Low Poly to High Poly Workflow
polycounter lvl 6
Hello,
ive always had difficulties with this specific workflow.
so lets say my goal is to have a low poly model and to bake some normals and AOs.
i'll provide an image:
so lets say im modeling this pillar/bridge shape that i will eventually extrude.
ive started it out with model A which has 10 more tris than if i were to lower its poly count to model B.
Though i know bringing in model B to zbrush will be difficult to add details because zbrush and tris just dont go along well...
i was thinking of bringing in model A to zbrush since it has quads, and adding detail then copy the UVs of model B to A and then i can get the normals and AOs out of zbrush?
but i cant seem to copy the UVs since they're not similar.....whats a good approach to keeping model A present but still creating a detailed model and make the normal and AOs.
ive tried this in a previous project but it went haywire.
ive always had difficulties with this specific workflow.
so lets say my goal is to have a low poly model and to bake some normals and AOs.
i'll provide an image:
so lets say im modeling this pillar/bridge shape that i will eventually extrude.
ive started it out with model A which has 10 more tris than if i were to lower its poly count to model B.
Though i know bringing in model B to zbrush will be difficult to add details because zbrush and tris just dont go along well...
i was thinking of bringing in model A to zbrush since it has quads, and adding detail then copy the UVs of model B to A and then i can get the normals and AOs out of zbrush?
but i cant seem to copy the UVs since they're not similar.....whats a good approach to keeping model A present but still creating a detailed model and make the normal and AOs.
ive tried this in a previous project but it went haywire.
Replies
Simply Import A (you need clean structures with control/edge loops on it) and sculpt it adding details, etc. Then just export an .obj from it.
Unwrap Model B which is optimized with lower polycount and export it also as .obj
You can now use programms like xNormal to bake normal and AO maps onto model B without problems. That's how i usually work with this.
What people often do is make a base mesh made out of evenly sized polygons through out the whole object, export to zbrush, sculpt it, export a mid res version to a package you like and model the final low poly version on top of that mid res version.
When the low poly is done (and unwrapped) you'll export the high res version and low res version into whatever application you wanna use to bake the normals.
sounds like xnormals is going to be my choice of program then for baking my normals& AO
interesting, i guess my best bet is to just make sure the polys are evenly distributed before bringing them into zbrush also
though i get a bit confused on this portion
"What people often do is make a base mesh made out of evenly sized polygons through out the whole object, export to zbrush, sculpt it, export a mid res version to a package you like and model the final low poly version on top of that mid res version. "
did you mean model the final HIGH poly version? if so i understand but im confused on modeling the final LOW poly version?
so far these really answer answer my question efficiently, thanks alot! im really loving the forum so far