High Poly or Low Poly first?

[WhiteGuardian]

Hello all my friends and members of GameArtisans. :)

I still confuse and wanna ask about modelling technique, especially for creating video game's character.
Which one that you usually do and what is the advantage ? :think:
Making low poly-high poly or high poly-low poly? If the high poly first, what is the fastest/best way to make the low poly? And how to reduce the high poly fastly? Any plugin?

Right now i make the low poly first, unwrap the UV then continue to make the high poly to get the normal map. This is the best way or not, i'm not sure.
If i doing the high poly first, maybe it's difficult for me to unwrap it and reduce to low poly by click-delete vertex one by one. :p

Please share here your method and thank you so much for your feedback :)

[mr_ace]

it depends on whatever you prefer. various ppl/companies do it in different ways, for example epic games make the high poly first and the low second. however, what ever your technique, ppl will quite often use a variety of the two. personally, i've only used the low poly then high poly method, though i'm going to try the other way very soon.

As for doing it, you could import a version of the high poly into max and use snap to build your new topology, or youi could use programs designed specifically for retopogising stuff, like topogun, which as far as i know just allows you to draw your new mesh ontop of your high poly one.

I'm no expert, but i hope that's been some help to you.

[Yozora]

I do this;

#1: basemesh (number of tris dont matter, but keep it in quads for sculpting) just to get the rough shape of my character.
#2: high poly sculpt
#3: go back to level 0 or level 1 (depending on how many tris I'm aiming for) in the high poly and export that to be my new "low poly"
#4: Fix the tris in that new low poly by just deleting edge loops or collapsing edges
#5: Do the UVs
#6: Bake maps

[boxfox]

Hey, White.

I'm still trying to learn how to normal map, but I've got a little experience converting low poly to high and visa versa. My preference is to model it high poly first and then weld/target weld the verts or edges a little at a time. I'm not sure that it takes longer, but at any rate you have the advantage of being able see the big picture all the time. I imagine it's a lot like sculpting with clay or ice or marble...you take a bit off at a time here and there until you like what you see.

The reverse is certainly possible and has advantages, too. For example, the MeshSmooth modifier makes pretty quick work of boosting the poly count and also makes most models prettier... Also, you could build onto the clothing or whatever a little at a time, getting very specific details exactly where you want them.

Mr. Ace, what exactly do you mean by using "snap to build your new topology"? Forgive my ignorance.

And Yozora, when you say "sculpt" do you mean using something like Zbrush?

Good luck White!

[Shadownami92]

So far I found that my favorite workflow is make a good basemesh, then sculpt the high poly, then retopo for a nice clean low poly model.

[TryForce]

do as you wish, both things will need time to learn.

Edit:
I started with Lowpoly because i wanted to get stuff ingame back then.

[WhiteGuardian]

mr_ace
What is "ppl" ? Sorry never heard about that. Topogun is a free software or like plugin?
Thx for your help :)

Yozora
Hmm...what a nice pipeline. Sure i will try it. Thx Yozora :)

boxfox
Using weld will take much times if our character have a lot of tris. Thx for your sharing :)

Shadownami92
So you're using same method like Yozora? Nice. Thx for the sharing :)

TryForce
Yeah, both things need time to learn and try. I just confuse if i move to fast to high poly and forget to save the low poly so how can i faster to make the high poly to become low poly again. And if i unwrap the high poly that will be more difficult than unwrap the low poly version. Thx for you sharing too :)

[YdoUwant2know]

mr_ace
What is "ppl"...

ppl is short for the word people. Kind of like thx is short for thanks


As others have said, It does not really matter the order. Use whatever gives you the best result.

For me, generally, I will start with a low poly base, take that into Zbrush or Mudbox for sculpting and then modify the base mesh as needed to better fit the finished sculpt.

But you should do what works best for you.

[Guedin]

Hi WhiteGuardian

My workflow is pretty similar to Yozora, Shadownami and now YdoUwant2know

Make a BaseMesh as simple as possible, try to have all the quads same size and with a square shape the most i can (When you'll subdivide in ZBrush or Mudbox you'll be albe to add the same amount of detail anywhere on your mesh). Avoid tri, n-gons, and points connected to more than 4 edges, this features are hard to sculpt and will make some weird artifact. If you can't avoid it, hide it.

Import the basemesh in your sculpting software, and sculpt whatever you want. For now topology doesn't matter.

When the sculpt is finished, import the highest subdivision level of your mesh your modeling software can handle and create whole new mesh around the hi rez with snap. I use 3DSMax with the polyboost plugin. Polyboost is incredibly efficient to make topology, but it's not free. You still have the choice to make your new topo in ZBrush.

When the low rez is done with UV done, you can generate normal map from the hi rez to the low rez inside ZBrush. I think XNormal can do it too, and it's free.

This my workflow, for me it works pretty well but i'm still a student, and I never worked on any game production so, i don't have a professionnal experience.
Try a lot of workflow until you find one you like

[Maph]

Depending on the required output, I usually work with a very low res base mesh without any topology at all (extruded boxes), or if I'm feeling lazy, I use an existing base mesh or kit bash from others.
Sculpt/paint on that one and retopolize it using Topogun, and bake Normal/Albedo/Amb Occ(Skylight and no Skylight) and cavity from the high res to the retopo'ed one.
Works like a charm most of the time. :)

PS: Topogun is a standalone utility that's designed for the retopolizing process. There's not a lot of software that can compete with what Topogun is doing atm. 3Dcoat comes close I've heard, but I've yet to try it's retopo features.
But when it comes to baking, Topogun 'pwnz teh world' imho. Mere seconds for a 4k normal map is OK in my book. :D And the output is usually very, very clean.
http://www.topogun.com
It's in beta, but I think you can still apply to be part of the beta.