Workflow, 3ds Max, Mudbox and smoothing groups
Me and a friend had a little discussion about workflow from 3ds Max to Mudbox to a Games engine.
He said he would model his base mesh as close to what he wants in the engine as possible, and only add some details in Mudbox that doesn't change the shape of the base mesh. He would then get a normal map out of Mudbox and apply it to the base mesh he started with.
Me on the other hand prefers doing most of the changes in Mudbox and tend to change the shape of the base mesh a bit. When I'm finished I export the base mesh from Mudbox back to 3ds Max and replace the model I had, I then export the new model to the games engine(UDK).
My method works just fine apart from one thing: smoothing groups. Apparently Mudbox removes any smoothing group I have on my model, so I have to do the smoothing groups over again. My normal maps also doesn't look right, no idea why it's doing that...
Any wisdom?
He said he would model his base mesh as close to what he wants in the engine as possible, and only add some details in Mudbox that doesn't change the shape of the base mesh. He would then get a normal map out of Mudbox and apply it to the base mesh he started with.
Me on the other hand prefers doing most of the changes in Mudbox and tend to change the shape of the base mesh a bit. When I'm finished I export the base mesh from Mudbox back to 3ds Max and replace the model I had, I then export the new model to the games engine(UDK).
My method works just fine apart from one thing: smoothing groups. Apparently Mudbox removes any smoothing group I have on my model, so I have to do the smoothing groups over again. My normal maps also doesn't look right, no idea why it's doing that...
Any wisdom?
Replies
Make a matching ingame lowpoly with any tool you want.
Bake the high information to the low mesh with the tool the most appropriate for the game engine you are working with.
That's about all there is to it! Besides these 3 steps, there really is no magic workflow. Aaaand I would even say that the two methods you describe, by "hard linking" the low and the high models ... are both flawed
So should I use render to texture in 3ds max for the normal map then?
Just to get it straight: Make the high res model, create a low res model that has the same shape and then bake?
And what do you mean with "hard linking"?
You are free to retopologise after you used mudbox, the basemesh is nothing more than what the name suggest a basemesh to get you going, the topology will most likely look pretty different(more optimized for ingame and animations)