Character modeling newbie question
polycounter lvl 6
After teaching myself ZBrush and watching a few anatomy tutorials, I'm cable to sculpt some humanoid characters. The question is how to make low poly models out of the high poly models. I know there are many topology tutorials on the internet (including the polycount wiki pages), but none of them tell you how to make a game model that really low poly like Blizzard did in WoW. For example, to retopo a head, most tutorials say I need to build edge loops around the eyes, mouth, laugh lines, etc., then connect the dots. But models in WoW or Torchlight don't have those edge loops at all. So what "guides" did artists in Blizzard/Runic Games use to build low poly characters?
Replies
Only the most recent models in WoW probably used high poly sculpts as their base. I am talking about Pandarens and other new characters. But they have additional edge loops at their faces, unlike older models.
If you are aiming for a really low poly look (or perhaps a distant camera) and facial animation isn't a major goal for the model, then those kind of loops aren't going to be crucial to the model. When that is the case you pretty much just need the model to maintain the silhouette, perhaps creating the major planes of the face. You can still add some extra vertices to support basic blinking or jaw flapping if you need those things.
@unit187, the pandaren model does have edge loops around eyes, but it also has significantly more vertices than the old WoW models.
@cryrid, yes, I'm aiming for 3rd person 45 degree top-down camera and no fiscal animation.
To build really a low poly model, directly modeling the low poly based on the character sheet in Max/Maya is the way to go?(completely skip ZBrush/baking workflow?)
Pandarens have more dense mesh and have nice facial rigs to allow variety of emotions, indeed.
Yes, for really lowpoly you should go straight in your preferred 3d application without doing sculpting.
A related question: by sculpting the high poly and baking AO/normal map to the low poly UV map, I can see where each part is on the UV map (facial features, muscles, clothes). It helps me do the texturing even I don't use normal map in my final models. That's why I'm more comfortable with high poly -> low poly workflow. I wonder how to do the texturing directly on UV map of the low poly without AO/normal map as a guide?
http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/index.html?url=files/GUID-F5518487-A253-44F0-A8D9-9CB537A8F392.htm,topicNumber=d30e412268