High Poly to Low Poly Retopologizing Help!

Roque218

Hello there, i am having difficulties with the process of converting a mesh from high poly to low poly and i would aprecciate any help given.

So, i created a base mesh in 3ds max and then sent it to zbrush and started working on it.When i finished it, i sent it back to 3ds max in order to make the low version of it, the problem is that i don't quite know the best approach to do so, i mean, i tried to duplicate the high res and then apply a pro optimizer to it and also a Quadrify all in the graphite modeling tools, the thing is that the mesh is very messy with loads of tris and it's very difficult to unwrap it even with pelt mapping, this method has worked ok for some rocks i did but it's not that good for hardsurface objects. I also tried to reto it in topogun but i think it works best for characters, so i'm tied up without a clue on how to do it :poly122:

I have attached 3 pics showing the base + wire, high poly and low poly mesh + wire(with pro optimizer on it)

http://i.imgur.com/lC76QXq.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/FfbymuN.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/43EJyik.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/vjCGQoN.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/IseYPqr.jpg

Rafferty_Eggleston

It looks like you can actually just modify your base mesh with standard modeling techniques to help accommodate the changes you have made in zbrush. Topogun would be good for hard surface objects as well. I would check out some of the various tutorials on the PC wiki http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryTopology regarding topology. If you include the wires of your models, it will be easier to direct / help out!

Butthair

You can take your base model into zBrush and project the low poly onto your hi poly, so as to get the main silhouette of it while keeping the geometry pretty clean. You can also use the move brush for further tweaking.

In this case, because it is a rather simple hi poly, zBrush has a retopo tool that draws geometry using the hi poly as a ref. It will draw the geo over the hi poly so the vert points you make are respecting it's shape.

If you're not comfortable with that, you can export a decimated or low sub div of the mesh and do the same in max using xray mode.

Roque218

Thanks guys, i will see what i can do with the info you provided.

Luka

you could also use zbrush's zremesher. i havent used it on hardsurface stuff yet, but on organic stuff, it makes it feel like cheating