Is there a way to instantly turn lowpoly model to rough highpoly model?
I really want to find a way to turn a rough lowpoly model done by using ton of boolean operation in 3ds max (with propperly set smooth groups but crappy topology) into good looking (but not ideal production ready) highpoly. Or at leas give this lowpoly a fake look of a highpoly. The final goal is not production ready asset but rather a quickly done and good looking presentation of a hardsurface design.
What approaches do I know.
- Turn smooth groups into UV islands and based on this info create poly groups in Zbrush -- then Zremesher -- then subdivide or dynamesh + polish. = lot of steps. too slow.
- Bevel shader in Blender and final render in Blender. = only possible to present in Blender and I also want to play with UE5. don't want to make UV step for bake bevels.
- Retopology tool and Subdivide in 3ds max. = too heavy mesh - not possible to create big assets. (proOptimizer + weighted normals is a solution but the result looks not really good.)
- Bevel edges + weighted normals. = requires cleanup of mesh. too slow.
So all of this approaches have their own downsides. I imagine the ideal approach for me is to have some sort of plugin/script/modifier that gives me the ability to:
- remesh only the areas with predefined radius close to hard edges and by that have a good looking bevels - its different from simple bevel modifier because it will not require any clean topology - just info about hardedges. Like in SmoothBoolean plugin but based not on the boolean operands info but smooth groups / hardedges.
- It must be really fast in computation.
- Ideally a modifier on top - that I can enable/disable so that this lowpoly to highpoly switch will be non-destructive.
- Control radius of remeshed hardedge area in real time.
Again this would be an ideal situation but maybe you know something at least close to this? First of all interested in such a functionality in 3ds max, secondly - in blender.
Replies
Provide a set of models (source and target) exactly representative of what you mean, and people will be able to point you in the right direction with practical demonstrations.
in my personal lexicon i associate a lowpoly mesh with an in-game mesh but i believe here you're describing a block-out mesh. essentially you're asking how best to automate topologizing a hard surface highpoly model, hoping for a one click solution but are accepting of a springboard result.
for characters, i spring off a remesh or previous model where possible and roll up my fuggen sleaves like an OG. for static props, i remesh, poop out and pack UVs like a new kid.
if there's a reliable automated process, give it to me NOW! 😉
Yes I was talking about blockouts - you are right. And a solution for really bad post boolean topology to be magically converted to something that looks like a highpoly. We can say that by highpoly look I mean exactly adding bevels to hardedges in the mesh.
I have a retopo and decimation with weighted normals actions and they give me good results sometimes but not always.
Chamfer modifier is good too and this is great that it is non-destructive. But it kills me that it can not understand self intersections. And I know that it does not meant to. But It would be close to ideal to have some advanced chamfer/bevel modifier that could prevent this self intersections and would just stop small radiuses while continue to grow larger ones.
If you work smart in sections I think zbrush will be fastest way workflow is similar to preparing something for 3d printing
Alternative I can see a lot of parts that are good candidates for In Maya smooth preview crease on taste and then convert smooth preview to poly if not final high res will give you better representation [all the cylinders ]for zbrush dynamesh
I was also imagining some some solution with remeshing only edges. Maybe there is a non-distructive script.
ZBrush is not a best solution for me because I really want to do some changes on the go - test this "highpoly" preview for a second and then return to booleaning stuff. But I totally agree that for example Zremesher + Dynamesh + Polish = will fix poor blockout polycount of cylinders - all will be a true highpoly. But again than I need to finalize design first and only after do this stage with Zbrush and I really want to have a fast ability to jump back and forward.
nice work!
this level of hard surface modeling would require some TLC. i had experimented with SmoothBoolean v2.0 in 3dsmax two years ago while exploring solutions to this very need but found it just finicky enough to cast doubt on its promise. maybe exploring what users have been saying about this plugin since then will uncover some leads.
For UE use : do your best to generate decent-ish UVs (ideally by proactively marking seams on the pieces as you model them), and bake down the Blender bevel node (or the Modo/Max/Maya equivalent) to a normalmap.
Or, bake everything (with hard edges) as an Object Space normalmap, blur it ever so slightly, and convert it back to the desired tangent space. The downside of this is that the blurred edges will only appear as intended over continuous UVs but not at UV splits which will just show a small shading artefact (resulting of the blending of the island color with the background). Whereas if you use the bevel node they will all show up everywhere regardless.
Two benefits from there : no highpoly is ever involved, and you end up with a model with UVs ready for automatic texturing in SP or any other texturing tool.
Lastly, you could also simply model everything with the desired non-destructive bevels/chamfer modifier you mentioned yourself. That is by far the most simple and straightforward solution, so why not just do that ? And for the parts that glitch out like on your screenshot, then just don't use it there. Or stack the effect multiple times depending on the widths you need.
(BTW, sharing some test meshes would probably be a good idea too)
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Oh and : I can't help but notice that there aren't any screenshots showing your UE rendering experiments using these models. In practice there is actually no guarantee that you'll even need any these hypothetical edge processing effects on your models to achieve the high level goal you are after... Any conjecture on that is pretty much pointless until you actually test out your final rendering really.
I'd go with Mr Bolton's non destructive pro-boolean und dynamesh workflow, for that thing...
but yeah as mentioned, testing will help verify you're on an envisioned path forward to finalization.
awesome.
I sometimes use remesh modifier in Blender with small voxel size. It works pretty slow although. But you could then project UV from low poly on hi poly that impossible to do in Zbrush. It's not perfect on curved things although. And it's much easier to just bake Bevel shader node into low poly normal map as pior suggested . Still sometimes it's convenient to then sculpt few chip offs on edges . You just need to switch off auto shading and set all to smooth.
You can achieve the look of a high poly model using the rounded edges node inside of Arnold Render. Take a look at the documentation here: https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/Round+Corners
Hope this helps.