[Maya] Practicle and feasible alternative workflow to Max Smoothing groups
polycounter lvl 8
Smoothing groups are awesome for high poly modeling prototyping. You just select the faces, give diff smoothing groups, apply a meshsmooth set to smoothing groups and voila you have a blockout that you can edit in realtime that will hold well once smoothed again. I cant honestly think of a better and faster way than doing this.
Smoothing groups are very usefull for baking as well. Try baking some hard poly sculpts onto the retopologized low poly version without working your smoothing groups before : you'll never get clean normal maps.
Max doesnt only have them but it has an awesome implementation of them.You can asign diifferent numbers to diff smoothing groups, you have selections based on smoothing groups etc. They are passed to several modifiers that can make use of them like the swiss knife Chamfer modifier (recently updated) you can also filter you selection by Smoothed and unsmoothed edges etc and chamfer your entire model with respect to them along with other controls.
Is there any workflow similar to this in Maya and anyone using it, I mean a way of quickly getting the shape and details that you like with a pretty increased geometry first without bothering too much initially about supporting edges and topology. I know about the Soften and harden edge thing and creasing but I feel that it isnt fast enough and that defeats the purpose of getting into that workflow anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZsTYOzfH0s&t=20s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X1-kF89kwU&t=40s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzRgV2dHKmo
Smoothing groups are very usefull for baking as well. Try baking some hard poly sculpts onto the retopologized low poly version without working your smoothing groups before : you'll never get clean normal maps.
Max doesnt only have them but it has an awesome implementation of them.You can asign diifferent numbers to diff smoothing groups, you have selections based on smoothing groups etc. They are passed to several modifiers that can make use of them like the swiss knife Chamfer modifier (recently updated) you can also filter you selection by Smoothed and unsmoothed edges etc and chamfer your entire model with respect to them along with other controls.
Is there any workflow similar to this in Maya and anyone using it, I mean a way of quickly getting the shape and details that you like with a pretty increased geometry first without bothering too much initially about supporting edges and topology. I know about the Soften and harden edge thing and creasing but I feel that it isnt fast enough and that defeats the purpose of getting into that workflow anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZsTYOzfH0s&t=20s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X1-kF89kwU&t=40s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzRgV2dHKmo
Replies
It's not as immediate as it might be in max, but works well enough. I typically start with the set angle, then go about the model with the manual hard/soft as needed.
On this video around 27:30 Arrimus uses the so called Double smooth technique (two turbosmooth modifiers, one set to respect the smoothing groups and the other not) so you quickly and accurate give a bit of rounding to your edges which otherwise will look too sharp with the smoothing groups. Its a quick method to get a model for a presentation ofc at at cost of high polycount.
reading this old topic it seems someone found out how to work around and do this in Maya as well using the Subdivide proxy. https://polycount.com/discussion/117488/double-smooth
File menu> Proxy Subdiv Proxy> Select smoothed mesh> channel box set keep hard edges on> hit 3 on keyboard to smooth again> now move points on the subdiv proxy cage and harden/soften edges as needed.
Can someone replicate this and provide a short gif or vid pls. I dont think Im doing the right steps. Is this the same thing as in max to begin with ?