Hi! i'm new to polycount. A friend told me this would a good place to ask help for topology. I've been trying to model Ribs across cylinders but there's a lot of pinching. Tried to reroute some loops but i made a mess.
@aandronov I would argue the opposite. On many full assets a properly modeled OpenSubdiv mesh would be more a lower polycount than with traditional edgeloops. This is substantiated by Pixar: https://www.fxguide.com/featured/pixars-opensubdiv-v2-a-detailed-look/
@FrankPolygon joined Polycount today and this was the first post I came to. Great reply and thank you - learnt a lot from it, just the sort of explanation I'm after (trying to build on my understanding of why we model things in a particular way - if that makes sense :-)).
Prutsirs_JayJay you can search on Google, Youtube and even here at Polycount forum about them. There are a ton of info about constraints. Also you can check the "User Guide" of the software you use to learn about it. Hope you find what you need!
@TeriyakiStyle Thank you for that. In my first tests I consistently find I'm a little overly-conservative with polycount, as well. I want to be efficient, but I also make it hard on myself by not having enough initial subdivisions. I think my judgement there will come in time.
I modeled your object a little bit, the proportions are incorrect but I hope you find it useful. The basemesh was made from a box primitive. The polycount is kept as low as possible for easier editing. Most of the control loops are generated from a modifier equivalent to the bevel modifier in blender
Thanks for that clarification. Would anyone be interested in seeing a shape attempted using OpenSubdiv rather than more traditional techniques? Perhaps one of the weekly hardsurface challenges? I figure it'd be a useful example of a different approach, where little examples currently exist on polycount afaik.
if you are modelling with Subd, your polycount doesn't matter. (obviously, don't overdo it, putting 3 subdivisions on a very tiny screw that is a 100 times on your object wouldn't be to smart). If I am reading your post correctly, what you are trying to do is basicly a waste of time.
Had a go at this, not sure if my method counts as "manual tweaking" but the result is there. Check .obj, you will need to put a Turbosmooth on it, I used 4 iterations for mine. Edit: I also made my mesh from scratch just to get some practise. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45171669/Polycount/Kroma_shape_test.obj
It depends on what your target platform is. Are you making assets for a next gen racing game, or a mobile platform? Or is it for an open world game like GTAIV? In games that are just cars, polycounts on the cars and rims tend to be very high, you could bevel and use a normal map if it makes the end result better.