3D models

Conception in blender

View statistics (number triangles / objects)

In blender, you can see the number of triangles, click on viewport overlays, and click on statictics, you can now see the statistics.

One mesh

Each .blend file must have only 1 mesh, or 1 logical group.

This avoids "who touched what" conflicts in version control.

LOD (Level Of Detail) management

In the goal to keep performance in the game, we need to have 4 LOD.

One you have created your mesh, rename it with the suffix _LOD0.

Duplicate it with alt + D or in menu Object > Duplicate Linked and rename it with suffix _LOD1. Repeat the duplicate for _LOD2 and LOD3.

On _LOD1, _LOD2 and _LOD3, add the modifier Decimate. Apply the ratio like this table:

LOD	Decimate Ratio	Triangle target
LOD0	1.0 — no decimate	100%
LOD1	0.5	~50%
LOD2	0.15–0.2	~15–20%
LOD3	0.05	~5%

textures

danger

Never embed textures inside the .blend, keep them as sidecar files so they can be updated without opening Blender

tip

A material reused across several models does not live next to its .blend at all. It is published once into the shared library and assigned by Godot at import time, which is what stops the same texture from existing in four copies across the repository. Read Materials to find out which of the two flows your material belongs to. The rest of this section covers model-specific materials.

This is the procedure to manage textures:

When adding a texture the first time, in the Shader Editor, add an Image Texture node → click Open → navigate to your assets_blender/.../ folder and select the .png file there. Blender will store a relative path automatically as long as the .blend has already been saved once alongside the textures.

Check a texture is external (not packed): look at the Image Texture node header. If you see a small floppy disk icon with a dot on it, the image is packed. If it shows just the filename, it's external.

To unpack an already-packed texture:

1. Go to File → External Data → Unpack Resources
2. Choose "Write files to current directory" (this places them next to the .blend)
3. Then move them to your proper assets_blender/…/ folder and re-link (see Files Structure page)

To re-link a texture after moving it: In the Image Texture node, click the folder icon next to the image name → navigate to the new path. Or use File → External Data → Find Missing Files to bulk-fix broken paths across all materials at once.

Make all paths relative (important for team/version control): go to File → External Data → Make All Paths Relative. This converts all absolute /home/you/project/... paths to //relative/... paths, so the .blend works on any machine as long as the folder structure is preserved.

The simplest rule: textures live in the same folder as their .blend, or in a subfolder of it. For your structure that means:

• assets_blender/structures/buildings/houses/
  • house_colonial_2f.blend
  • tex_house_colonial_2f_albedo.png
  • tex_house_colonial_2f_normal.png
  • tex_house_colonial_2f_roughness.png

Export to Godot

Once finished, export for Godot.

File > Export > glTF 2.0 (.glb/.gltf)

Choose the format glTF Binary (.glb) (single file, everything packed in. Best for most use cases).

This is the recommended Settings Panel:

🔵 Include

Option	Setting
Limit to	Selected Objects (if you don't want the whole scene)
Data > Mesh	✅ UVs, Normals, Vertex Colors
Data > Armature	✅ Export Deformation Bones Only
Data > Skinning	✅ Enable

If your model contains blend shapes (shape keys / morph targets), the Data > Armature > Export Deformation Bones Only option must be enabled — exporting non-deforming bones will lead to incorrect shading in Godot.

🟢 Transform

Option	Setting
+Y Up	✅ Enable this — Godot uses Y-up, Blender uses Z-up

You can check Transform > +Y Up and other options from the built-in glTF exporter panel.

🟡 Geometry / Mesh

Option	Setting
Apply Modifiers	✅ Enable (bakes modifiers into the mesh)
Normals	✅ Enable
UVs	✅ Enable
Vertex Colors	✅ if used
Compression (Draco)	❌ Avoid — Godot doesn't support Draco decompression natively

🟣 Material

Option	Setting
Materials	✅ Export
Images	None, but only for a model using shared library materials

A model whose materials come from the shared library exports with Images: None. The .glb then carries the material names and no pixels at all, and Godot assigns the real materials at import time. Exporting the images would ship a second copy of textures that already live in the library, which is exactly what the library exists to avoid. A model with its own model-specific textures keeps the default. See Materials.

🟠 Animation (if exporting animated objects)

Option	Setting
Animation	✅ Enable
Export NLA Strips	✅ Enable — this separates animations by name in Godot
Bake Animation	✅ Enable if you have complex drivers or constraints
Sampling Rate	1 (default is fine)
Optimize Animation	✅ Recommended

When exporting with animations, use NLA Strips mode — each strip in the NLA Editor becomes a separately named animation track in Godot, which is what allows the AnimationPlayer to recognize them individually.

🔴 Before Exporting — Critical Checklist

1. Apply all transforms (Ctrl+A > All Transforms) on both mesh and armature. Incorrect scale or rotation on an armature is the #1 cause of weird deformation issues in-engine.
2. Check origin points — objects floating in Godot is often caused by a misplaced origin in Blender.
3. Materials: Use Principled BSDF nodes. The exporter supports Metal/Rough PBR (core glTF) and Shadeless (KHR_materials_unlit) materials, and constructs a glTF material based on the nodes it recognizes in the Blender material.
4. Textures must be in PNG or JPEG format — other formats are auto-converted on export.
5. One UV map per object. The export keeps the map flagged render — the camera icon in Object Data Properties → UV Maps — which is not necessarily the one you edited. A part separated with P inherits the body's UV maps, so the duplicate is easy to acquire without noticing. Select the extra one and delete it with –.
6. Check face orientation. Overlays → Face Orientation: blue = front, red = back.

The last two are worth knowing by their symptoms, because neither reads as a UV or a normal problem when you hit it in Godot:

What you see in Godot	What it actually is
A surface in one flat colour, as if the texture never arrived — while Blender shows it correctly	The export used the other UV map. In the game file the UVs are collapsed to a point, so the whole surface samples a single pixel of the texture
A surface you can see through, or that looks "textured from the inside"	Its faces are inverted. Godot culls back faces, so you are looking at the inside of the mesh

❌ Faces pointing away from the viewer show red:

✅ The same faces once fixed show blue:

Fix a red surface in Edit Mode with Shift+N (Recalculate Outside); on a thin plate, where "outside" is ambiguous, use Alt+N → Flip instead. Turn the overlay off afterwards — left on, it paints everything blue and hides your textures.

Screens are the exception to a global unwrap

A screen face (dashboard, mirror feed) must fill the 0→1 square exactly: select that face alone and use U → Reset, never Unwrap or Cube Projection. Unwrapping a whole object at once takes the screens with it and the feed comes out hugely magnified, showing one corner of the image. See Vehicle models for the full screen recipe.

Tip: Save as Export Preset

Once you've configured everything, click the ➕ operator preset button at the top of the export panel to save these settings as a reusable preset (e.g., "Godot Export"). This avoids reconfiguring every time.

Import in Godot

Once 3d model exported, open godot, you will have the file with extension .glb.

Open it, and you will have the import window.

On Scene, be sure to uncheck Generate LODs.

On each MeshInstance3D with the suffix _LOD0, _LOD1, _LOD2 and _LOD3, set the right fields (Visibility Range Begin and Visibility Range End):

Category	Examples	LOD0	LOD1	LOD2	LOD3
Tiny	coins, bolts, leaves	0–0.5m	0.5–2m	2–5m	5-8m
Small	cups, rocks, bottles	0–1m	1–5m	5–15m	15-25m
Medium	chairs, barrels, crates	0–5m	5–20m	20–50m	50-80m
Large	cars, trees, statues	0–15m	15–40m	40–80m	80-150m
Huge	buildings, terrain chunks	0–30m	30–80m	80–200m	200-400m
Massive	mountains, skybox elements	0–100m	100–300m	300–800m	800-1500m

Then click on Import or Reimport button.

Practical Tips

• Transparent / alpha objects (leaves, fences) switch to a flat billboard at LOD2 or LOD3