Stuck on 3D Coat's retopo & baking workflow
polycounter lvl 3
Hello! I've been looking for the best workflow from the time that I import a model into 3DC until it's ready to bake and export.
Problem is, I have found hardly any information or documentation on things that I desire to do. I am looking to bake an object, made of multiple subobjects, and bake it, and all the videos that I have discovered, merely beeline through the AUTOPO wizard and explain nothing else (it took me a while just to figure out how to do the autopo wizard procedure outside of the wizard, as no one seems to explain this little bit either). In addition, I cannot seem to bake from all of my high-defs? They must be merged first? But that wastes quality at the seams... Anyway, here are the things that I am trying to achieve, and am basically asking whether they can be achieved, and how best so.
1. Suppose I have this stylised plastic dragon character figurine, cause thats the latest one that had frustrated me. The dragon has body, ears, two eyes, hair. They are all subobjects of the "Dragon" parent. I go to AUTOPO this parent layer, but... no object comes out? I assume that that's because the Dragon object-layer itself does not hold geometry and is just a parent to its sub-layers, but shouldnt AUTOPO just take all the visible subobjects into account if I opt to AUTOPO their parent?
2. I have managed to sorta go around this by cloning the Dragon parent and then merging it all together so that it does, in fact, all rest on a single layer. However, this ends up handling all the intersections too, and often in an awkward way, because (say) the hair and the body merge together and gain a jaggy border instead of a fine and crispy one, which would be avoidable if the two did not have to be outright merged into a single full body before they can be retopoed. Furthermore, every time I make changes to any of the source object-layers, I need to remerge them because I did not yet find out how to AUTOPO multiple layers at once.
3. I have discovered that I can AUTOPO my dragon model layer by layer, each layer will create a new group (such as group that only has body in it, group that has only hair in it...) and have even found a way to merge them by shift-dragging, and this does not combine them into a single solid object. However this seems an exercise in madness if I change a part of my model later, as I will need to delete this now-invalid topo-group, and remake a new one by using AUTOPO on every body part separately again, then then shift-dragging them once more.
I think that 'm forgetting some details; I will ask back if they crop up again. But basically, I'm feeling that I'm doing something wrong, and that there is a more sensible method to go about retopology & baking workflow in 3DC that simply has not dawned upon me by default. Any ideas are welcome, and (brief or long) explanations of own workflows and best practices, basically something to give me an overall better direction in the retopo/baking process in 3DC.
What do!
Problem is, I have found hardly any information or documentation on things that I desire to do. I am looking to bake an object, made of multiple subobjects, and bake it, and all the videos that I have discovered, merely beeline through the AUTOPO wizard and explain nothing else (it took me a while just to figure out how to do the autopo wizard procedure outside of the wizard, as no one seems to explain this little bit either). In addition, I cannot seem to bake from all of my high-defs? They must be merged first? But that wastes quality at the seams... Anyway, here are the things that I am trying to achieve, and am basically asking whether they can be achieved, and how best so.
1. Suppose I have this stylised plastic dragon character figurine, cause thats the latest one that had frustrated me. The dragon has body, ears, two eyes, hair. They are all subobjects of the "Dragon" parent. I go to AUTOPO this parent layer, but... no object comes out? I assume that that's because the Dragon object-layer itself does not hold geometry and is just a parent to its sub-layers, but shouldnt AUTOPO just take all the visible subobjects into account if I opt to AUTOPO their parent?
2. I have managed to sorta go around this by cloning the Dragon parent and then merging it all together so that it does, in fact, all rest on a single layer. However, this ends up handling all the intersections too, and often in an awkward way, because (say) the hair and the body merge together and gain a jaggy border instead of a fine and crispy one, which would be avoidable if the two did not have to be outright merged into a single full body before they can be retopoed. Furthermore, every time I make changes to any of the source object-layers, I need to remerge them because I did not yet find out how to AUTOPO multiple layers at once.
3. I have discovered that I can AUTOPO my dragon model layer by layer, each layer will create a new group (such as group that only has body in it, group that has only hair in it...) and have even found a way to merge them by shift-dragging, and this does not combine them into a single solid object. However this seems an exercise in madness if I change a part of my model later, as I will need to delete this now-invalid topo-group, and remake a new one by using AUTOPO on every body part separately again, then then shift-dragging them once more.
I think that 'm forgetting some details; I will ask back if they crop up again. But basically, I'm feeling that I'm doing something wrong, and that there is a more sensible method to go about retopology & baking workflow in 3DC that simply has not dawned upon me by default. Any ideas are welcome, and (brief or long) explanations of own workflows and best practices, basically something to give me an overall better direction in the retopo/baking process in 3DC.
What do!