3DS MAX HELP! - Lowpoly Modelling

Ionixe

Hey guys, I made this thread to ask for some help with my low poly model for a Machete game-asset I have been working on for some time.

I was wondering if this low poly mesh is correct before I move on to unwrapping and Texturing.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=12493&stc=1&d=1375766667

I still don't understand the steps of creating a low poly model from a high poly model, so if you were to kindly guide me through it, it will be highly appreciated.


P.S. : I am a newbie at this and I do not know many "technical" terms. So, please simplify if possible.

Mark Dygert

That really depends on what you plan to do with it.

1. What kind of materials are you going to apply and in what program are they going to be displayed? Renders, game engine, realtime viewport?
2. Are you going to apply just a simple color map to just the low poly?
3. What is the target triangle count?
4. Are you going to create a normal map for it? How do you plan on doing that? High poly modeling or maybe sculpting? Maybe a mix of both?
5. What is the objects importance, trash on the ground or 1st person weapon?

Ionixe

1. I plan on importing it into UDK
2. I am going to apply a diffuse, specular, gloss and normal map.
3. My target triangle count would be anything below 2k for this model
4. I already have a highpoly model I made with Sub-division.
5. The object will be a 1st person melee weapon.

Mark Dygert

There are a few edges in the handle I might re-route so the quads look more standard and have less of a chance of doing something funny with the cage.

It looks like you're ready to start baking, you can do that in 3dsmax with Render To Texture (RTT) or xNormal, both have their advantages and disadvantages and both have a lot of tutorials floating around on youtube and in the max help files (F1).

Since it's two pieces you probably want to explod-o-bake. Which just means move the parts away from each other so their cages don't intersect while baking. The easiest way to do this is to turn on auto key move the slider to frame 1 and move the pieces then turn off autokey. Bake on frame 1 do everything else on frame zero.

Quick and dirt max RTT steps:

1. Press 9 to bring up the render settings dialog, scroll down to the bottom
2. Under "Assign Renderer" change it to Mental Ray (this will allow you to bake Ambient Occlusion)
3. Unhide your low and high poly.
4. Select your low poly and press 0 to bring up RTT
5. Under Projection Mapping, check on enable, click pick, select your high poly
6. That will add a projection modifier to your low poly
7. In the modifier panel, open cage, click reset and then adjust the push amount up until it encompasses your high, try to stick as close as possible to avoid distortion.
8. Back in RTT under Output, click add, and add the maps you want to output, spec, diffuse, normal, AO
9. Set the filename and path for each
10. Under Baked Material check on "Render to files only" otherwise it will create shell materials and assign it to your low poly and it gets messy to deal with.
11. Render and apply your materials to a copy of your low poly object
12. Export as FBX and import to UDK

Ionixe

Thank you very much!

Ionixe

I will have the final render posted here when I am done.