help regarding generating low res models from high res

mixeh

Hi all,

I'm somewhat familiar with most methods of generating low pollies from highs, but I'm curious as to what is considered acceptable or not in some situations. For example, I'm currently creating a tree in zbrush that is very organic with flowing roots and so forth (similar to http://www.wyred4sound.com/uploads/74030/images/140877/tree_roots.jpg). Is it okay just to polycrunch this in meshlab for the low poly, or should I manually retopologise in zbrush/max?

I guess it's obviously preferred for cleanliness, to manually do it, however in the industry wouldn't it be better to get a similar result and do it much faster by just crunching it? I'm creating this tree for my portfolio, which is the main reason I ask, and I feel I should do it however is considered more appropriate.

I believe to manually do it will take me a very long time that could be deemed unnecessary, but I'd like to hear your guys opinions. Thanks!

Bal

There are some automatic retopology techniques that are a bit cleaner than polycrunching, like 3Dcoats auto-retopoloy, where you can place some initial loops to guide it.

In many cases, I just use decimation myself (for rocks mostly), for a tree the result could be kind of ugly on the actual tree trunk, so I'd be careful, but test and see what works best really. Retopology shouldn't be a very long process if you have the right tools otherwise.

mixeh

Thanks Bal, I'm yet to explore decimation master, i'll try find some info on it, I take it its better then meshlab. I'm doing a lot of stuff like broken statues and pillars for this scene, so I'm hoping to find something I'm comfortable with for making the lp versions.

Jungsik

decimation master is highly useful when you want to bring a really highpoly to a fairely lowpoly so you could retopolize (is that a word?) it. I see people tend to use topogun quiet a lot
Im a noob so i cant help you further <_< good luck