Low Poly Retopo and Baking Tutorial for V4.0.6

[Jax_Cavalera]

I have been snooping around the forums trying to find some tutorials that cover Low Poly Game Character Retopology and Baking that I may learn from.  I've read carefully the happy baking guide and it seems to only help if you have a medium to high poly retopo mesh, which for game models (500 to 5000) are not working out right.

 

I read also that back in 2011, 3D Coat was not able to perform well at Hard Surface modelling and that there were a few people looking for tutorials on this.  I would also be interested in locating a tutorial for this so I may determine if 3D Coat is now capable of being used for low poly retopo and baking of hard surface as well as organic models.

 

I've been trying to get any information I can regarding the specific test mesh I've been using and I think either the community are not sure how I can fix the problem or are tired of all my questions (I know I am lol).

 

I'm happy to wait the hours I would have to wait to download the right vid tutorials or to spend the time needed to read the text+image tutorials, though with limited internet speed and bandwidth, going on a treasure hunt for them is not currently an option.

 

Please if you are able to assist I would appreciate the help greatly as I am really keen to use 3D Coat and am certain that there is a way to get successful low poly work done using it.  I like the way it's tools work in theory, I'm just not getting the results from using them yet.

 

((Current progress is linked to 2 videos I created below))

 

 

 

More detailed updates to these videos is also found in the following topic :

 

http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14515&p=98869

[Jax_Cavalera]

I've just been watching the Ghost Game Character series again and notice that for his fingers he only uses 4 sides and does not have flat quads between each finger for the webbing.. I think I will try this out on mine and see if it improves things more.  Unfortunately in the videos because they are for version 3.3  The baking process doesn't show up the same as it does for version 4.0.6 which makes it a little bit hard to follow how he got such a great bake when .. aside from those aspects my mesh doesn't look that different.  Also the character he is doing isn't a main so I'm guessing that's why he did not subdivide the fingers into 8 segments but only 4.. I think if the hands are for a main then you would want the 8 segments so they look rounded but the overall concept shouldn't really change I would think so long as I get rid of those flat webbed bits between each finger.

 

I think I will give that a try and see how it all goes.  Haven't been able to find any good tips for the toes yet and so I'm starting to think that I will have to use a ring of triangles before them and then just join like I do on the fingers unless someone has a better idea?

 

I had a question as well about this kind of thing... Am I meant to be paying for tutorials so I can obtain a successful retopology and bake?  As in, do other people seem ok with paying money to learn how to get successful results with what I would consider basic workflow and generic usage of the 3D Coat software?  This is a genuine question so please take it at face value.. there is no hidden agenda to it or intended hostility.

 

I'm just curious to know if this is why help seems to be a little bit hard to obtain at this point or if there is something else I can do to get better assistance.  I'm not saying that I would personally be happy to pay money for tutorials to learn how to operate software that I haven't purchased yet just so I can evaluate it's validity and usefulness in my workflow, I'm more trying to understand if this is what is socially expected though from this community.

Edited August 28, 2013 by Jax_Cavalera

[Jax_Cavalera]

Well I got a bit of luck with the fingers.. the trick is to make a V shaped wedge so that just before the webbing in fingers where they join as shown in the Game Character Tutorial Series.  By placing an extra row of loops around each finger here, you can get in nice and close whilst still keeping with the V shape instead of a flat surface between each finger as I was attempting to do in the above videos.

 

So.. that's go them sorted now and I also realised that the use of Triangles was important.  it's also worth mentioning that you should use triangles instead of N-Gons.. and ensure that you have good topology flow using the split rings tool.. by placing the triangle the right direction it will allow for clean circles around your mesh which using the method shown in that video.. it did NOT do.  Once I fixed this up and got rid of the spiraling topology flow it played nice on the hand area as well.

 

Other than this.. if you want to have smooth "round" fingers then I would recommend that you subdivide them so instead of having 4 segments you want 8.  I tried with 4 and it's good.. but the fingers do look a little too blocky and if they are going to be in view say... holding a weapon or something then you definitely don't want them to look like old school counter-strike fingers or Quake 1 fingers or worse!

 

Just remember that the subdivision is fine to stop after the finger area before you get into the palm using clean quads and triangles.  I would personally recommend avoiding Poles which are the diamond shaped quad polygons.. in favour of using triangles.. .as with the triangles you have more control over edge flow and can stop the evil spirals.. where as using Poles.. the software figures out what ever it wants and usually causes more of a mess when you try to bake.

 

So I guess I will be able to get some good baking done now.. it will just take me a while to get more use to it all and I think I'll have to tweak the size of my fingers so they are a bit thicker.

 

Thanks to those that helped along the way and I'm sure I will still have more questions as I explore things further but I do appreciate the help.  (no I'm not being sarcastic.. I got a lot of help in other threads from a lot of people and Digman spent a good number of hours showing me things via Skype so I do mean the thanks)

 

Hopefully these tips will help others that want to rip their hair out of their head when trying to work with this software and save them the torrent of profanities that flew from my mouth at times haha.

[Tony Nemo]

So all's well that ends well, always keeping in mind that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. As your modeling skills develope, so will your topology. Altogether a good exposition of an artist's journey.

[TimmyZDesign]

Aye, good to hear it man. Glad to see you kept at it and figured it out! This is a wonderfully helpful community we have here on these forums, but individual perseverance is the best learning tool of all.

 

In regards to your statement:

I would personally recommend avoiding Poles which are the diamond shaped quad polygons..

 

I thought I should mention that Poles are not simply diamond shaped quad polygons. They are points where multiple edges meet. They are used to make edges flow in the directions that you want.

 

Here is an image to help explain it better. As you can see, the blue lines show how the edge flow is redirected by using poles:

 

[Jax_Cavalera]

Ahh that is also true and I know my modelling skills are still quite young and will get better as I go along.  I forgot about poles in the case of a Cube.. yeah not always diamond shaped indeed.. I guess the poles that I was recommending to avoid though were the ones where they are a diamond shape.  So in the left example I found that the Red pole was causing spiraling edge loops which were destroying the bake so by manually placing in triangles instead... the option on the Right was more similar to the way I resolved the problem.

 

The triangles seem to affect edge flow unpredictably which is why I was recommending using the Split Rings tool to visually see edge flow and test how it's currently working to determine if it needs tweaking.  I guess once you get good enough at this stuff you no longer need split rings to understand how your topology is flowing but for a beginner in 3D Coat like me, it has been quite helpful.  Thanks again and I am super excited to see how the new Autopy toolset works as it could even be a bigger time saver !

[Carlosan]

Polygon Reference Tables for 3D production

 

http://www.gotwires.info/2012/01/tutorial-pedro-alpiarca-dos-santos.html

 

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=764151

 

http://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?98754-Polygon-Table-Help-Building-One

[Jax_Cavalera]

Thanks for that, the Flash files that they produced in the last of the links you provide are really awesome and make it a better - compact set of reference documents.