k texture pack option.
The higher your texel density, the more tiling you will have to do and the more noticeable repeated details will be, its a bit of a tradeoff.
@@PolygonAcademy Hey thanks for responding, Tim! Recently had an art test and that was the desired density. I was really trying to figure out a trim sheet so I could save on materials but there was no material limit for the test so I just used tiling textures for everything.
Yeah I kinda thought 1600 was a little high for games but it was for a studio that makes AAA fps games so I thought maybe they went a little higher for the density. Maybe that's just what they wanted on the test and not what they actually use in game.
So basically it would be defeating the purpose of using a trim sheet to only put one texture on it right? Like it would be better to just use a 4 way tiling texture at that point?
@@frankie3351 yea at that resolution its probably better to use 4 way tiles and then face weigghted normals on beveled edges to fake the nice smooth edge highlights, similar to how alien isolation did most of their props
this is amazing !! thank you !
no problem, hope it helped you out :)
Man thank you so much for these videos, I can't tell you how big of a help they are to reference when I'm feeling stressed out with an environment project! I have a question about your 3DS Max keyboard shortcuts though. I haven't set any up myself and can tell it's slowing down my workflow but haven't the slightest idea which functions are worth setting up shortcuts for and am concerned I'll overwrite something important or get swamped setting up shortcuts for every little thing. Do you have any advice or resources on how to approach keyboard shortcuts?
Is there a formula for dividing trim for different texel density? Mine is 50px/m. How to calculate trims?
for current gen i use 512px/m so a 2048 would cover 4x4m, i usually just chop the trim sheet into a combo of 1m, 0.5, 0.25m thick trims. but when you are uv mapping there will be some squashing and stretching in most cases, but a 10-20% texel density difference is not going to be noticeable.
Great videos Tim! Are you using References for these trim sheets?
not for these ones, i just winged it for time, but usually I will make a ref board or base it on shapes shown in concept art yea
Polygon Academy Cool, thanks!
Will this work for 3d printing to have very high detail? I want to print out walls for Star Wars Black Series 6 inch diorama.
No probably not. You need actual geometry to 3d print details if you want the actual shapes to show up. You could use this workflow with a displacement map that actually displaces geometry and save that out, but just using a normal map wont work for 3d printing. So the answer is, yes but slightly different workflow using displacement and actual highres geometry :)
Amazing !! Thanks
You’re welcome!
Hey Tim! Thanks for doing this series it's super helpful!
Is there a reason for using Max or can this step be done in Maya as well?
This can pretty much be done in any 3d software, max, maya, blender etc. I just have been using max my whole life so thats why i used it haha
what I do is I manually make ID's in photoshop and plug them inside quixel mixer and start doing the trim's there I guess this still another way to cut the production by removing the sculpting process. Tim any thought about this?
sounds like an efficient method. I just assigned different color materials in 3ds max to each mask i want and chose that in painter as the mask option, but your method sounds super quick as well
If I may also add my thoughts to this: The sculpting process nowadays is pure preference or dependent on the art style. You could also do your trims entirely procedurally inside Substance Designer. A lot of times it seems faster, but you are working hard to get the textures look as if they where handsculpted and more realistic, whereas with handsculpting, they get that certain level of life and quality from the get go, that, I would argue, would take equally as long to achieve procedurally. Danny Carlone is a great Environment artists who mostly handsculpts his environment textures and uses the resulting bakes as a basis for his substances, and it shows imho: www.artstation.com/danniecarlone . This can be hard to decide really. It also depends on wether your target texel density can even hold all this sculpted information, or if you jus work on our heightmaps directly, or if you even have a normal map. And also of course, if you are experienced at sculpting. In the end I think, to use everyhting together and how it fits has the most benefit. Not everything needs a high poly. But stuff needs to be "touched" and "interacted" with, to deliver that certain feeling of less "CGI-ness" , if you know what I mean. No matter the process. There needs to always be some form of sculpting your heightmaps(normals) for stuff to look good. Quixel is certainly a great tool for that, esp. when they hopefully have decent tablet support in the future and as well as working from scans speeds up some of this process as well. Just like the use of photos did in the past.
Thanks a lot for the tutorial :).
you're welcome :)
Thank you so much for this series Tim! Caught up on all of your videos yesterday and learnt a whole bunch!
please upload few tutorials on UV editing the workflow
btw I have a doubt here that shouldn't we UV unwrap here? I mean honestly, it's my 4th in college and after hearing about this trim sheets I feel like I'm today years old
i swear
Part 4 of this video series is all about uvs :) keep watching!
No need to unwrap at this stage, we bake to a flat plane in part 3 ;)
THANK YOU VERY MUCH !!!
welcome :D
hey Tim
How your Wrap mode 1 can be operate, with no uv square ? When you modeling your trimsheet plane, the uv are never unwrapped. How Zbrush can handle the wrap mode without uv ??
There is more advanced techniques for Trimsheet ? Pixel Stretching Techniques, color gradient, vertex paint, decals, details maps, Mega Textures , etc.
I find it difficult to grasp the concept of trim sheets when it comes to environment design... for instance, I know have to do an assignment for university in which I have to create a landscape with a small village. Where would I want to use trim sheets? Isn't it better to have big buildings and such as a unique asset? And what about small details like fence posts or lamps? I would still create all of those as unique assets... or is this not a smart move?
trims would be great on buildings for things like door frames, long sections of wood planks etc. the rest you could fill in with tiling textures.
I have rarely seen large buildings being done as unique unwraps for games, its hard to get the texel density consistent and high without breaking the building into multiple pieces and then using massive 4k textures on them, which is not ideal for texture memory. with a couple 2k tiling textures and a trim sheet you can accomplish a LOT and get a ton of variety in your buildings.
things like fence posts and smaller objects can be unique textures, but even then lots of the time they are made with basic tiling textures if they are not super important. mainly hero assets and super important props get the unique treatment because they player actually tends to look at them, while things like a fence post...not so much haha.
@@PolygonAcademy Thank you, this seems very reasonable; I will try to build my first asset with this in mind! :)
I'm trying to follow this tutorial using C4D and I found there is no crease option on it, what would you recommend me?
unfortunatley I have never used C4D before so i dont know the equivalent action :/ sorry!
@@PolygonAcademy no worries, I'll try using Maya maybe. C4D interface it's super intuitive but I always get errors or have problems when polymodelling
Hi there, sorry if it's obvious but is there any reason you didn't export them as one OBJ rather than individually?
Its so i can import each object as its own subobject. In that version of zb i was using if it was all one obj it would be one object. Having them seperate makes it easier to work with and you can also easily subdivide them separately when certain ones need more polygons for detail instead of subdiving the entire mesh. You can separate the mesh after i believe, this is just the way ive always done it haha. If there is a better/easier workflow, use that for sure
@@PolygonAcademy That's fair! I've always just used sub objects but the same file for export. However, having them separate does make things easier later on if you need to reimport stuff after the fact. I soon realised this after watching a bit more. Thanks buddy, really useful!