Low poly and projection issues
polycounter lvl 8
I'm trying to create a low poly version for my model. I used zphere to reconstruct the topology, but when I subdivide my low poly into higher polygons and then hit "project all," my model looks deformed. Below is an example of one of the pieces I'm using for a robot character. Check to see for yourself:
High poly:
Low Poly:
When I hit projection the model looks like this:
So how do I get around this issue? If my model turns out bad with the projection, is this an indicator that the bake is going to turn out bad? I don't want to use zremesh to make a low poly model, since zremesh doesn't work that well. I do plan on baking a normal map for the low poly model. I can't really use Xnormals to bake textures since I am a Mac user. So if there is a recommended software for Mac please let me know. I can imagine Zbrush isn't the best software to bake out normal maps.
High poly:
Low Poly:
When I hit projection the model looks like this:
So how do I get around this issue? If my model turns out bad with the projection, is this an indicator that the bake is going to turn out bad? I don't want to use zremesh to make a low poly model, since zremesh doesn't work that well. I do plan on baking a normal map for the low poly model. I can't really use Xnormals to bake textures since I am a Mac user. So if there is a recommended software for Mac please let me know. I can imagine Zbrush isn't the best software to bake out normal maps.
Replies
As for your projection issue, did you divide the low-poly to the same or higher vert count as the high-poly?
From your image it looks like you've just projected to the lowest level.
Also, you can play with the projection distance setting to tweak the projection, provided your mesh to be projected to has enough resolution.
That's a great question, because I'm wondering if there is a better way to bake out normals then the way I'm doing. I'm projecting in Zbrush, because I'm wondering if this is a good way to preview whether or not the bake will work. I only really have two programs to bake out normal maps. Zbrush and Maya. I'm fairly new to baking out normal maps, and have used both programs for baking. For Zbrush, I took the low poly version of the model, subdivided the model to a high polycount, projected the high poly mesh to the low poly mesh, and from there exported normal maps from Zbrush.
I heard Xnormal is good with baking out normal maps, but since I'm a Mac user I can't really use Xnormal unless perhaps I install Boot Camp on my computer. If there are any other good normal map baking software out there for the Mac, please let me know.
As for your projection issue, did you divide the low-poly to the same or higher vert count as the high-poly?
I did subdivide the mesh, but I didn't smooth when I subdivided the low poly version. That's why the projection looks blocky. I wanted to made sure that the low poly mesh encompassed the entire high polygon piece. Still, I get some weird deformed looking piece when I projected.
I did not play with any of the distance settings, perhaps I'll try that.