High poly to low workflow using Maya

Steve Schulze

This has probably been discussed a number of times in the past, but the terms are a bit too general to actually find anything with the search (over 1000 results).

Anyway, I've started work on the low poly version of my Dominance War character and am having a great deal of difficulty building a low poly mesh around it. I've dumped a medium level version of the body part into Maya but actually working the low poly geometry around it is proving problematic.

How do people people usually handle this. I know max has a plugin that can snap an entire mesh around another. Does Maya have something similar available?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

aesir

Just freeze the high res mesh and make it semi transparent, and then build up the low res mesh like you normally would using the high poly as a guideline to base it all on. You could might be able to find a script to snap it all together, but I doubt it would even save you that much time. You still have to build the whole low poly mesh properly. Its not that much extra effort to the put the points in the right places. And remember, its a projection for the normal map so the low poly points dont have to rest exactly on the surface. Just try and get the whole thing as close as you can.

MoP

Depends what version of Maya you have. I know the newer ones have something called "Make Live" which you can apply to a surface and it then becomes used for snapping anything else to, seems to work pretty well. I think that's in Maya 7 and 8.

James Edwards

Since you are already using Maya...

http://draster.com/component/page,shop.product_details/flypage,software-flypage/product_id,35/category_id,7/manufacturer_id,0/option,com_virtuemart/

Check out the Quad Draw video specifically:

http://draster.com/videos/downloadable/NEX-Alpha-QuadDraw.mov

I don't even really like maya as a modeler but combined with NEX, it's pretty sweet for retopology work. I prefer it over other solutions like Silo, Modo, or Topogun, since Quad Draw is just one tool that does multiple things. There's a demo there too so try it and see for yourself.

Rob Galanakis

A Live surface has been around since pre-Maya 6, I am pretty sure.

It is the plain Magnet icon next to the rest of your snaps on the top right.

I import two instances of the "medium poly" (a lower subdivision level of the high-poly version) and put them on the same layer, I make one semi-transparent with a Lambert material, and make the other a Live surface (select it and hit the Make Live icon), and make the layer Renderable (so I can't select it).

I shape a surface onto this, cutting in proper geometry and everything, extruding, etc. You can start from a normal box or cylinder, or use the lowest-subdivison level of your highres mesh as a start, if suitable (or you can use a generic model you have already), however you do it is fine, you can't really mess up.

There is also a script called "fitVertices" you can get on highend3d that really helps once you have the geometry defined, you can "shrinkwrap" (in fact one of the scripts that does similar is called shrinkWrapXY) the low poly mesh to the high poly... very useful on many occasions.

malcolm

Yeah dude, make live has been their since Maya 2.5 when I started using Maya.

Steve Schulze

Ah that sounds like a good way to work, Professor. Thanks for that.

Its a pity I don't have an up to date version of Maya. That NEX business looks pretty schmick.

East

Holy moley, Gwot, that NEX plugin has completely reshaped the way I work in Maya. Now I don't think I could go back to using Maya without, so it looks like I'll be forced to cough up the money to buy a license..

Darn you, Gwot. Darn you! (Also thank you for bringing it to my attention, it -is- an excellent plugin..)

James Edwards

Hehe, me too! Glad it could be of use East. =]

Daz

Woah, I'm used to doing it the old fashioned way but just tried the demo. I'm sold, thanks Gwot.

tacit math

for your resurfacing pleasure. it has been hinted that in a later release NEX might include features such as are discussed here :

http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=191022&an=0&page=0#Post191022

James Edwards

Ah another one! No problem Daz, enjoy! =]
Jump into their forums too if you have any ideas or requests for features/improvements. They are pretty keen on making it a better toolset for all.

rooster

and another one! this tool is a blast!

fritz

just outta curiosity...for those of you that use maya and max...is this just like polyboost's polydraw function?

rooster

how does that work? with quad draw you anticipate where your verts will go, dot em down, then hold shift and drag thru the verts and the polys pop into existance. feels great. or theres a function where you can drag the mouse and it creates polys where you drag

MoP

rooster: With polydraw you don't have to dot verts down, you just select what average face size you want, and just paint on the mesh and it makes quads with edges in the direction of your stroke angle. Sounds like the 2nd option you mentioned.

SkullboX

NEX!

Is awesome.

rollin

wow .. nex is realy impressive.. doesn´t happen often i wish i would work in maya

James Edwards

Polyboost also has waaaay more features than NEX at this point, but for straight up topology.. man... all those tools combined into one is badass. I can build a low poly mesh up from scratch without dropping the tool at all.

Fritz: I'm not sure how tight the workflow is in polyboost but I just love it in nex(quad draw). A couple of the key workflow advantages for me are the way you paint polygons onto those dots, because it also functions as a bridge tool between polygons that are already there so you can layout separate strips or work on island chunks all you want and stitch them together when you are ready just by painting over the gaps/holes. You can also target weld verts and edges and delete polygons on the fly too, and cut edge loops into existing polygons all without switching tools. It's just your mouse and a couple modifier keys.

Neox

afaik nex is pretty poorly implemented, i know a lot of guys that are quite unhappy with the implementation of nex in maya, but love the tools, but there will be another tool soon, flow for maya by henry korol, has some awesome workflow additions

@rollin: as gwot said, polyboost for max has right now a way broader featureset

James Edwards

I don't know anything about code or how poorly it is implemented... all I know is that it works really well for topology specifically - better than anything else I've used to date. For what I'm getting out of it, that's all that really matters.

Is 'Flow' the same tool that Henry has been developing in this thread?...

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=7&t=342302&page=1&pp=20

If so, it doesn't sound like it's very close to having topology building tools. That's what I'm using NEX for right now.

Not having access to his tools the way I did with NEX while it was in beta, it's kindof hard to even compare them at this point.

If there are people unhappy with the NEX plugin I'm not seeing them posting about it in the NEX forums or thread on CGTalk. Since the developers are so open to feedback and user input, I find this difficult to believe, since any problems that do get reported seem to be dealt with rather quickly.

I did happen to notice in the NEX thread here:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=7&t=387363&page=14&pp=20

Henry was implying that the NEX developers were ripping him off. To me that seems a bit on on the unlikely side considering that ideas like this have been floating around online for years and even exist in other applications in bits and pieces already. Other than that bit of colorful posting the NEX thread seems highly energetic with good ideas exchanged from users and positive 2 - way communication with the developers. That and the fact that NEX is available right now and has been openly available for some time makes me wonder at the credibility of some of the statements Henry made in that thread. I still have yet to see a working plugin come from him.

It's also a bit unprofessional to go and dirty up someone else's thread with such claims and other attempts to put a negative light on their toolset or capabilities, which he does also. You need some cold hard facts to back those claims up and I dont' see any of that coming from him. That's my own observation though after reading through both threads.

Others can draw their own conclusions by reading them if they are interested. Personally I go with tools that are available NOW, and work well, and whose developers maintain a strong relationship with their community of users. The flip side of that is hearsay, vague promises and no actual tool in my hands to use. Guess where my money goes?

I wish him the best though and hopefully he can bring further innovation to modeling in maya, as there's plenty of room for that still. I will certainly check out his plugin when it is released.

rooster

I've been using NEX all day today, loved it. Trying to convince our manager to buy it before demo runs out. Not sure what the poor implementation is referring to?
I love the silo tweak functionality, coupled with solid soft selection. splitting loops, target welding, bridge etc all a button press and mouse click away.

Daz

Not having any integration issues. Looks to be what I would call seamless in fact.

A question ( and I had a look on the forums but couldn't find an answer)

Is there a way to get the quad draw points to snap to the grid as you lay them out? Say you weren't using the tool for retopology purposes, but for building something non organic from scratch for instance. I really can't find a way.

rooster

by the way rollin I think its also a max plugin? download the demo and see how it works in max

James Edwards

Daz: I think that so long as you don't have anything in the reference mesh slot, it will default to the grid.

rooster

I think he means grid snap though, I couldnt get the dots to snap to anything other than the grid plane, rather than points

Daz

Yeah can't get grid snap going on at all.

By the way, the fact that simply saving a texture in PShop and Alt-Tab-ing back into Maya updates all the textures without having to touch anything is worth its weight in gold alone.

Mark Dygert

With the material editor highlighted press O to bring up options and uncheck "Manual Update". If you have a default scene that loads when max starts make sure to go uncheck that option and save the maxstart.max file again so you don't have to hassle with that again.

Really sometimes you Maya converts are so silly. =P

James Edwards

Daz: that's odd... if I fire it up grid shows up in the reference object box automatically at the bottom of the NEX panel. Did a quick test mesh and it worked for me.

Daz

Ah OK thanks Gwot, weird. I'll tinker around.

Er, you've totally lost me there Vig! Unless you were talking to someone else?

Mark Dygert

I jumped in this too late and didn't read anything much other than your textures comment, I thought you where talking about just updating textures... opps...