Making the transition from low, to high poly?

almighty_gir

ive been considdering it for a while, and while some of the principals surely apply to both styles of modeling.

is there a good way of making the transition from in-game modeling, to high poly?

i dont want to end up making a low poly model and hitting the meshsmooth button, as that just doesnt give nice results to be honest. so ive come asking if there is anything to take into considderation? or should i just dive right in and see what happens?

oh, and Daz, your grand moff tutorial was very informative, thanks

Kitteh

I suppose just dive right in yeah, worked for me

Faucet

Dive on in! The water is fine.

Just keep quads when possible and try to keep good poly flow. And one thing that I often seem to forget... there is no poly limit! Don't worry about poly counts! If there's detail you want to model, model it!

Here are a couple nice tutorials on high poly modelling. It's really not any different than game modelling, but there are some tricks on getting good topology on more complex bits like ears, heads, etc.
http://mr2k.3dvf.net/tutorials/max/tutorials_joan.htm
http://www.thehobbitguy.com/tutorials/polymodeling/index.html

Happy modeling!

Sean McBride

Absolutely! I made the jump not to long ago and its been fun all the way through.

For me there really wasnt any technique i just ran through some forums and tried to find some low poly cages to some sub=d characters that I liked and tried out some of what they were doing myself messing with the results. Its quite odd after being so exact with your polygons and trying to optimize as much as you can. Just play around, it dosn't take that much time to get the hang of.

Have fun, good luck man.

KDR_11k

I think I did a few tutorials and a few starting exercises (only faces, I think), after a while keeping quads and forming loops comes natural.

almighty_gir

well, i dove in, and it was fun, but im finding that because i kept myself so strictly regimented in the polycounts i used to go for, even though i dont have a limit now, i still feel like i have to make each vertex count for something, and i keep stopping myself adding in that extra loop

JKMakowka

[ QUOTE ]
well, i dove in, and it was fun, but im finding that because i kept myself so strictly regimented in the polycounts i used to go for, even though i dont have a limit now, i still feel like i have to make each vertex count for something, and i keep stopping myself adding in that extra loop

[/ QUOTE ]

Not every vertex counts, but every edge row (loop) should have a purpose. Otherwise you end up with hard to control/navigate/alter meshes (which is also bad for animation), and it is really hard to get rid of unwanted detail if there are too many edge loops without a purpose.