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I am trying to rig models for an old game using Blender. There is a poly limit of 5000. One thing has has proven to be a bit of a problem is that some of the models I am trying to rig have the clothes as separate objects from the base model, leading to unnecessary faces in the sense that the "skin" is not visible as it is blocked out by the clothes.

What I am wondering is, do I have a better way of deleting these occluded faces other than manually selecting them by hand?

What I've tried so far:

  1. Merging nearby vertices and then selecting interior faces and deleting them. This kind of works, but merging them leads to vertices placed in between where the skin was and where the clothes were. This deforms the clothes. Perhaps there is a way to pick the outer vertices as the point where the merged ones should be?

  2. Using the boolean modifier. This kind of works? Some faces definitely do get deleted on the "difference" mode, but not all of them. And, worse, depending on the object selected, sometimes it'll delete the entire body (e.g., in this particular case, the hair just nukes the whole model - example: http://sis.sy/WhiteTimidBeta).

If you can't tell, I'm a total noob, but I have tried (and failed).

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  • $\begingroup$ The link doesn't work for me. But anyway the boolean may help but you need to make both meshes to meet some basic requirements: Mainly they should be manifold. So e.g. if the cloth is trousers, you have to close all three holes (just click alt + left click on border edge to select the ring and press F). Next I would apply "merge by distance" to prevent any doubles. Even that may not be enough if there is some overlapping volume". You can check it by selecting "non-manifold" vertices. Also check normals, using "recalculate normals outside" may help too. $\endgroup$
    – Vajtus
    Jan 4 at 23:07
  • $\begingroup$ You may also consider using Union instead of Difference because otherwise, first Boolean will cause your character to cease being manifold. If it is about a resurrection of an old game, it shouldn't be such a big downgrading to weld it all together, if all the "connecting" geometry would be dark... $\endgroup$
    – Vajtus
    Jan 4 at 23:17

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You could write a shader in your engine that gets rid of unwanted faces. The best practice though - depending on the game style - might be to redo the model and make each bodypart piecewise - which is typically what games like half life, n64 and psx titles have done

meaning you start off with one mesh like a head - and then once its where you want it to be in edit mode - you add another mesh for, say a jacket IN EDIT MODE SO ITS ALL PART OF THE SAME MESH GROUP

Its a strange concept at first if you're used to having everything in one mesh but its actually what many games used to do and to top it all off, since youre working with simple geometry rigging and texturing will be super easy

I get what you're saying though. Unfortunantly if you dont want to write a shader you will have to manually delete, shape, and reunwrap your model as fit. It sucks and I understand the pain. Ive done it before myself.

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