I wish there was something I could do about the smoothing here... Not sure what I can do, if anything, without making the whole area a model and a single smoothing group... Maybe I can hack the normals there?
@kryptio The reason why the mesh LOOKS smooth is because the normals across the model have been averaged or smoothed. The texturing and rendering style takes care of the rest. The texturer almost treats the whole model like a static illustration.
The new updates look fantastic, thanks guys! Could you elaborate more on:* Baker “Smooth Filter” option for geometry smoothing Is that something like the edge shader in modo? I tried to find the option but I didn't see it.
horsies are fat. your showing to much muscle definition. the back leg bum muscle is is smooth and round. not like you have it here's william. hope this helps, simply smoothing your horsey might fix alot of the problems
smoothing is based on a angle, so 12 to 13 subdivisions must create a small enough of a angle for it to smooth out. got to Normals>Set Normal Angle will set it on the selected shape, or you can set it globally somewhere in the preferences
Admittedly, it didn't really show up in the actual normal map, Marie. I'll make reminder to smooth the peaks out before I render the HP shots again. "Panda, smooth peaks your skin noise!" - Reminder
The model you're referencing is by Rawkstar, a member on these boards. Anyway, I'm not that experienced, but it seems what you're seeing on the neck is just an ordinary smoothing issue. Adjusting your lowpoly model and it's smoothing groups a bit should fix it, shouldn't it?
To further fritz's advice, paint the mask on a low level, then up it for a super smooth gradient. It interpolates the verts from the lower levels. I'll paint mine at level 2 or 3, and then at level 4 or 5, it's a nice smooth gradient.
Of course ZB has normals. A vertex/face can't exist without normals. What Zbrush doesn't have is smooth shading - well it actually has a hack to force a quasi-smooth shading mode - at least not in the sense that tradtional DCC has.
You can be be a lot more loose with the topology of a high poly. Either of those are fine to use. As long as it smooths correctly then the topology works!The n-gons and triangles are on a flat plane so it wont give you any funky smoothing errors!