[blender] Advice needed, Hp/lp medieval helmet project I was working on...

oraeles77

I wanted to make a shiny nice looking helmet after a trip to a museum and doing some sketching of the helmets.

I had a BSOD/boot error thing which corrupted some other parts of my computer and this mishap distracted me from the projects I was working on last summer.

what I want to do,

1) make a helmet which looks nice in a render, currently Im playing about with Iray in Substance Designer/Substance Painter, Octane, and Cinema4d.

2) bake the textures on to a low poly version.  I've baked lots of normal maps and things like that on simple objects but I haven't done anything like painting a highpoly object then baking the diffuse to a high poly object.

3) eventually use this project with some stuff I've been working on in Marvelous Designer (although I got no idea how!)

thank you for your imput.

Brian "Panda" Choi

You should clean up or reedo your high poly model.  There's some mad faceting going on.

oraeles77

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

You should clean up or reedo your high poly model.  There's some mad faceting going on.

exactly what does that mean to someone like me who has no idea what they are doing?

so i get the original low poly, do a sub surf thing to it, then scult it to look a little interesting, add the rivets and then im done?

Brian "Panda" Choi

No.

Low Poly doesn't necessarily turn INTO a high poly via subdividing the mesh.  It can, but iut doesn't need to.

For your helmet, building your high poly model where you subdividing a low poly model that has the appropriate control edge loops should be enough to get to where you're getting.

If you want more hand-holding infomation about the terms I've used, I recommend sitting down with the videos on youtube, like in this link:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=subdivision+modeling

Afterwards, you should have an idea about the workflow.

That being said, even after looking through the Polycount Wiki, Google, and youtube, do you NOT have a high-level understanding of what the asset pipeline for a game ready asset is?  Totally fine if you don't, we're just gonna have to go through again what pathway you should generally be expecting.

oraeles77

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

No.

Low Poly doesn't necessarily turn INTO a high poly via subdividing the mesh.  It can, but iut doesn't need to.

For your helmet, building your high poly model where you subdividing a low poly model that has the appropriate control edge loops should be enough to get to where you're getting.

If you want more hand-holding infomation about the terms I've used, I recommend sitting down with the videos on youtube, like in this link:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=subdivision+modeling

Afterwards, you should have an idea about the workflow.

That being said, even after looking through the Polycount Wiki, Google, and youtube, do you NOT have a high-level understanding of what the asset pipeline for a game ready asset is?  Totally fine if you don't, we're just gonna have to go through again what pathway you should generally be expecting.

hey brian, sorry if i came across a bit blunt earlier.

yeah, regarding 'hand holding' information, i've watched a lot of those subdvision themed videos before especially this one...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckOTl2GcS-E

I do know what subdivision is, i just dont do high poly scultping, and it seems whenever I attempt to venture into more advanced stuff the learning curve exceeds what I understand., i dont have any proper 'pipeline'/workflow cause Im completely self taught and Im filling in holes as I pass them, and I haven't ever made an object to export to a game, I assume your standards are much higher than mine cause you are a full time character artist with years of experience, ive only been doing this in my spare time since 2012.

but I see videos on youtube for Blender, people make a low poly, add that subsurf modifier (which is another thing i dont usully both with)  sculpt it a little bit then make the high poly and thats it, obviously in the real world its a little more complicated than that.

but if I was to re-do that high poly helmet could you explain what I should be avoiding? facets? are they are areas of high density where there is lots of detail?

Brian "Panda" Choi

Even with spare time, we can still do the best we can.

Facets are where I have them highlighted here.



You high poly model should essentially be the most detail accuratee version of the medieval helmet you are referencing.

oraeles77

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Even with spare time, we can still do the best we can.

Facets are where I have them highlighted here.



You high poly model should essentially be the most detail accuratee version of the medieval helmet you are referencing.

so are these the same as artifacts?  or are they something else?

Brian "Panda" Choi

Artifacts are used as a broad term to describe errors that look procedurally caused instead of intentional in THIS particular discipline.  Bad bakes, antialiasing errors, etc.  More specificity about a problem's identity within the umbrella of "artifacts" will lead to specific identification of certain errors.

Regarding the faceting in your high poly model above, you literally don't have a smooth surface there where there should be.  Your bolts also don't looks well separated.  WIth something like this, you won't NEED to sculpt, but cleaner high poly geo will get to where you need to go.

oraeles77

"Regarding the faceting in your high poly model above, you literally don't have a smooth surface there where there should be.  Your bolts also don't looks well separated."

so should the rivets (or  as you call them bolts) be separate objects intersecting with the helmet? I always thought the highpoly should be a single mesh with the geometry interconnected.

or by seperated do you mean the distance between the rivets?

Brian "Panda" Choi

Your high poly does not need to be one contiguous mesh. You can have everything separated as much as you’d like as long as it looks good and bakes well. 


Overwatch weapons use "floater meshes" to prep a bake in of certain details that would take too long to model contiguously, like bolt holes or indents.

oraeles77

Brian "Panda" Choi said:

Your high poly does not need to be one contiguous mesh. You can have everything separated as much as you’d like as long as it looks good and bakes well. 


Overwatch weapons use "floater meshes" to prep a bake in of certain details that would take too long to model contiguously, like bolt holes or indents.

ahh ok, I will look into that.