Need Low poly tricks and techniques.

Mr Digital

Hello guys! i really worked hard with this model and finally i finish it, but i always have a little question, is about the low poly and the polycount, i understand the term low poly of course, but when you talk about tris, i always get the double on my tricount, for example this ACR, i did a little low poly for test and i used optimize modifier because i was lazy, and the result was, no incluiding sight and elcan, 4,650 and 9600 tris, but the smoothing is horrible, and sometimes i heard people saying the normal will cover the smoothing errors, but with extreme horrible smooth the bake turn bad, and the normal map dont cover that smoothing, here a pic.



As you can see is a few optimization done manually and if i keep some loops and support edges you can see a lot of smoothing with darker areas, and if i put specular on the material, it looks worse, i was wondering, if i make a very hard optimization and i do tris with that horrible smooth, my normal will cover that?

Thanks for reading.

BARDLER

For hard surface stuff I would always recommend building your lowpoly by hand because there are a few rules you need to follow that no automated process could do for you. Your lowpoly shading is pretty much irrelevant because your normal map is going to override that when baked. However that doesn't mean you can just throw a single smoothing group on it and be done with it because that is how get bad gradients and errors. As long as you follow the basic rules for baking normal maps you should avoid any major problems.

Basic rules are you need to set a smoothing group on any faces that are close to 90 degrees, anywhere you have a smoothing group you need to have a separate UV island.

Unfortunately there are a bunch of other things to go into about normal maps, but I can't write up whole paper for you lol.

Mr Digital

Hmm, is kinda hard but i will try that horrible smoothing with a test bake, and then ill see, ok ok even with optimizer modifier and manual optimization i have around 9 and 10 tris, a small difference, optimization mod = 9600 tris and manual optimization = 10,700 tris, i will post an update in a few days, thanks for the assist tough.

Tim270

I think you are getting too hung up on exact numbers of your tri count. You need to focus on a good lowpoly rather than get hung up on exact vales.

Pretty much on the example you posted, anything that is not there to help with the silhouette or smoothing you can kill.

achillesian

This was helpful to me for harder surface stuff:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGszEIT4Kww"]The Fundamentals of Perfect Baking - YouTube[/ame]

Mr Digital

achillesian wrote: »

This was helpful to me for harder surface stuff:

The Fundamentals of Perfect Baking - YouTube

Nice! thanks for that.

Mr Digital

Ok, i did the bake, but i have no idea why this is happening.

In other models i made that kind of smooth and i have good bake with xoliul, and iam not happy using HQ normal modifier of 3point, there is something wrong here, i hope someone can bring me some help.

For example here is another model made with that smooth and using xoliulshader.

ZacD

If a model with no errors you have 2 options, use a bunch of support loops to help support the shading, or use a sync'd workflow (aka 3 point shader with HQ normals, or handplane).

Mr Digital

ZacD wrote: »

If a model with no errors you have 2 options, use a bunch of support loops to help support the shading, or use a sync'd workflow (aka 3 point shader with HQ normals, or handplane).

Then if with 3 point shader with HQ normals, this mean the model will look good in games? iam not against 3point but the use of HQ normals mod, is something iam scare.

ZacD

The model will look good in games that use the same tangent settings as the high quality setting in the 3point shader. Handplane does a great job of letting you generate normal maps for specific engines, as most engines have a different way of dealing with tangents.

Mr Digital

ZacD wrote: »

The model will look good in games that use the same tangent settings as the high quality setting in the 3point shader. Handplane does a great job of letting you generate normal maps for specific engines, as most engines have a different way of dealing with tangents.

Ok then, i will use 3point this time and is time to bake that elcan, thank you iam feeling better with this.