How to go for the low poly?

AkiRa

Hi together,

atm I'am working on a sc-fi styled fusebox. I did not much game ready models yet so I dont really know how to go for the low poly on this thing. Should I do a retopo or do it another way?
And: Are those details all bakable or not?

Any advice is really appreciated!

Much thanks in advance!

Snader

It really depends on the amount of polygons you're willing/allowed to use for the lowpoly. But I think the parts what will give the most issues are the grated wiring, and that you might have too many tubes everywhere.

ZacD

Generally you want to model your high poly for so that it will bake well, that includes some thinking about shapes and how it will bake. Alec Moody included this example in one of his 3dmotive tutorials, obviously the 2nd example will bake better and look better in the end.



The only think I'm worried anbout is those rows of bent tubes you have everywhere. Pretty much everything else is okay for the most part.

Noors

You could still use a mask for the grid and bake the wires as mask on a plane aswell. Though for a tiny prop, it's probably better to go like on alec moody's example, not too much offsets.

AkiRa

First of all: Thanks very much for your help!

@Snader:
The polycount I aimed for was about 1500 tris for this piece. Since it has many of those pipes and a lot of beveled insets and buttons, I thought that would be okay.
I think youre right and this grated part will cause some problems. But I could kill this part since its not that an important thing.

@ZacD:
I tried that. But because I didnt many normal bakes yet, I dont really know what bakes good or bad. But by logical thinking I could imagine that the wirings and the grate could cause some problems, but I didnt thought about the pipes. Also I could try to reposition them and put them into some of the insets like in the picture you posted.
Seems I have to overwork the model completley for a normal map that doesn't look like crap.

@Noors:
That was my idea too. But I think it'll also give a lot of errors on the normal so I I'd better get rid of this part.