How do I get smoother curves with a low poly model?

TheDonquixotic

Hey new to modeling but wanted to get some pointers on something. 

I feel like I got most basic low poly modeling stuff down, but sometimes I see models that are slightly higher poly but way lower poly than something made in Zbrush or with dynatopo in Blender. Stuff like this:

https://sketchfab.com/models/cb8e95b3cbc041cf967360432512a986

or this

https://www.behance.net/gallery/16588335/Stone-Golem-Medium-Polycount

Nice even quads all over. 

I've been learning Fusion 360 lately, and love these beautiful curves I can make in it, but when I export it as a mesh, the faces becomes a mess of ugly uneven triangles that are useless to work with. What the heck am I supposed to do to fix that?

I try using a remesh modifier in Blender but it just ends up ruining the curves with some chunky blocky shapes, unless I turn up the octree iterations up so high that it's basically a hi-poly model. 

What am I missing here?

musashidan

TheDonquixotic said:

What am I missing here?

Manual retopology pretty essential for hard-surface. More organic models can be retopoed using auto-processes but, manual is still going to give optimal results(or a combo of the 2)

Here's an asset I created a while back. Modeled in F360, manual retop in Max.

TheDonquixotic

Okay yeah, that makes sense. But the models I linked were extremly uniform sets of quads. Like they had been remeshed maybe? But their remesh hasn't distorted the curve at all. 

NoRank

I don't even think that the first one did use zbrush, I guess it's just a mesh with a turbosmooth or something like that applied. The second one is probably the same thing with some deleted edges.

I guess you can't get a really good result with any automatic solution for hard surface.

FourtyNights

TheDonquixotic said:

Okay yeah, that makes sense. But the models I linked were extremly uniform sets of quads. Like they had been remeshed maybe? But their remesh hasn't distorted the curve at all. 

It's just a manual retopology on top of your high poly. To get the even distribution of quads just means that in the case of Blender you just grab a bunch of polygons on your low poly retopo, smooth them, and snap them back to the surface with the face snapping. With the combination of shrinkwrap modifier, uniformity of quads can be done even faster with smoothing.

Neox

musashidan said:

This is a Manual retopo?

musashidan

Neox said:

musashidan said:

This is a Manual retopo?

Yes. Retopo in mostly quads. Result is after turn to poly modifier triangulation. This is the actual manual retop.

Neox

Why so many polies on straight lines?

musashidan

Neox said:

Why so many polies on straight lines?

Time mainly. I had an evening to retop this so I didn't have time to optimise more. But, for the few verts I would have saved it wasn't worth it or necessary  as the asset was well within the budget. A lot of the verts are holding verts so there aren't as many as you may think that could be welded.:)

Prime8

TheDonquixotic said:

...
I try using a remesh modifier in Blender but it just ends up ruining the curves with some chunky blocky shapes, unless I turn up the octree iterations up so high that it's basically a hi-poly model. 
...

To my understanding the remesh modifier is used for example when you have mesh with big variance in density that you want to sculp on.
Blender has a decimate modifier, which will more likely keep the edges on a hard surface model, but it will not give you the result as seen in your examples as well.
As NoRank wrote, this are subdivision surfaces.
Might be helpful to see your actual model, I don't fully understand what you want to achieve, a "nice quads low poly model"?