Character high poly workflow

Torch

Hey guys, I was talking to someone about this from work and wanted to get other people's opinions, as I'd be interested to know how they deal with it, kinda tricky to explain though. Working on an asset for a character, say its a shoulder pad or belt, etc. that will hang off the character at an angle, I find that I am fine until up to the point of retopologising/doing mirrored UV's on the piece.

Basically using a shoulder pad as an example, I would create the mesh at the origin so I can work on it with symmetry enabled, start with a base mesh, then move it into place and rotate it to fit on the character, followed by a detail pass or adding damage. Now when it comes to retopologising or UVing the asset, it would be a lot easier to do with symmetry enabled, but because its been rotated and moved into place and is now at an angle, this isn't possible. A friend mentioned working on it in symmetry at the origin point and then adding it to the character after all the detailing/damage work has been done, but I prefer to see it on the character while working on it, in case some areas need to be scaled or wrapped around for a better fit.

I guess I could UV the mesh before hand, but there are times way I may have to make a few changes to the general shape of the mesh which messes up the UVs anyway. Hope that makes sense, any info would be great. Cheers

Brian "Panda" Choi

This is a good question. Really good. Assuming that local symm just dies at some point.

I . . . I guess I'd personally keep it at origin until I ABSOLUTELY have to move it. Even then, I have to think a Block out proxy in position would be enough to communicate silhouette information, etc.

jfitch

When I have to move it, I put the movement on a layer. Then I can reverse that movement at any time. This can be tricky with subdivisions because it's a layer, so make sure you have enough before you do that. Then you can do your detailing work/wrapping/what have you on several new layers, and then remove the movement layer when you're ready to retop/UV.

phixel

You could make an instanced copy of the piece and place it on the character (rotated and angled into place) and work on the original located at the origin.

Torch

Hey guys, haven't checked this thread in a while, thanks for the replies, I decided it was easier just to work on a basic blockout at the origin with Symmetry enabled in X, then if its symmetrical on both sides of the character, just move it into place and work on it with Z symmetry enabled instead so both sides are affected and can be easily split/UV'd (this is in ZBrush.) Also local symmetry helps a ton!