Beginner Questions on the right workflow

SummonedSpirit

Hello Polycount,

I'm a hobbyist really interested in playing aroung with Maya. I've started plans to make a virtual yacht and pier for a really special friend of mine but I would really want to get it done right in a proper way without misconceptions.

I've been poking my nose into tutorials and decided to do a test on a wooden plank. I just wanted to know if i did it right and understoof what it means to create a 3d model that works and can be rendered out not just in maya but perhaps unreal engine as I plan to do my lightings there

The link below shows 5 screen shots of my maya and photo shop.

http://imgur.com/a/gKzTK

I started by creating the form of the plank and hardening its edges by inserting edge loops. I made sure that everything of the plank would be quads as I heard lighting doesn't work well with none 4 sided polygons.

After which I planar mapped each face of the plank and sew them back together with their corresponding edges so the texture would flow to all faces properly.

I then created a texture map in photoshop and soften the potential areas with seams using a healing brush. I exported it as a tga and created a grey scale as a bump map.

Which resulted to the fully colored plank in the 2nd picture. Apologizes for their mis aligned chronology I'm not sure why it turned out this way.

I really would like to know if I'm on the right track when it comes to modelling and if this piece is functional to be used to construct the Pier I have in mind. Really appreciate the time the community takes to look into this and thanks you for all feed backs!

Also I would like to know, when models are made there is a 1,2,3 option to smooth them. If Say I have a cake and I insert edge loops to give it shape. Must I move the vertices to resemble its form in (3 button's softness) or is 3 indeed the final render and what is expected to be seen in rendering

PyrZern

3 is just a preview of when you use 'Smooth' on it. (double your polygons, I think.) 

huffer

- you can harden edges by using Soften/Harden Edge in the edges marking menu
- but if you use support loops like this, you might as well soften all edges - you'll get nice soft highlights on them instead
- when doing textures, you need to leave padding/bleed around your UV borders, so you need to extend the wood texture by 8-16 pixels around the edges. With this you'll prevent the white around it from bleeding in the edges when you zoom out
- you can simplify the texturing a lot if you create a single, full wood texture, tile-able, and just apply it on all planks, then add variations by scaling the UV's (or rotating them, etc)

SummonedSpirit

huffer said:

- you can harden edges by using Soften/Harden Edge in the edges marking menu
- but if you use support loops like this, you might as well soften all edges - you'll get nice soft highlights on them instead
- when doing textures, you need to leave padding/bleed around your UV borders, so you need to extend the wood texture by 8-16 pixels around the edges. With this you'll prevent the white around it from bleeding in the edges when you zoom out
- you can simplify the texturing a lot if you create a single, full wood texture, tile-able, and just apply it on all planks, then add variations by scaling the UV's (or rotating them, etc)

I see Huffer so that means the 3 button is merely a preview and I need to match what I see to (1 mode) to the desired extent of how soft the wood will be? Understood. Workflow wise however is there any process I have missed out? Hmm Tile-able i'm not sure what it mean. I've looked it up though it seems like repeatable textures. I believe I had tried to cut out these textures and paste it over to the individual faces but it left some pretty ugly lines.

Ged

3 is a preview of smoothing your mesh by subdividing it, if you go to "modify>convert>smooth mesh preview to polygons" then you will be working on an actual subdivided high polygon mesh( which is what 3 has been showing you a preview of ) at this point if you delete history you will loose your lowpoly. So I usually find using 3 useful if Im creating a high poly mesh that will be used for baking to my lowpoly but not for much else.

Eric Chadwick

Workflow and software questions belong in Technical Talk instead of General Discussion. I moved it for you.

SummonedSpirit

Ged said:

3 is a preview of smoothing your mesh by subdividing it, if you go to "modify>convert>smooth mesh preview to polygons" then you will be working on an actual subdivided high polygon mesh( which is what 3 has been showing you a preview of ) at this point if you delete history you will loose your lowpoly. So I usually find using 3 useful if Im creating a high poly mesh that will be used for baking to my lowpoly but not for much else.

I see, so that means when exporting these assets or rendering them for video their default appearance is 1 and not 3. Also if I understand right. Baking is the process of creating normal maps to project the finer details of a high poly mesh on to a low poly one?

Last thing just to check as written in my original post did I understand the workflow of modelling correctly or is there something I might have missed

SummonedSpirit

quick bump anyone can shed some light on my remaining question regarding my modelling workflow accuracy?