A better edge flow?

mdeforge

Hello polycount I started my new job today. Thanks to those who posted in my other threads, my transition from Max to Maya has been a smooth one. I'm pretty comfortable zipping around the menu's now. :thumbup:

I have a more technical question for you now regarding the proper way to model this simple object. Pictured below on the left side is a rough draft of what I believe to be the starting of the bare minimum number of edges for this model... (although looking at it again I'm missing a few, but you get the point) However, the issue I'm having is that this object will be used with nCloth and be animated. nCloth needs a good amount of subdivisions to simulate real cloth... but I'm trying to be a good steward of my edges as well, or least be placing them where they count. Is the method on the right really the best way to go about this? My gut feeling say's no, but my brain is telling me that if I want nCloth to work well, there's not many more options. Thoughts? Sketches?



It's important that the middle piece there (the white part) be slightly extruded. Otherwise, I'd just make a high poly model and bake it onto the low poly. I could probably still do it, but I don't think a bump/normal would bring enough pop to that piece. This isn't video game art... it's simulation/instructional video's. I need to be accurate.

The crazy subd way is the way my coworker has been doing things thus far, but again, I think I could be doing it better. Am I just over thinking it? I appreciate the advice in advance.

EDIT:

Headed to bed, but I'm liking the topology on this much better:



It's a WIP

Scruples

I don't think n-cloth will respond well to varying levels of density, so keeping the density even throughout would be ideal.

[Edit] Unless you create a separate polymesh for the ncloth deformations (even poly density but without details) and wrap deform your high-poly to it...what is that thing anyway.

Oh and you gotta be careful about your speculars getting sucked into the higher density area's...if only we had doom3's normal weighting by face area tool.

r_fletch_r

You might want to check if you can do this with curves/Delaunay triangulation. That tends to play very nicely with cloth sims, or atleast max's system favours tri's over quads.

mdeforge

Unless you create a separate polymesh for the ncloth deformations (even poly density but without details) and wrap deform your high-poly to it...what is that thing anyway.

Not sure how to do that, but I've remodeled it and I think it's looking much better. I tested it out in nCloth and it seems to move around well. See the attached image.

And lol, it's a securement device for a catheter.

You might want to check if you can do this with curves/Delaunay triangulation. That tends to play very nicely with cloth sims, or atleast max's system favours tri's over quads.

I thought I read somewhere that maya really prefers quads over tri's. Perhaps it was in a Simply Maya video where I heard it. I'll keep this in mind for the future. My mesh won't be doing anything too crazy.