Still learning how to go from high poly to low poly
polycounter lvl 9
Throughout all the tutorials I've watched they usually take the high poly, delete the unnecessary edges and turbosmooths to get the low poly. I know you have to keep the silhouette of the high poly. Then there's retopologizing the high poly to get a low poly version? Here's the top piece that's the high poly of my weapon. I know that there are some smoothing errors to fix.
Would I just take that whole thing into Topogun and retopologize it to get the low poly? So I could take this into Zbrush, add scratches and dings, decimate it to a lower poly count while still maintaining its overall shape, export to Topogun, retopo to get the low, bake out the normal map and voila? How would I go about keeping the silhouette if just wanted to delete the Nurbs I've applied instead of retopoing?
Would I just take that whole thing into Topogun and retopologize it to get the low poly? So I could take this into Zbrush, add scratches and dings, decimate it to a lower poly count while still maintaining its overall shape, export to Topogun, retopo to get the low, bake out the normal map and voila? How would I go about keeping the silhouette if just wanted to delete the Nurbs I've applied instead of retopoing?
Replies
or just do your highpoly and use retopo tools, to build a new mesh around it.
The right has the turbosmooth applied so just removing it isn't gonna work. Do I just need to add more support edges to the low using the high poly geo, ie just delete the edges from high leaving the edges that support the overall shape?
Don't optimize the fully subdivided one.
This.
Any other edges I delete will mess up the structure so what's my next step? It's still 900 polys. Do I start welding faces?
This took me between 15 and 20 minutes to make from scratch - just eyeballing your image. You can't tell me that you seriously cannot optimize that model any better without losing detail.
400 tris, btw. So you've got something to aim for
Is that pretty much what you did?
I feel like the very first stage of creating a model, ie edge placement, is crucial or else you'll get a hot mess like what I have going on. Here's the plane I extruded from...
In your case it should be even easier, since you have the HP, so you could a plethora of tools to get that shape via Retopology like methods (hell, just even plane modeling one face and then applying a shell modifier is all you need).
I honestly suggest you go back to basics, look up a few tutorials, follow them, and tackle simpler models which don't have so many curves, and while at it, redo the Low-Poly for your model, because you could have saved up alot of time if you have the correct topology in the first place.
I can see where a few extra edges and a little more clean would make the corners look a little more round.