Marvelous Designer into Game Asset - Workflow question

yongslyy

Hi guys, I'm pretty new to making assets for games so do forgive me for my lack of knowledge!

I've recently picked up Marvelous and got carried away making various military assets. I built a Load Bearing Vest with multiple layers but when preparing the low poly model for baking/texturing, I'm met with a ton of issues. 

While detailing the high res mesh in zbrush, I used panel loops to get some thickness but am now having trouble with approaching making a low poly mesh. I retopo-ed a low res mesh but when trying to subdivide and project, it gets pretty crazy (i'm guessing it's because of the multiple fabric layers going on, plus the gaps in between them). Should I have built it simpler with only a layer in mind in Marvelous? 

What would be the workflow for tackling objects built from Marvelous Designer? I see a lot of tutorials on importing and detailing clothing from marvelous but can't find many that talks about preparing the asset for baking.

Or I should have just not used Marvelous for assets like this to begin with lol. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

I have attached an image of the character I'm building to provide more context. I built the pouches and clothing too in marvelous, and am trying to prepare them for baking, hope they don't give me as many problems  

pior

Just build the lowpoly the same way one would build a lowpoly for any game, MD or not.

kanga

I am busy with the same sort of character. Its just my opinion but the wrinkles give a clue as to what the material is and  its thickness, or how rigid it is. Apart from your projection problems the model above seems to have an overall noise that makes it look a bit bumpy.

I did all the fabric parts with MD, but modeled the boots and most of the bags in Max. The straps were modeled in ZB. For thicker more stiff materials I sculpted the wrinkles in: like the boots and chest bags. As far as baking goes I broke the model up into different parts, just for baking and so I can get a clean result. Im doing the retopo now but Im pretty sure there will be a bit of back and forth to iron out the errors.

I think you can use MD for most fabric, but you have to pay attention to what type of material it is. I dont think it works well for stuff like canvas bags for instance, because you get a better result by sculpting warpage intensity and frequency in. You could do it, but it would be like building a model of the Eiffel tower out of matchsticks. There is also a danger that your resulting model will look like a lumpy mess, even after all the hard work.

Cheers

yongslyy

Thanks @pior and kanga for the reply!

@kanga Thank you so much for that breakdown. I have been stumbling my way forward for the past few days and a peek into your workflow has been insightful.

As I was preparing my asset, a more specific problem came to my mind and I would like to seek some opinions from you guys. As I am planning to detail straight onto on my MD mesh, do I have to close these gaps up or is there a way I can go about baking just the outer shell onto my low poly? Once again I do apologize if this is a real noob question lol. Also, if there are any sites that provide information on baking practices would be greatly appreciated (The ones I found are from mainly from the polycount wiki and am reading them right after this post!).

thanks at ton guys.