Maya - Mudbox Workflow - Retop?

Vocari

I've recently been bogging myself down into Maya and Mudbox trying to optimise my workflow between the both, however I seem to have hit a bit of a wall with a misunderstanding of of workflow and retopologizing.

I'm just having a few problems with asset and character modelling back and forth from Maya to Muddy. I tend to build a lo-poly object, a door for example. Then add divisions to keep the base shape for Mudbox. Then once all the sculpting has been finished in Mudbox extract the Normal map to place on the Lo-Poly object.

I'm all a little bit confused on how this workflow works properly, so any help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry if it seems like I have no idea, I've tried many different videos and I'm getting told different things off each so I am a little lost.

Thanks Vocari.

Wombatinahat

What I tend to do is create the a very basic low poly in max then add the support edges etc to keep the base shape. take that into mudbox for the sculpt then once I have my high polly I will usually use Topogun to retopologise the mesh creating a new more accurate low poly which I will then take back into max and unwrap before bringing both the high and low together to create a bake either in max or xnormal.

This is just my own workflow which works for me, hope this helps

Vocari

Thanks for that Wombat, what advantages do you gain by Retoping your work though? is it better detail or an optimised object?

And baking Hi-poly and Lo-poly what does this involve?

Sorry for all the questions just wanted to start with a good workflow and save me some time in errors.

Thanks again, Vocari

Wombatinahat

well for me it depends how much the high poly changes from the original low if your just adding a few small dents ect then you probably wouldn't need to retopo the high poly you could just use your original low poly.

Here is a good example of workflow and when to retopo I found linked elsewhere on polycount.

http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/generic_wall_tutorial/generic_wall_tutorial.html

As for baking there is a lot of info on the forums here.

http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/article_normalmaps/normalmaps.html

This goes over the best practises for optimising your geometry for normal map bakes.

As for baking in maya I'm unsure as I use max however if your wanted to try Xnormal its free and you can get it and read the tutorials on the website.

http://www.xnormal.net/1.aspx

Vocari

Thanks alot Wombat for all the links, they should really help me out and push my work to the next level.

Vocari.