Low Poly optimization: Speed/Quality balance for next-gen production
polycounter lvl 17
A question for the Character Artists out there.
On current-gen projects, low poly modeling has been the fastest step of the production pipeline. The most straight forward one, while High-Poly sculpting/modeling and texture painting would take usually longer.
With the next-gen specs and some new tools, such as Marvelous Designer that changes how we can make high poly garments, and dDo and Substance Designer, that change how we make our textures, things changed quite a bit.
In some cases now, depending on the asset (weapons and vehicles come to mind) you may not even have a high poly model, since the low poly have enough geo for all the main shading needs, so the normal map can be used just for surface detailing.
Anyways, with the amount of assets that we need to make now for next-gen projects, given all the player customization and simple plain amount of npcs and such, have you guys found any process or tools that speeds up the low poly time?
I ask this because, for instance, right now I'm working on a garment piece for which I've used MD for the high poly, and I'll use SD for textures, giving me much faster results, but when it comes to the low poly, it's still the same old thing, in fact, slower now because I need to make denser meshes for the new specs.
Of course, I do use a retopologizing software, in my case Topogun, which I really like, but it just feels there should be something faster already. I wished solutions such as ZRemesher could generate more usable meshes, but I can't ignore all the bad edge-flows that it creates, no matter how many guides I put.
Having the low poly step to be the bottleneck just seems weird.
On current-gen projects, low poly modeling has been the fastest step of the production pipeline. The most straight forward one, while High-Poly sculpting/modeling and texture painting would take usually longer.
With the next-gen specs and some new tools, such as Marvelous Designer that changes how we can make high poly garments, and dDo and Substance Designer, that change how we make our textures, things changed quite a bit.
In some cases now, depending on the asset (weapons and vehicles come to mind) you may not even have a high poly model, since the low poly have enough geo for all the main shading needs, so the normal map can be used just for surface detailing.
Anyways, with the amount of assets that we need to make now for next-gen projects, given all the player customization and simple plain amount of npcs and such, have you guys found any process or tools that speeds up the low poly time?
I ask this because, for instance, right now I'm working on a garment piece for which I've used MD for the high poly, and I'll use SD for textures, giving me much faster results, but when it comes to the low poly, it's still the same old thing, in fact, slower now because I need to make denser meshes for the new specs.
Of course, I do use a retopologizing software, in my case Topogun, which I really like, but it just feels there should be something faster already. I wished solutions such as ZRemesher could generate more usable meshes, but I can't ignore all the bad edge-flows that it creates, no matter how many guides I put.
Having the low poly step to be the bottleneck just seems weird.
Replies
Admittedly, I've only used it a few times, but it seemed to work pretty well for creating that low-res mesh.
No, as a matter of fact I haven't used Mudbox for ages now. Do you find it better than ZRemesher? I don't like the lack of control of ZRemesher...
I'll take a look at it. Thanks!