How to use quad draw to create clean low poly shells for baking

Bradstone2020

Im having trouble creating clean low poly shells to bake my high poly textures on. I was tought to use quad draw but it just seems super messy and difficult to get the polys to cover the high poly without breakage when baked onto the low poly shell. Is it just too low poly or are the models not symetrical enough. Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thankyou.

slosh

Your image doesn't really explain the problem you are having.  I use quaddraw on all my retopo and it works fine for me.

Bradstone2020

Ok so the question is "how do I stop my models from having broken textures like the model on the right of the top picture and what exactly is causing this to happen", as well as also looking for any tips on how to me my retopology cleaner as its a complete mess.

Bradstone2020

Update: I may have solve my texture breaking problem as it seemed to have been something to do with the uvs. I will continue to experiment with this to fortify that this is the problem and if not I will come back and ask for more help. If you have any tips or tricks on how to use quaddraw in a faster or cleaner way, that would be highly appreciated. Thankyou.

PolyHertz

From the screenshot provided it looks like either the meshs weren't properly aligned when the bake was done, or the bake cage was too large / rays traveled too far. I don't use Maya these days, but If you post the file this is happening with it'd be easier for people to give you more specific advise.

Bradstone2020

Yeah, I will paste the file here as im still having trouble. It seems like while if off working on another piece the part I just fixed breaks again. Its so fustrating. I could not add the actual file so its ina Dropbox link. If someone could work me ethrough what im doing wrong that would be amasing as this is the one problem that has stumped me with all my models. :https://www.dropbox.com/s/6plb28sey9h1ov4/Sawed Off Shotgun.mb?dl=0

Bradstone2020

So i found out what I was doing wrong. I had not unwrapped my UV's correctly creating distortions when baking the high uv textures onto the low poly model.

kanga

Just looking at the top pic you may be missing basic stuff.  The lowpoly model on the right has strange smoothing. Most baking apps require you to smooth shade all polys with a single group before you bake. Before you experiment further it may be an idea to find a comprehensive tutorial on the process. One that covers the whole process from start to finish to fill in the gaps. Here is some good info from the polycount wiki: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking

Bradstone2020

Thanks to all your guys help I managed to get model to work perfectly. Yeah you were right i was missing basic steps and that tutorial did help. Thankyou and heres a pic of the final model.