Mudbox: Any reason not to use multiple meshes if planning to retopo?

DDevilfish

I've been really digging into sculpting in mudbox lately, and I'm having plenty of fun, but I haven't been able to find any advice on this subject. Im mostly working on environments and hard surface right now. I often feel that my models would be more manageable to work with if I used many seperate meshes without connected vertices, or even broke the model into many separate objects. It would cut down on the amount of freezing and masking I need to do, and generally make it easier to see and work on individual parts.

So my question is, as long as I plan to retopo the final sculpted product into a contiguous low-poly, is there any reason I shouldnt do this? For example, I wonder if its possible that I might accidentally tear edges away from eachother while sculpting, doing it this way. Or if it will come back to bite me when baking. Thanks!

oglu

depends on how your objects look like... sometimes its no problem... somtimes you cant get a clean bake...
could you post some images..?

DDevilfish

Thanks Oglu. I dont really have a specific example yet, I'm mostly just making sure the concept is sound. I've always been advised that all assets (game production) should be a single mesh. But that advice comes from very basic courses and tasks, so it might not be relevant, or might be oversimplified. I'm new to sculpting high poly and then doing retopo for a low poly, and dont have any education on it, so I wanted to check before I let go of that one-mesh rule. I think you've already answered by saying "sometimes". At least that means there is no absolute rule that I mustn't do this.

I'm sure it's a painfully basic question for most people here, that goes without saying... but it's gotta be said at least once for me to know.

oglu

some highres stuff we are working on does have more than 500 parts... but again sometimes this wont work...

DDevilfish

Noted, I won't come back to hassle you about it if I have one that won't bake right. I can always explode it for baking, or otherwise figure it out when it happens.