Further Mitigating Shrink-Wrapped Objects in Blender: Object-Smoothing with Less Vertices!

Okay, so I ran into this deal where too many vertices on an object — when shrink-wrapping it to my character can actually distort the object being shrink-wrapped. This actually makes sense when you think about it.

So, let’s do a quick re-cap:

This is an example of less vertices. However:

This would be more vertices. See what I’m getting at?

Now luckily in my first game, the character is only ever going to get so close to the camera during gameplay and again, the game won’t be entirely 3D. Still, I do intend for it to be native 4k on setups that can support it so, detail matters.

Can we actually ‘smooth’ these vertices out though? It wouldn’t make sense for apparent polygon count to be different/less for character aesthetics versus how it is for the character itself. Don’t try to accomplish this by dealing with the vertices’ options in edit mode, it’s more of a quicksand trap than it is a rabbit-hole.

For one, there is a ‘smooth shade’ option in object mode:

While this doesn’t change the shape of the object itself, it does change how the lighting reacts to it. In other words, the geometry remains the same, but less apparently which may be enough considering your needs.

Changing the geometry itself requires a modifier called Subdivision Surface:

Play around with settings to achieve desired effect.

It totally works for me!

Now, I’m going to take this story a step further. As I mentioned, I’m attempting to add ‘cyber-wear’ to the character. I don’t exactly have a specific direction I want to take this; I just want something ‘cyberpunky’ that I can refine later.

First off, let’s reference what I’m talking about.

This can go in many different directions, endless possibilities. Luckily, considering my project is going to be a ‘toon’ or ‘anime’ art style, I don’t have to concern myself so much with effects like skin indentations or metallic shadings.

So, I’m actually going to start with cube objects instead of a plane as the plane objects aren’t sculptable.

Because I’m new to Blender, we’ll do this step by step:

Let’s not touch that shrink-wrap modifier yet!

And that many subdivisions in vertices caused distortion so I’m going to see if I can get by on one horizontal divide for now.

It works with even that one divide.

There are ways to add new materials to existing objects or an old material to a new object in the materials side menu:

Using all these methods I mentioned thus far, I get a pretty cool beginner cyber-wear aesthetic:

This can easily be modified for a more desired effect.