UV'ing High Poly Model Problems
polygon
Hello,
I've modeled a high poly King Tiger tank in 3ds max 2012 and sculpted on it with zbrush 4r4 for details etc. It is at it's highest sub divs with all lower deleted. The model is broken up into 3 max files for eaiser handling such as turret-hull-tracks & wheels.
All 3 files combined are in the 9 million poly range with important parts sub divided but most other parts are just chamfered or have control edges with no sub divs.
All model peices are quads with few triangles in unimportant places. No ngons.
I originaly wanted to build a high poly model in max, sculpt in zbrush and uv the high poly for texturing in photoshop but I've ran into problems I'm sure the pros here are familiar with. Just doing a low poly and transfering detail from the high poly with a bump map wasnt what I wanted to do.I wanted something pretty and spent a month working on this model getting the detail that I wanted to add without worrying about poly counts.
1. Uvlayout will not load the model at its current resolution
2. Zbrush's uv master chokes on the turret peice which is a 2 million poly object with all the details sculpted in, gives me a memory error and says reduce poly count blah blah blah
3. the mesh in 3ds max would problaby be a problem trying to uv it as well, but havent tried yet
Using decimation master in zbrush would kill all the quads but also preserve the details mostly, with the option to protect borders.But I'm not sure how well that might look afterwards. Seems to look ok at 50% reduction but not sure if i can still select edge loops that I would need to be able to do for laying out uv's.
Am I screwed with this model and can only use procedural maps in max now ?
What options do I have to uv a high poly model given the above info ?I'm hoping that in the year 2012 there are better solutions.
My computer is a beast so thats not the problem either.I'm just a noob with alot of money ;/
here is a screenie of the turret in zb for reference purposes.
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh295/Bubba91873/kt.jpg
I've modeled a high poly King Tiger tank in 3ds max 2012 and sculpted on it with zbrush 4r4 for details etc. It is at it's highest sub divs with all lower deleted. The model is broken up into 3 max files for eaiser handling such as turret-hull-tracks & wheels.
All 3 files combined are in the 9 million poly range with important parts sub divided but most other parts are just chamfered or have control edges with no sub divs.
All model peices are quads with few triangles in unimportant places. No ngons.
I originaly wanted to build a high poly model in max, sculpt in zbrush and uv the high poly for texturing in photoshop but I've ran into problems I'm sure the pros here are familiar with. Just doing a low poly and transfering detail from the high poly with a bump map wasnt what I wanted to do.I wanted something pretty and spent a month working on this model getting the detail that I wanted to add without worrying about poly counts.
1. Uvlayout will not load the model at its current resolution
2. Zbrush's uv master chokes on the turret peice which is a 2 million poly object with all the details sculpted in, gives me a memory error and says reduce poly count blah blah blah
3. the mesh in 3ds max would problaby be a problem trying to uv it as well, but havent tried yet
Using decimation master in zbrush would kill all the quads but also preserve the details mostly, with the option to protect borders.But I'm not sure how well that might look afterwards. Seems to look ok at 50% reduction but not sure if i can still select edge loops that I would need to be able to do for laying out uv's.
Am I screwed with this model and can only use procedural maps in max now ?
What options do I have to uv a high poly model given the above info ?I'm hoping that in the year 2012 there are better solutions.
My computer is a beast so thats not the problem either.I'm just a noob with alot of money ;/
here is a screenie of the turret in zb for reference purposes.
http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh295/Bubba91873/kt.jpg
Replies
I still don't quite understand the reasoning. You could have UVd it when it was low, then added divisions and sculpted from there.... Why do you not want to project it to a low-poly model? Even if it isn't low-low, it would still be much easier to UV.
Sorry, wish I could help more than that.
really you would never have to uv the highest level model even if you don't intend to make a low poly version.
if you uv the lowest subdivion level , this passes though to the highest level anyway
So as the others have said, either Retopo it, or go to the lower divisions and unwrap that.
Joopson
UV master seems to have a 150k limit to each subtool. Thats why Im getting the memory error when just trying to use uv master on just the turret not even including the other parts. The turret by itself is 2mill polies ;/ at the time i didnt know i could just mask off parts of a mesh and increase resolution to areas i only needed it in.Discovered that while detailing the hull by accident.
Tristamus
Retopo for me would be slower then remodeling the main parts that I sub divided for detailing in zb.
Ruz
All lower sub divisions on all files were deleted so going back is impossible. Reason being when i exported out the object back into 3ds max I couldnt figure out why i was loosing polygons on export import. Then i learned that zbrush only exports object files at it's lowest sub division and still retians the highest sub div. So like a dummy I deleted them. Painful lessons.
Ace Angel
Seems like my only choices currently is just to remodel the high poly parts from scratch and start over, uv a low poly, take low poly back into zb add in details and project it back onto a low.
Or decimate model and hope I can still use edge loops without loosing hard surface details.
When I started the project it seemed like uving a high poly with zbrush and or uvlayout would be alot easier but it's not. Learning 3d is quite painful.
I have spent ALOT of time reading and watching tutorials.
Worth a shot, and should maintain flow, if it works. It's right there with all the other division-related things. Right near "Divide"
If you insist on them and don't want to manually retopologize: Reconstruct should work fine if you didn't change the topology. If you did, then you are most likely going to have too change the topology again. you could even try auto polygrouping, maybe merge similar, split groups into new subtools, and then start using dynamesh, qremesh, or refresh on lower resolutions. All 3should give you typology you can paint on, and if the resolutions is kept low you'll have an easier timbre adding uvs. Keep the original subtools laying around and you can project their detail back.
Reconstruct Subdiv is only working for some sub divided parts and on others it's not allowing due to the presence of triangles. So this is a partial solution.
It gives me 2 subdivs on the turret part but it's still 490k at subdiv 1.
Originally I added 1 turbosmooth divided by smoothing groups in max so I could hold hard edges when I took them into zbrush for sculpt.Then I would mask off areas that I wanted more resolution for welds and rough spots and divided those in zbrush.
So thats why it's not giving me full sub divs back. ;/
I do want to add uv's and paint in photoshop and I had thought it would be easy to uv a hp model in uvlayout or using uv master in zbrush but they just cant handle it.
I'll keep the current subtools and back them up, and try lowering the resolution with what you 2 suggested and try uving those. If all else fails I'll remodel the problem parts in 3ds max.
And on uvlayout with the subdiv option on load, I thought it would load my hp mesh and be just fine. But I was wrong.
I do understand that I can break the model up into parts and uv seperately and recombine those in 3ds max. If I can overcome the parts of the model that are heavily sub-divided.
I misunderstood the people above when they mentioned retopo, I'm still learning zbrush and never retopo'ed anything before so my apologies if it seemed like I ignored the suggestion.
With this way it seems like I dont have to change any of the work I've done so far. I just have to learn something else....;/ retopo and projection, feels like my brain will explode.
I tried QRemesher but it couldnt hold the hard edges. It would place polies across the edges giving me no way of using edge loops to select.
Decimation Master gives me close results though but the triangls make my eyes bleed after doing everything origanlly in quads carefully.
I did find copies of my low poly work earleir tonight that I can use now to uv so the retopo stuff is a mute point now.
I had planeed to use Mudbox to do a base paint with camoflage and then bring the non-overlapped uv's into photoshop. Adding in drips dirt and scratches. So I still need to uv the low poly.
Just wished there was easier ways to uv hp objects in a user friendly manner like zbrush does with uvmaster without it's limitations.
Thanks once again for the replies and wish me luck.
www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Environmental_Sculpting_Project
Thank you for the link. I had read that tut awhile ago but forgot about it.
Yeah I was totally doing it wrong yesterday compared to that tut.
I just appllied qrmesher etc without cloning and reprojecting details ;/
You all have been a big help and thank you.