Cloth topology pros cons

goekbenjamin

as an example i have this pants (zremeshed^^ ) with spirals, but it does take the folds in account to get a better silhouette, also the borders are good so i could cut along the edges to have pretty uvs

zremeshd:

and this is the all nice quad mesh:

zremeshed:


quaded:



both have clean sharp border-edges to cut along for good uv-ing,
what would you choose?

A. zremeshed: folows folds, nice silhouette, good uv, BUT spirals
B. quaded: does not follow folds, no spirals, good uvs, BUT "bad "silhouette"

oglu

B. quaded: does not follow folds, no spirals, good uvs, BUT "bad "silhouette"
And displacement on top for good "silhouette"

What is it for?
A game, a still render, animated?

Neox

it really depends on your end product. will this be rigged and placed in anything game or ad or film? go with B

if its just for a still frame, A is fine, whatever works then.

Alex_J

regarding the silhouette, is there a discernible difference between the two ? I can't tell. Maybe if you have a reflective material it is going to look nicer with topology that follows curves rather than go against them but in the photos as is, it looks indistinguishable to me.

goekbenjamin

Sorry, I forgot to mention I was aiming for games.
I will go with "B" + "additional cuts" for deeper folds I guess...

poopipe

I wouldn't let you put that in a game I was working on. 

unless that's really near the camera and it's got a cloth sim on it there's no reason you cant remove 75% of the geometry

goekbenjamin

poopipe said:

I wouldn't let you put that in a game I was working on. 

unless that's really near the camera and it's got a cloth sim on it there's no reason you cant remove 75% of the geometry

Hey, what version you would not put in a game? "A" or "B"?

oglu

Both
To much unneeded Poly.

If you compare that to a gamechar from metro for example.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/3oBamv

goekbenjamin

Actually it depends, no? 
I didn't even say what game or what platform I was aiming for to be fair ?!
It's not for a mobile game and also this won't be a  low-poly model, I aimed for a realistic aaa model, so I think that's ok?
Like I oriented myself by the pants on "Leon" from the game "Resident Evil 2 Remake", those pants alone does have a tri count of
17.000. just to get a taste what is "acceptable"
But that is actually not the question :-D

oglu

Still to much poly in areas you dont need them. 
But show us the rest of the char. Its easier to answer if we see the whole picture.

And i fear those folds wont look good if he bends the knee. Unless this is goin to be simulated i would go for folds that work with deformed legs.

goekbenjamin

oglu said:

Still to much poly in areas you dont need them. 
But show us the rest of the char. Its easier to answer if we see the whole picture.

And i fear those folds wont look good if he bends the knee. Unless this is goin to be simulated i would go for folds that work with deformed legs.

Sure Christoph, here you go:

oglu

Ok and now make a turntable with the char in black. That we see only the silhouette. And you see nothing from your high polycount.
If you spend that much poly on a char every poly should make the silhouette more interesting.

goekbenjamin

oglu said:

Ok and now make a turntable with the char in black. That we see only the silhouette. And you see nothing from your high polycount.
If you spend that much poly on a char every poly should make the silhouette more interesting.

I get your point, also it's not only the silhouette that benefits from that "high" poly count I think?
I delivered no game by myself, I just "make" my thought up ( )

It benefits from "smoother/rounder" edges overall when animations are played, also closeups by in-game-cut scenes are looking good? So no pre-rendered stuff in-games? maybe I am just wrong I dunno

GIF:
https://i.gyazo.com/a308284fb4fed9f16d1d30e40f63044c.gif

btw thanks a lot for your time guys!

oglu

Those AAA Chars does have a lot of Rigging and Blendshape goin on op top. 
If you do a Portfolio Char you go for the best looking Still Frame. 

I would grab a Game you like and search for wirefame shots and mimic those.
There are a lot different ways todo topo.

Alex_J

goekbenjamin said:

I delivered no game by myself, I just "make" my thought up ( )

You don't have to make a whole game. In just an afternoon or a couple you can learn to do a quick rig with humanIK and then lookup some youtube tuts about the shape deformer. It's all a lot easier than you might imagine and playing around with it a bit will give you much better idea about how your topology will work and help you understand how far you can push it before you really need more resolution.

skinning and animating a character with that much geo does slow things down, so it the topology isn't essential its really better to not have it.

And for animation test you can easily import your character to mixamo and then download. It even has a pretty good autorigger you could use instead of humanIK, and then you can still do your shape defformers and corrective skinning on top of that.

otherwise, just listening to the tech artist and do what they say