I'm doing a simple subD modelling...I m gonna apply a "turbosmooth" modifier.
I'm not gonna use it for sculpting or as a lowpoly model....
I was just worry to make a nice polyflow that looks clean
its the spaceship from the film District 9
I'm kind of trying to establish a nice workflow, I started with a basic massing model then I moved into details. I used to model beveling all edge and fixing all parts where the geometry get screwed....but i don't think it's the right way to model....so for this one i'm trying to use edgeloops it gives me a cleaner mesh flow and it will be easier to uv
I'm a newbie...I don't know all the tricks of subD modelling I'm trying to learn by myself...and sometime i find it quite hard.
is there any thread or website that shows some useful tricks and workflow of how to model in subD
....for example i find quite hard to model big pieces, like this one...
do you guys have any suggestion?
If you are planning on creating a low poly version of your model and you want to bake some high poly stuff on it, then you only need to UV the low-poly. The high poly doesn't need to be unwrapped.
Not so fast... there are some times you might want to unwrap the high.
If you apply a bump or a normal map to the high poly it will be captured also, this is good for things like scratches, wood or stone materials to transfer over to your low poly layout. It's especially useful because it can seamlessly flow over the low poly UV boarders.
A normal map was applied to the high poly and baked onto the low poly, across UV seams. The result was seamless and the distortion in low poly UV's was handled appropriately. If I had applied that normal map to the low poly layout in photoshop it would have distorted and would have been a pain in the ass to have flow across UV seams, nearly impossible.
You might also want to block in some simple colors on your high poly to help get your low poly diffuse started.
If it's dense enough you can paint vertex colors and bake those.
Capturing details this way helps calculate in UV stretching and distortion, which is actually hard to do in photoshop because you are typically applying a non-distorted image over distorted UV's.
The UV's on the high can be whatever works so they can be as fast and as dirty as you need them to be.
If you only plan to capture surface geometry and nothing more then you don't need bother unwrapping the high.
This forum is very cool and interesting, but I was just interested in understanding the high poly modeling. (if you know other forums that are more appropriate please write me some links)
another question is.... I see people try to avoid ngons and triangles in their models...and try to make big complex pieces instead of splitting the object in several parts...so what's the right way to model?
Regarding n-gons and tris, you usually want to retain control over all the loops in your model, and that the subdivision results don't end up sending loops to areas you don't need or want them, or create 'pinching' artifacts. It's not a hard rule, just something to generally avoid.
For complex pieces vs smaller parts, it's usually so we can get a smooth transition between one part to another when it's called for. It depends on how the object being modeled was machined to begin with.
Replies
Whats it for? Is it that going to be a low poly? Gonna assign a Normal map ?
Gonna sculpt on it?
^important info to know to help you so we can wrap our head around your object so to speak.
I'm doing a simple subD modelling...I m gonna apply a "turbosmooth" modifier.
I'm not gonna use it for sculpting or as a lowpoly model....
I was just worry to make a nice polyflow that looks clean
its the spaceship from the film District 9
I'm kind of trying to establish a nice workflow, I started with a basic massing model then I moved into details. I used to model beveling all edge and fixing all parts where the geometry get screwed....but i don't think it's the right way to model....so for this one i'm trying to use edgeloops it gives me a cleaner mesh flow and it will be easier to uv
what do you mean?
is there any thread or website that shows some useful tricks and workflow of how to model in subD
....for example i find quite hard to model big pieces, like this one...
do you guys have any suggestion?
here is the obj... https://dl.dropbox.com/u/14559238/G01.obj
If you are planning on creating a low poly version of your model and you want to bake some high poly stuff on it, then you only need to UV the low-poly. The high poly doesn't need to be unwrapped.
There are loads of good tutorials over at Digital Tutors , 3DMotive , The Gnomon Workshop .
If you apply a bump or a normal map to the high poly it will be captured also, this is good for things like scratches, wood or stone materials to transfer over to your low poly layout. It's especially useful because it can seamlessly flow over the low poly UV boarders.
A normal map was applied to the high poly and baked onto the low poly, across UV seams. The result was seamless and the distortion in low poly UV's was handled appropriately. If I had applied that normal map to the low poly layout in photoshop it would have distorted and would have been a pain in the ass to have flow across UV seams, nearly impossible.
You might also want to block in some simple colors on your high poly to help get your low poly diffuse started.
If it's dense enough you can paint vertex colors and bake those.
Capturing details this way helps calculate in UV stretching and distortion, which is actually hard to do in photoshop because you are typically applying a non-distorted image over distorted UV's.
The UV's on the high can be whatever works so they can be as fast and as dirty as you need them to be.
If you only plan to capture surface geometry and nothing more then you don't need bother unwrapping the high.
thanks for the links...very useful!
This forum is very cool and interesting, but I was just interested in understanding the high poly modeling. (if you know other forums that are more appropriate please write me some links)
another question is.... I see people try to avoid ngons and triangles in their models...and try to make big complex pieces instead of splitting the object in several parts...so what's the right way to model?
For complex pieces vs smaller parts, it's usually so we can get a smooth transition between one part to another when it's called for. It depends on how the object being modeled was machined to begin with.