Object triangles size

[Britain]

I'm having some fun learning this program. I did the tire tut from philnolan3d. I do rock crawling in Modified vehicles so my tire of choice was the Krawler T/A.

My rigs tires were a bit tired so I had a friend send me some pics of the tires from the buggy he's building for is daughter. Hes a Solidworks guy. In less then an hr I sent him the tire. Pretty cool!

What I starting to find out is the object triangles size. They be pretty big. This tire ended up being huge.

What should I be looking at to hold the objects T size to something more manageable while developing the work?

Thanks!

[philnolan3d]

Do you mean the size of them or the amount of them?

[Britain]

being a noob I should have said the amount.

[philnolan3d]

Well you need a lot in order to keep the edges sharp, I think I actually mentioned that in the tutorial, when you first merge (import) the B&W image. When you save out the mesh as an OBJ or LWO you will get options to decrease the triangle count.

[Britain]

Ok the more the better...

I've been following your car build. I havent started to learn the retopo, Whats the main reason for retopo? Applying external setails?

[philnolan3d]

Well as you've noted a detailed sculpture can have a ton of polygons an they're often messy, none of this is any good for anima ting with. When you retopo you can layout new polys in a way that is better for animating with and far fewer of them so you won't kill your computer trying to animate or render them. A friend of mine at a game studio was just telling me how 3DC is a regular part of the pipeline there, especially using the retopo tools to make low poly game models out of heir high poly models.

BTW if you hold the W key you can see the wireframe of the voxel mode, that might help to understand why you need so many.

[Britain]

All righty then, this is slowing coming together. I was noticing your break calipers look pretty sharp, so far what I've accomplished looks very soft. How do you keep the edges clean and sharp? Theres time for the roundies and time for the crisp sharp stuff. Really appreciate the pointers!

[philnolan3d]

No prob. Like I said more triangles allows for sharper edges.For that caliper I knew I wanted hard edges so I started out pretty high. At one point my computer had a little trouble keeping up even.

[Britain]

I've given your break calipers some thought. They dont move, theres no moving parts why retopo?

[philnolan3d]

Well it's still kind o0f silly to have millions of polygons for large flat surfaces, it's a huge waste of render time, not to mention RAM to load the scene it might be OK with one car (maybe) but what if you have several of these cars in your scene? Also remember that caliper gets duplicated for each wheel.

[Britain]

Ok I WIL learn the art of retopo next. One more question, will retopo keep the edges sharp?

[philnolan3d]

Well it could be as soft or sharp as you want, just like any polygon modeling.

See this is a fairly soft edge:

But a simple set of polygones could make is sharper:

[Britain]

Started the learning of the retopo...that certainly takes the fun away from scuplturing! Guess with retopo, practice makes perfect. I'll start with some cubes and spheres, see what works and what doesnt.

Thanks for the info, I'm sure I'll have more questions later.

[philnolan3d]

No problem, I think most people come into 3DC already knowing polygonal modeling so for them retopo is even easier than the modeling they're used to.

[Britain]

Prob so, I'm not a poly modeler.I model in SW. But 2 years ago my adventure took me here over a period of time.

Bump maps wont work for me, this will. Did my first retopo of a cube..retopo look like a cube....call it back in for paint looks like a potato! Yeah!

[philnolan3d]

In microvertex mode the model gets subdivided so if you want sharp edges you have to add extra edges in there like this:

The closer the edges are the sharper the corner will be. This is just like subdivisional Surface (Sub-D) modeling

Or you can just use per-pixel painting mode that does not subdivide the mesh, just keeps it's original shape.

[Britain]

Ok I had time to do some work on this last night. Not so hard after all. I did learn that I need to work with the Per pixel and Microvertex painting much more to get a good handle on those. But first I need to get more into the retopo.

I will be looking into how retopo is applied and how this changes the corners and edges I will start with the sample you suppliedand branch out from there.

[Britain]

Ok I had time to do some work on this last night. Not so hard after all. I did learn that I need to work with the Per pixel and Microvertex painting much more to get a good handle on those. But first I need to get more into the retopo.

I will be looking into how retopo is applied and how this changes the corners and edges I will start with the sample you suppliedand branch out from there.

Ok havent had much time to spend on this but the time I did, I have this to deal with.

I've watched the vids and all the smooth retopo's. Looks easy not so for me. Parts of my retopo are buried in the object. Some pointers here please.

Thanks

[philnolan3d]

Screenshot?

[Britain]

Screenshot?

When looking straight on its covered. I just want to be sure before getting on with a more complicated model, I'm not doing something incorrect. Heres a sample sphere.

[philnolan3d]

That always happens, you're putting a straight edge on a curved surface so something has got to give. You can avoid seeing this effect though by adjusting the Z-Bias slider at the top of the screen. The edges will still be going though the base mesh, but you just won't see it. Sometimes I actually prefer to see it though, depending on what I'm doing, so I adjust that slider a lot. Now if you actually don't want the geometry going through their you will obviously need more polygons, so you can use the Split Rings tool or other editing tools to add more edges in there.

[Tony Nemo]

I assume that the visible polys are all there is. That some are partially submerged is adjustable with (in Retopo) with the Z-bias slider in top bar.

Phil, you beat me to it with a more complete explanation!

[Britain]

Ok I've learned a bit here. Heres a shot of something simple. I'm happy with the out come.

Though I had a hard crash trying to export as an high poly mesh. It did generate a report that I sent in.

Heres the file .3b file perhaps philnolan3d you could look at it to see if I did an error.

My link

Thanks

[philnolan3d]

Are you trying to export the retopo mesh or the voxel mesh?

[Britain]

Are you trying to export the retopo mesh or the voxel mesh?

Ok, Trying to export at a V mesh isnt so wise. It will export as an object. Seems there more learning to do here.

[philnolan3d]

Yes it exports as an object with some nice decimation (reduction) options that can be handy for some things.

[Britain]

Appreciate your help, did a UV on it. I think now if I can get some artistic talent pulled from inside me I'll be doing ok.

This is one cool program!