RGB Crowned Skull by @ArtCebola
Wearables
RGB Crowned Skull
- Rarity: exotic
- Category: helmet
External Image
Link to editor
Hey guys I’m still preparing this wearable, so please don’t worry about it. It is not done yet!
Once I finish it I comment here again.
Also, let @michi review it, please!
@michi could you check it for me, please?
Really appreciate it!
Talk back soon!
Thank you, let me know when you’re ready and I can review 
Hi @michi, it is ready! 
Thanks in advance!
The collection has been assigned to michitodd
Hey @Cebollitos , this is such a sick design!
Looks really good in game but currently it has a really high tri count and material count. I recommend possibly removing the back faced culling outline and even separating the crown to an individual item itself. Please drop down to at least 1500 tris, this is because in game, even if the builder has disabled a category, in backpack it’s now a feature to unhide regardless of clipping. So Helmet should stay as close to Helmet category as possible.
Super happy to help and discuss, so please feel free to ask for any support!
Hi @michi, thanks for your feedback! Appreciate it!
I’m trying hard to understand why the builder keeps saying it has 10 textures, because the 3D has only 4 textures. They are the ones really necessary to the model: base color, alfa and emissive. I tested a lot of combinations of materials and textures (separating pieces, joining pieces, using the native materials, with the native colors, using only image base textures, and other approaches) and it always gives me these strange numbers of materials and textures. I’m even reusing the same texture as Base Color and as Emissive to avoid using 2 different images for each.
Also I checked the glb. file after exporting and importing and it is the same.
Like, I exported the .glb from Blender, imported it on Builder, exported from the Builder, and imported on Blender again, only to check. And it came back the same 3 materials and 4 textures. Why the builder keeps saying it has 10 textures?
Now talking about the tris! I get it about the cartoon style outline. It is a really cool effect, and this effect is what makes this wearable really outstand, in my view. But it really takes a tool on number of tris.
I gave my best to try to decrease (more) the number of tris. I spent the last 2 days removing as much tris as I could and kept only the ones that are really necessary to support the shape and the FX of the wearable itself. I swear I removed as many as I could. And I was able to decrease from 7k to 4k tris.
Also the final model now has only 1.08 MB, a lot less than the 3 MB limit. Being that “fit”, you think the number would still be a problem??
Thanks again!
1 Like
Hey @Cebollitos ,
Lowering tri count is always a struggle. I’ll break down the existing design so I can look at areas it can be updated to be a lower poly design without losing quality!
Currently:
4200 tris
- Outer Skull: 890tri
- Inner Skull: 966tri
- Crown Outer: 770tri
- Inner Crown: 1638tri
Textures:
Hair_MAT:
UV MAP - Emission
Hair Material
Hair_MAT.001:
UV MAP: Base Colour
UV MAP: Emission
UV MAP - Alpha
Hair_MAT.002:
UV MAP: Base colour
Crown Material:
UV MAP : Base Colour
UV MAP: Emission
I think there’s also HAIR_MAT getting counted and another transparency somewhere maybe.
Material swatches being the UV MAPS:
- FullSkull_Base_color.png
- WhiteAuraS.001
- WhiteAuraS
- crownBaseColorTiny
- crownEmissiveTiny
Hmmm, looking at what can be improved!
Even without the outer shapes this exceeds 1500tri count because of the crown. Simplify the design a bit by removing some of the decorative elements, I’ve done this quickly by removing the number of gems and spheres above the points and enlarged the gems. This is an example and just an easier option to reduce the crown from 1500 to 658tris.
I would hate for it too lose some of the wow factor so I recommend creating a UV material specifically for emission that is backface culling and opaque.
Then remove the outline from the crown and apply the new material to the outer skull, crown and gems. The uv I quickly made is just an example to show how you can use the one UV for multiple glow points, I made the crown a dark yellow so the gems glow brighter:
Then it can look however you like the colour to come through without effecting the HAIR_MAT underneath.
Now it’s two materials and 2500 tris but I think still looks pretty cool!
Being a little naughty I’ve just decimated the geometry of the outer and inner skull dropping the model down to 1600.
If you have the time I recommend trying to do topology again on the inner skull and make it a bit sharper but using the same otherwise you can just reduce with the mesh tab> clean up> decimate geometry but I always recommend if you have the time trying the topology one more time.
Everything is just a recommendation because its your design and what matters to you is how you will prioritize the simplification of the design.
Let me know what you think or if you get stuck again! I haven’t tested this in game so I encourage you to experiment with the glow colours and brightness.
2 Likes
Hi @Michi, I really appreciate you breaking down the model and the suggestions. I will work on it. I can see there is a WhiteAura.jpg that is not used and it is being counted, I don’t know why. And also one texture that is being counted as 2 textures, the base color. I will try to join them all, and work with maps somehow.
I think I will remove the whole outter skull. It will drop the number of tris to around 3200.
I’ve seem other Helmets in the market that have being approved and they have similar amount, around 3100 and 3300. Would this be ok?
With the textures, I know it can get a bit glitchy when using hair_MAT and sometimes naming conventions in the file so I’m happy to be a bit more lax. With the Tri count, attempt to get it as close to 1500 as possible. Previously wearables can be approved by combining categories but now due to the change in the way the backpack works that was requested by community, it’s a little less lax.
Do what you can and I’m happy to review, some other suggestions for the crown would be swapping the 3D embellishments to be flat 2D UV elements to drop it down. 
Feel free to keep asking questions and I’ll see how else I can help!
2 Likes
This builder was getting me crazy @michi !
The new version of the model has the same materials, the same textures and for some reason the numbers are different! I just cleaned everything and created all materials from zero. But now the builder says it has less textures/materials.
I was using 3 materials and 4 images, one of them was being used twice, but the builder still said it had 6 textures. So I moved the extra texture to other material that made more sense in the model!
Also, there was an issue on the number of tris. Even tho I triangulated the model before exporting, the Blender and the builder were showing different numbers of tris.
But now I removed one “repeat” in the array of the crown. Before it had 7 parts, now it has only 6.
I removed more vertices from other parts of the mesh as well. So I could drop a lot the numbers.
I just updated the file!
What you think?
For now, I will leave here, a video of this wearable as a face filter. 
Just having a look now @Cebollitos , dont forget to join all the objects. That will also multiply the texture/material count.
Currently there’s two objects:
- Crown w/ backdrop
- Skull
When we combine the objects you’ll see there’s 4 materials:
A Texture is any effect or UV:
So in this case the materials have:
Hair_MAT.004:
- UV Texture; Base Colour - FullSkull_Base_color 2
Hair_MAT.005:
- UV Texture: Base Colour - FullSkull_Base_color 2
Hair_MAT.003:
- UV Texture: Base Colour - WhiteAuraS.003
- UV Texture: Alpha Blend - WhiteAuraS.003
- UV Texture: Emission - WhiteAuraS.002
CrownMaterials:
- UV Texture: Base Colour - crownBaseColorTiny.001
- UV Texture: Emission - crownEmissiveTiny.001
You can fix this by combining materials and recycling UV textures in the same material swatch (if that makes sense). This would should show as 5 textures but the FullSkull_Base_color 2 was separated into two objects, once on crown and once on skull.
With the tris I still recommend the crown is taking the most space with a tri count of 1500 and previously I believe the skull was only 800tris (give or take) but is now 1500tri.
Super happy to have a 1:1 to help you get this ready to a point that will support the platform!
It’s a really awesome project that I will love to see launched in time. 
I might send you my calendly link and contact so I can continue offline to find the best solution. Let me know!
1 Like
Hey @Michi, I just woke up. And will work on it again now. Yesterday I already spent the whole day on it.
I thought I had combined all meshs in one. And also the names of the materials originally weren’t Hair_MAT.003, Hair_MAT.004 and Hair_MAT.005. They were Hair_MAT, Hair_MAT.001 and Hair_MAT.002. Is it normal the builder to change the names?
I did a lot of tests, on builder and in-world. The builder and the in-world show different FX. Also in the builder I can see when I disable the back face culling (what would help in the yellow crown case. Because of the back face culling it has to have the back of the inmer crown). Even tho I can see it working on builder. It doesn’t work in the same way in-world.
When I kept 3 materials with 4 textures the builder still showed 3 materials and 6 textures. But the FX was broken. To fix I took one of the 4 textures and created a new material that keeps saying 6 textures, the same number of textures (6). But now it is the same 4 textures but being separated in 4 materials that doens’t break the FX.
So it does not make sense to keep them together (broken).
The issue is with the emissive. That emitts light even if it is black (#010101). Something I tried to avoid.
Please lets do this 1:1 man. The anxiety levels just go high when I upload a new version. Even tho the model is really small in size file. The textures too. There are 2 of my texture that are only 8px x 8px.
I tested and changed materials, tested and changed UV maps. And still this was the “fittest” that I got when talking about the in-world FX. Considerating the builder and in-world differences.
Hi @Michi, I was giving another try to the materials and I really need 3 different materials!
The model needs the 3 different maps (base color, alpha and emissive).
Skull: hair_MAT
Aura: hair_MAT.002
Crown: crownMaterial
Why I can’t join the Crown Material to the Aura Material?
- Because the Blend Mode of the Crown Material is Opaque and the Blend Mode of the Aura Material is Alpha Blend. The Alpha Blend affects the mesh even if I UV map it to a point blank (white #ffffff) of the image (where it should be opaque). So putting the Aura Material and the Crown Material together is impossible. It is the same to the Skull Material. It can’t be joined to the Aura Material for the same reason.
UV mapping doesn’t help here!
Why I can’t join the Crown Material to the Skull Material then?
- Because the Skull Material is Hair Color affected and the Crown Material isn’t. What makes impossible to join them as well, otherwise the crown would be changing colors too.
So this 3 materials can’t be linked in any way.
Now talking about the images I’m using. I have only 1 image being used in each of them, so 3 images in the whole model. I use the same image as Base Color and as Emissive. What turn the 1 image into 2 textures (that’s a Builder thing). And then it says I have 6 textures when I have only 3 images being used.
And there is another problem, the outter skull is emissive, but the inner skull is not. And the in-world experience keeps emitting color even if it is black in the uv mapped image. So I can’t put them together ass well. Even If I use different uv maps to place the not emissive part in a black area of the image, it still emits light in the in-world experience.
So I would have 4 materials and the same as before 6 textures.
I will show you in the meeting!!!
I really appreciate the effort you have put on it!
1 Like
Hey @michi, it was great to talk to you! It was a productive chat.
I just updated the file with the new changes.
Really appreciate it!
