How to retopologize and bake a confusing or complicated shape (guide)
polycounter lvl 8
Hey, guys. I recently had to make a low poly bandana out of a cloth simulation. I spent a while scratching my head at how I was going to retopologize and bake something that was folding over itself with tons of wrinkles, before I came up with this method. Hope it helps someone else out there.
Software used: Maya, XNormal
Software used: Maya, XNormal
Replies
Nice one, thanks!
These flat shapes (patterns) are essentially your UV's.
So in MD you are switching up the process. Instead of modeling first than doing your UV's, you make the UV's first and then the model gets made.
So since the patterns exported from MD already have the UV's you simply bake from your high poly to your high poly.
A standard plane, gets its UVs mapped to the entire UV tile. So if you apply the OSN to that plane you are essentially just looking at the 'UV's'. You then proceed to cut up that mesh to fit your baked normal maps details.
Of course there are multiple ways to go about this.
You could export the patterns out of MD reset, so they are flat.
Those flat meshes you can then use an auto retopo on, or just a straight up decimation.
That way you have base you can start from. You can generate UV's for the retopoed pieces, by simply transferring attributes, but instead of position you transfer UV's.
You can do a simple retopo/decimate of the 3d mesh, which will retain the UV's of the high poly and if it doesnt you can simply transfer them from the HP to the decimated mesh.
This method can be usefull as decimation tries to retain volume. So you will generall have more geo where there are sharp edges, so it is easier to figure out where to place your edges when you do a clean up.
Using the exported flat version out of MD, and having the UV's match up, you can then flatten the decimation, so you can work on a flat version again. And now you are able to go back and forth from 3d to flat version with your low poly to adjust stuff in both 'modes'.
Like in the OP transfer attributes is pretty overlooked. can do a bunch of cool stuff with it. =]
I am thinking about creating a video at some point covering the 3d methods i just mentioned.
While the original picture is awesome, i feel like watching someone do it can be easier to learn stuff from. as it is a pretty unorthodox way of doing things.