A mix of floating geometry and a bit of optimization should work ok. Floating stuff will give you some problems if you are baking out displacement maps and/or ambient occlusion maps, but can still be a usefull time saver.
Well I figured I had read that wiki a million times. I read a bunch of links again and I'm gonna use some floating geo. But what about the AO maps, hand painting every floating geo might get a bit tedious on a highly mechanical/complicated bit. And whats this about pentagonal technique? Is that when 5 quads meet at a vert?…
If you're making highres meshes for normals, and not for pre-rendered stuff there is absolutely no reason not to use floating geo, it will save you soooo much time and give the same results. Use as many seperate pieces as possible and as much floating as you need. Also its really silly to say something is the "bad way" if…
ya totally agree to float. too many people get caught up trying to make perfect high poly meshes with one object. it becomes a cluster fuck and the quality of the model suffers.
heh there are several ways to get a good subdiv. In that box, that's the bad way, and that's not a clean mesh. "The Pentagonal Technique" is the way. I really don't recommend to use floating meshes for solid subdiv models. for certain cases are quite good, but it depends...
i refer to pure subdiv models, not subdiv meshes for games. If i'm going to bake, i'm the first to make floating parts ^^ (i've got a huge collection of float meshes for that purpose). A subdiv model for animation or illustration should have a clean mesh. Another way to accelerate the work is to make different parts,…
I've noticed preplanning helps a ton. Get your basic forms figured out first and then go about adding loops. I usually don't start adding loops till the shapes are cut in/out. Segment your meshes and also using floating geo.
Read thru the links here, if those edges are getting in the way, you'll find some ways to clean it up a bit. http://wiki.polycount.net/Subdivision_Surface_Modeling Also don't forget you can use floating meshes for indents like this. Inside the 5th link, see poopinmymouth's first post. Mind blown? :angel: