Floaters or Modeling better?

jeremiah_bigley

okay so I recently have been hearing some different opinions on floaters. I recently modeled a jukebox and there were quite a few details on the back that I modeled in instead of using floaters. Why? because I thought it is more impressive than hiding from the fact that you can't model and compensating with floaters.
And the reason they were saying use floaters was because there was a lot of geometry if I didn't use floaters and the wires looked bad. I am interested in hearing other opinions.

Eric Chadwick

If you're using the model to make a normal map, floaters save modeling time, no doubt about it. Only downside is it takes a bit more work to make an ambient occlusion pass, but it's still quite do-able.

Some info.
http://wiki.polycount.net/Ambient_Occlusion_Map#FMP

jeremiah_bigley

I completely agree that floaters save time. And I really love them for it. But if you have the time to model it, if it is for a portfolio, will floaters be looked down on?

raul

Man, i have my questions about this too...i think if ur gonna bake them into a normal map, it should be fine. But for a high rez model that will be on a movie, can u still use them there? i guess u would still need to bake into a texture, right?

To float or not to float!

mLichy

I float stuff all the time. Yeah it doesn't look as good, but if it's going to take waay too much time to model in, or get messy, than float it.

Also, if u float stuff, it makes it alot faster/easier to just remove some edge looks in your HP model and then you have your LP model ready to Unwrap.

aniceto

I don't think it reflects poorly on your modeling skills if you use floating geo, it just shows you know some time saving techniques

EarthQuake

End result is all that matters, anyone who knows enough to be worthy of you caring of their opinion will know that using floaters well shows you have the technical knowhow to create good results while managing your time properly. Excessively complex meshes only show you're not very good at managing your time, or that you're OCD.

Modeling everything by hand does not make you a better artist, nor does it even guarantee you will make a better model! If you make the same model twice, both times using the exact same amount of time, the model where you can be creative and save time on small details is the model you'll be able to give extra loving where you really need to.

In a lot of cases, floaters offer not only time savings, but flexibly that you really do not get when you start cutting up your meshes and getting overly complex. When you start needing to do revisions, and do them quickly, you'll find that if you cut your mesh into a mess to add lots of details, you will struggle to make even basic changes, and may need to simply remodel the area to make the change. When you're using floats, a lot of the time you can modify the base shape much more quickly, and simply reposition your floaters to make any required changes.

Saying all this, there are a lot of things i do not bother using floaters with, with experience you'll learn what sort of things are natural, know when you're unlikely to need to change an area, and know when it just make sense(for the purpose of getting a good bake in some cases) not to. However, i probably do a few things with floaters that people would never expect you can even do as well, again it comes down to experience.

jeremiah_bigley

thanks for the reply guys! I think the answers helped me. Now I guess is it the same for a portfolio? Would you want to spend that time, or do you still want to save time?

Vrav

If you're going to be showing the wires of your highpoly source models in your portfolio, I think it would be a strength to have some examples of both - the attentive lead looking at it will probably perceive this as a positive example of your knowing more than one technique.

raul

@ earthquake - awesome answer! thank you, sir!

@ JJ - i think u wanna show your employer that you can kick ass...so...perhaps using floaters is also theway to go. And yes, i know u wanna modeled everything, but dude! dont kill yourself trying to do get everything in there.

jeremiah_bigley

awesome! sorry if it seems like I am just not getting it. I am just a student trying to gain some knowledge on how my modeling will be perceived by professionals.

mayaterror

This is great to hear you guys saying they're OK - somehow it was drilled into me early on that a single-mesh model was superior to one made in pieces so I've always tried to focus on that. Only recently have I been taking a second look at "floaters" (just learned that's what you call it). It's WAY easier for certain things.

It totally blew my my mind when I was studying the UT2K4 characters in 3DS and discovered that they were constructed of "floaters" or element sub-objects - I always just assumed the big game company modelers did a unified mesh instead of an attached conglomeration of parts.

Anyway, threads like this are why Polycount is the straight poo.

Millenia

EricChadwick wrote: »

If you're using the model to make a normal map, floaters save modeling time, no doubt about it. Only downside is it takes a bit more work to make an ambient occlusion pass, but it's still quite do-able.

Some info.
http://wiki.polycount.net/Ambient_Occlusion_Map#FMP

But can't you technically just use the normal map on the lowpoly to render the AO? I usually do it that way

jeremiah_bigley

But then would it really be "rendering?" Using your Normal map to create an AO map is not a true Ambient Occlusion. Though it can create some nice fine shadows...

michi.be

If you are a student and want to learn or get some practice do the full modeling.
If you are working on a deadline use floaters.

elte

The wiki has been very helpful, but anybody know how to do it in maya?

Eric Chadwick

How to bake occlusion in Maya?

Haven't tried it, but looks promising...
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/vbarticles.php?do=article&articleid=17

elte

Thanks for the link @Eric, but what if we have floating geometry to bake on?

EarthQuake

In xnormal there is an option to disable backfaces when rendering ao, this fixes the "shadow around the floater" problem by about 95%, you'll still have to manually do a few tweaks, but in generally it saves a LOT of time. I think you can do similar things in max by disabling shadow casting and enabling backface culling on your floater object, by going to the object properties or something.

Eric Chadwick

I would guess you move the floaters to a distance greater than the Max_distance value, similar to how r_fletch_r explained here for the 3ds max mr method.

EarthQuake

No, you still want the floaters to self-occlude.

Eric Chadwick

And they do. The max_distance is the ray distance from each pixel on each mesh face.

EarthQuake

Oh i see what you're saying, adjusting the distance an object casts shadow? Still seems like simply disabling back-face shadow casting is a cleaner solution. As moving stuff around or relying on arbitrary numbers(floaters may be closer or farther away for instance) doesn't seem like a very quick way to do it on a complex mesh. Or am i still missing the point?

I though you meant putting your floaters outside of the ray cast so that they are missed entirely.

Eric Chadwick

Right, max_distance is the shadow-casting distance. I guess if the mesh is really complicated, then sticking the floaters X units away might be troublesome. But the distance doesn't really matter, from the baker's POV. Just thinking aloud here, haven't played with any of this. Backface culling is a cool option too, whichever works best.