High to Low Poly Workflow

[Sheldon]

Hello everybody,

i m testing 3D Coat since a few days because i found it interesting when i heard about it and after reading over the manual and watching the videos provided here i had the hope that i found a program which provides me a new way of workflow where i m used to work with maya and mudbox.

The autoretop function was the one which draw my attention to 3D Coat. I tried it out with different models and it works absolutley fine (of course there is still a learning curve), uv mapping works also great which made me really enthusiastic about 3D Coat.

But then i ran into some problems which i m not able to solve even with reading here and in the manual. Maybe because its not possible which brings me to this post.

I want to use 3D Coat to retop some of my models which have about 250k polygons and no UV-Map. As written before, importing it and doing the autoretop is no problem. Same with making the UV-Map. My main intention was to get a high(mid) poly mesh of my model and a low poly mesh with a identical UV-Map. And that's the crux of the matter for me.

Is it possible to get a High and Low Version of the modell which have a identical UV-Map within 3D-Coat?

If yes, would some of the experts here be that kind to write a short worklfow description how to achieve this or just a short "NO" if it isnt possible?

I would be really appreciate that

Thank you very much in advance

[Gilded]

Well if you changed the topology then you've changed the verts and the UVs, so you wont have the same UVs as before the retopo. If you are saying that you already have the high-poly mesh textured and would like that transferred then you can project the texture onto the new, retopo'd mesh using the 'texture baking tool' under the 'Textures' menu. As far as having the same UVs (if having the same UV locations is important), the best I can think of at the moment is going in and manually removing geometry (that doesn't make UV seams) on the high-poly mesh, but even that isn't a good solution. Someone else might know something better, but you should be able to meet all of your needs when you make a new layout for the low-poly. I even think you can adjust the texture UVs after the fact with the 'texture UV editor', but I'm just speculating because I haven't used it. Oh and you'll probably want to get the latest build, 3.23 if you don't have it because there are baking improvements.