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General advice or tips for low-poly modeling?

coolguyslims
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coolguyslims polycounter lvl 2

Hello,

I've finished a couple projects with good results, but I see people mention sometimes to maintain good edge flow on low-poly models. Does edge flow matter if the model is not being subdivided? I haven't had any problems yet with what I've been doing.

Are there any general tips to keep in mind when create low-poly props for normal maps? Does edge flow matter for low-poly? Any modeling principles to keep in mind besides the obvious? Just want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

(I'll include some wireframe images of a model I made when I get home)

Thanks :)

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  • Eric Chadwick
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    Eric Chadwick admin

    Depends. Often it's best to refine the topology to match the flow of the silhouettes.

    If the model deforms at all, for example a floppy hat with ragdoll constraints, then topology flow really matters, it's helpful to have good edge flow wherever it bends.

    More on the wiki

    http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Topology#Principles_of_Topology

    Also some wireframe examples & animated gifs:

    http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Limb_Topology

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  • MilkMaster
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    MilkMaster polycounter lvl 2

    As Eric put it, the importance of edge flow depends. However, it's probably best practice to have it as good as you can, whenever you can.

    As for just general low-poly modeling tips, here are a few I can think of right now:

    • - One of the most, if not the most important factor, is to keep the silhouette of the low-poly as close as you can to the high-poly. This of course doesn't mean making a low-poly have a ton of edges, but trying to bake a perfectly smooth cylinder onto an 8-sided cylinder will cause noticeable issues like scalloping. It might take some experimenting to see how low you can go before there's a serious quality drop.
    • - If your low-poly includes several crashed objects, try to attach them wherever it makes sense. I know this sounds vague but that's because it depends on many factors (object shape, orientation, size, etc.). For example, if your low-poly consists of one cube crashing through the face of a larger cube, try to "stitch" them together. This will help save UV resolution space and also usually gives better-looking bakes.
    • - While this might be more of a preference and there might be times when you don't want to do this, I usually conform my low-poly to my high-poly. This means that when you have your low-poly and high-poly overlapping, the high-poly completely covers the low-poly. You can achieve this using a conform or skin wrap tool that most programs should have. This again I usually do to try and achieve better bakes, but as I said, different situations might call for other solutions.


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  • Eric Chadwick
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    Eric Chadwick admin

    Great tips.

    Re: bullet point 1, check out Understanding averaged normals and ray projection/Who put waviness in my normal map?

    Re: bullet 2, here's a great example: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Normal_Map_Modeling#Low-Poly_Mesh

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