clean low poly topology

Elie

Hey all,
I'm searching some good references to explain and show some junior modelers what makes a beautiful mesh for rigging. I find some, but I feel like about 15 to 20 is not really enough to cover it all ;
Don't hesitate to post what you like, this could be a lot of help for others as well...!

I have to say that it would be for game engine, so really really low on polygons, and maybe (maybe) triangles would be fine, what do you think ?
Cheers

musashidan

Elie said:

I have to say that it would be for game engine, so really really low on polygons, and maybe (maybe) triangles would be fine, what do you think ?
Cheers

This isn't the 90's mate. It doesn't have to be that low anymore. Have you checked the wiki on here? Topology section: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Topology A great way to study topology is to rip examples from some of the UE4 sample scenes and export them to your DCC.

RN

Lowpoly mesh needs density at key areas (knees, elbows, ulnar styloid etc.) to hold up the shape:
http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/paintingWeights/#density

Elie

Thanks a lot, I will check this, 
musashidan, I need to be very low on polygon for VR, we can't be high-poly at all !

Elie

Hey all, I work in Maya with the cleanup tool, but I can't understand what's going on with some vertices that are non-manifold. Any tips to help?

Eric Chadwick

You'll need to post some screenshots.

Obscura

Elie said:

musashidan, I need to be very low on polygon for VR, we can't be high-poly at all !

This is a similar myth to the "normal maps doesn't work in vr". They do. And you don't have to go so lowpoly either. VR isn't a hardware, its performance is determined by the videocard basically. Its just a way of displaying things. I was playing Elite Dangerous and Alien Isolation on vr, they are both fairly highpoly and they both run well even on earlier videocards. I'm sure there are other examples too. Expensive effects and materials rendered at high resolution are a much bigger bottleneck. Depending on the amount of characters rendered at the same time, you could actually go pretty highpoly without any issue. By pretty highpoly I mean 40k or more really shouldn't be a problem. But as we all know things depends on many factors. Like if you want to render crowds, thats a different question again, in that case you would need to be more careful but there are instancing systems even for skeletal meshes now, so...

Elie

Thank you everybody for your answers. Eric I could not post screenshots, sorry about that. I found that vertices were highlighted with the clean up tool, but that was just to indicate uv borders I suppose.

Alex_J

Elie said:

Thank you everybody for your answers. Eric I could not post screenshots, sorry about that. I found that vertices were highlighted with the clean up tool, but that was just to indicate uv borders I suppose.

Don't guess. Read the manual. Every tool.in Maya has direct link to documentation in the top corner. 

Quickest way to cleanup funky geo is to delete and replace. As you get more experience you won't be making it much, so don't worry about it, just fix quick and keep moving.