VW Beetle retopology
polycounter lvl 7
Hey guys. I'm starting to make a game-ready version of a Beetle model that I did a while ago that was originally intended as a cinematic prop. I haven't done much of this before and I was hoping for some pointers on workflow.
At the moment the model consists of about 30 separate subdiv objects. I'm thinking I'll delete support loops, optimise, then weld these pieces together to form a main 'chassis' object around which the remaining elements can float.
Then I'll re-do the low poly UV's and bake normals, AO, diffuse and specular to the low poly (to avoid manual repositioning of texture parts in photoshop. downside to this is I'll lose the ability to edit my file in Photoshop)
Something that's confusing me: I'll be baking the high poly geometry to the low poly, but the high poly also has detail normal maps applied to it; how can I preserve this detail in the new normal map?
So does this sound like the right way to do things? What would be the approximate tri count for a prop like this?
Here's the original model:
At the moment the model consists of about 30 separate subdiv objects. I'm thinking I'll delete support loops, optimise, then weld these pieces together to form a main 'chassis' object around which the remaining elements can float.
Then I'll re-do the low poly UV's and bake normals, AO, diffuse and specular to the low poly (to avoid manual repositioning of texture parts in photoshop. downside to this is I'll lose the ability to edit my file in Photoshop)
Something that's confusing me: I'll be baking the high poly geometry to the low poly, but the high poly also has detail normal maps applied to it; how can I preserve this detail in the new normal map?
So does this sound like the right way to do things? What would be the approximate tri count for a prop like this?
Here's the original model:
Replies
I usually go for "as much as needed, as little as possible".
As far as I know, xNormal allows to add normal maps to highpoly meshes, I've never tried it myself, but it sounds like what you need..
The model ended up at over 10k tris after heavy optimisation, mainly due to the way I'd done the original cinematic model with interior surfaces for every piece of bodywork. I wanted to fix this by connecting up the geometry, re-unwrapping and re-texturing the whole thing but unfortunately didn't have time. Probably could have halved the poly count that way!
Anyway I learnt a lot about how to optimise and how NOT to bake normal maps during this process. The result looks okay, but the normals are messy; next time will be better
Here are the sheets I submitted to Blitz, any crits on the model/textures or presentation are welcome.
How did the open day go?
Especially wasteful since in racing games they are one of the few elements of a car that could benefit from normal maps (instancing + small size + harsh detail instead of smooth flows) instead of using modeled curves. I know this isn't exactly in racing conditionm but still...
Snader, I did some further optimisation on the wheel hubs and got them each down to 266 tris from 571 originally. Still too high, and I could probably halve that again by baking some of that detail into normal maps as you suggest, but I'll have to leave it for now.