Using 3D Scans from 123D Catch as Assets/Game Objects

Hello Unity Folks,

My Name is Paul. I am studying Graphic Design in the Netherlands. Therefore my software knowledge is originating more around the Adobe Suite. Nevertheless i have played around with 3D Software like Cinema 4D or SketchUp. Last year I found out about the Private Version of Unity. With very little knowledge about Unity, a friend and I managed to create some kind of FPS-game/experiment. (http://paulbille.de/projects/2017/eatshitordie/eatshitordie.html) So much for that.

For a new project I am now trying to create a walkable Open-World Map in which I use 3D Scans gathered from Autodesk’s 123D Catch App Community. (Which will close down in April) Basically a pretty easy thing, but…

The problem I am facing is the following:

The models from the 123D Catch App have way to many polygons for using them in Unity. Therefore I am tying to create low-poly game models out of them.

I found already many tutorials for workflows with software like MeshLab, Instant Mesh or Blender. But my knowledge in these applications is close to zero and the steps are not detailed enough for me to follow.

The next thing is. These models are mainly made by non-professionals, they are very imperfect, have holes or are non watertight, which is fine for me. But i guess it is a problem for texture baking or creating game objects out of them?

My question is: Is it even possible to create Game Objects / Assets out of these imperfect scans with preserving their imperfect appearance? Or do they need to be watertight and closed meshes?

I hope this is understandable and someone could help me or lead me somewhere :slight_smile: Sorry for being such a Noob.

I enclosed two images of the models.
Greetings from the Hague,

Paul

there are tools that will make the process of baking textures from highpoly to lowpoly easier, but without proper knowledge on this matter, you will likely run into visual problems like seams, bad shading etc
so having a rough idea how this works would really be beneficial

and no, your models don’t need to be closed for this, but having holes in the mesh (like in the mesh with the baby, the 4 visible holes) will bake out as blank on your maps, which will look bad, so this would either need fixing in your highpoly or later on in the lowpoly (i recommend to fix this in the highpoly before the bake)