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2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/3/ - 3DCG

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478383 No.478383 [Reply] [Original]

Hi /3/
I'm part of a team and one of my jobs is doing retopo (essentially). We have another guy who does the high-poly models and his life is easy because he has no polygon budget, etc. I have to take his models and bring them down to a reasonable number of triangles, say, 10K or fewer. So I'm baking normal maps, mostly.

The catch is, the high-poly models are NOT sculpts or organic shapes. They are vehicles. So the usual approach to retopology doesn't work very well. I've been handling it by brute force, pretty much completely rebuilding the model by using his high-poly as a guide. For example, the wheels on the jeep, I would just make cylinders, maybe do a quick bevel to soften the edges, then bake the details of the tires and rims.

What are some good tools for this? This is pretty much the worst job in the chain and it's taking me way too long per model.

>> No.478392

>>478383
In some parts you just have to remove some edge loops, and weld some vertices to make triangles, but yeah, with parts like the wheels it's better to just make them from scratch again.

>> No.478393

>>478383
check out if other applications offer more specialized tools for the job. 3D Coat, for example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trTqnA2M9iE

>> No.478398

>>478393
That AUTOPO feature looks neat, will try.

>> No.478399

>>478398
Let me know if you find that useful, time and quiality-wise. I'm a Maya user myself, and once I had to retopo an entire car (a modern car, whith curvy lines and all) and it was hell

>> No.478423

>>478383
if it's for a game (which i assume it is) then why is he just not making them lowpoly and cutting your ass out of the loop essentially saving the team time and money?

fuckin' highpoly for no reason.

>> No.478473

>>478423
Because we want all the detail of the high-poly, just without the huge triangle count. Starting with a low-poly and trying to paint on details with a bump map or whatever just isn't as good. I don't think anyone really goes that route these days.

Yeah, what would actually be best is if he did both the high-poly and low-poly, but he's got lots of other work besides modeling. So do I. I just got stuck with the extra work of doing the retopo because I'm the only one who's decent at it. I'm just not fast at it, so, need better tools.

>> No.478480

>>478383
College animatorfag here. One of my instructors worked at EA on NFS series. A competitive modeler that is kept in-house will also know rigging and scripting if he wants to stick around outside of his limited month contract.
A modeler is expected to model within budget, UV and texture his own models.

What kind of studio are you at and why are you cleaning up someone's high mesh models?

>> No.478483

>>478473
I know people are here say hur dur sculpt first and retopo after. But if you built the optimised car first you could then just build the high poly on top of that. In this case it's a lot easier than going backwards from the high poly.

>> No.478485

>>478480
Well, first, you don't really rig vehicles. Just simple parenting of the meshes is enough to make the wheels roll and the steering wheel turn, etc.

Second, EA is a completely different world. A small studio like ours doesn't have the luxury of a dozen modelers each working on a certain type of model (character vs vehicle vs environment vs ...). In small companies, each person has several roles. Our "modeler" does everything from modeling to music to editing video for social media. I do programming, this retopo crap, some concept art, and whatever else falls on the floor. There are currently six of us and we all do everything, really. I'd take that, any day, over being a tiny cog in the giant machine that is forced to crank out the next NBA NFL NHL MLB 2K16 rehash.

>> No.478486

>>478483
It's not really "hur dur sculpt first and retopo after," that is simply the smoothest workflow. But, like I said, these aren't sculpts. I haven't seen a lot of modelers using sculpts for vehicles, but I'd be interested in seeing the results.

Yes, it would be really nice of him to start with a low-poly model. It would be a lot of extra work for him, though, like "oh, I moved this wheel slightly in the high-poly version, I'd better go back to the low-poly and move that wheel by exactly the same amount..."

>> No.478492

>>478485
Rigging is rigging, be it complex or simple.

Why doesn't he have great topology and UVs done as he works?
Also people being a 'cog in a machine' is important because they are getting paid to be good at something, for their time. They know very well that one person cannot do everything.

Are you getting paid well for the amount of time and work you put out at least?

>> No.478493

>>478486
>It's not really "hur dur sculpt first and retopo after," that is simply the smoothest workflow

Clearly it isn't since it's fucking your job over.

>It would be a lot of extra work for him, though, like "oh, I moved this wheel slightly in the high-poly version, I'd better go back to the low-poly and move that wheel by exactly the same amount..."

That sounds way fucking easier than the shit you're dealing with.
He could just deal with that, and you could put your time to something more useful than rebuilding his vehicles almost entirely.

>> No.478503

>>478485
>Our "modeler" does everything from modeling to music to editing video for social media. I do programming, this retopo crap, some concept art, and whatever else falls on the floor.
I appreciate this but he has no excuse for not knowing how to do his job which is not putty modeling horse cocks, it's geometric.