Noob questions about high poly, and workflow?

Udjani

So, ive been modeling only with sub div so far, to learn about topology, etc. But sometimes i end up seeing different workflows, where people do things that i don't understand at all.

1. This is done only with ''autosmoth'', no subdiv, saw some guys doing that, and i want to know, if this is enought to be a hight poly, like, would that be good enought to texture?, until now, i'm using subdiv in everything. 

2. This is something that i saw too, 2 object/meshes together, without intersection or boolean etc, im a bit confuse to even make the question for this one, but could this one be a hp too? what would happen with that intersection in the texturing phase. 

3. And the worst one, but i didn't find a direct answer to that, the animation of objecs, character etc, happens in the low poly right? after the retopo and etc? 

throttlekitty

1) Yes, that's fine. The modeling is simple and clean, and conveys the rounded shapes nicely. A "high poly" model doesn't always need to actually have a lot of polygons, it's the visual result that matters.

2) Multiple objects is fine and it's a common way to add small details like screw heads or things we don't want to adjust topology for a nice edge flow. Look up things like Floaters for examples. In your example, I'd suggest adding a bit of an outer bevel to the base of the cylinder, like this. It's a separate object, but visually appears to blend into the cube.



3) Probably all of the time for game models. Though the actual animation is done on the character Rig, then baked to the skeleton and exported. In this way it technically doesn't matter whether the geometry is high, low, proxy or whatever, though it is important that the model bends properly with the skeleton.