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General Workflow for Game Character Modelling

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TomGT polycounter
Hey everyone. I'm currently modelling a character with a game-oriented goal in mind and am wondering how everyone else is integrating High poly and low poly modelling in their workflows.

My current workflow goes as follows:

- Maya: low poly modelling with proper topology.
- Zbrush: Import low poly model and sculpt high poly details. I then export the new low poly to Maya, along with any other maps and bakes as required.
- Maya: Unwrap, Rig etc. Texturing done in Photoshop. Model does not go back to Zbrush unless I really need to.


Im quite used to the above for most of my work. However I'm starting to think doing low poly first with topology is hindering me from blocking out the character properly, and somewhat inefficient in terms of time.

What do you guys think? Is doing a high poly sculpt first and then doing retopo a far better choice? How long does it usually take to retopo the body neatly following musculature and then crunching that poly number further down. How efficient is the Zremesher?

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  • SuperFranky
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    SuperFranky polycounter lvl 10
    For me, it all depends:

    If I do hardsurface modeling, I try to model it with the idea of using the same, but simplified geometry as my final game mesh. Meaning, I avoid retopology later.
    It's generally a decent idea to think of when you model anything.

    In other situations, I model a basic mesh in 3ds Max, do whatever I want with it in Zbrush and then retopo it to fit my needs. For example, my high poly mesh can consist of several separate objects and I retopo it specifically to make it one contiguos mesh.

    I also do retopo if I changed the base mesh too much in Zbrush or the base mesh isn't good enough to be simplified for low poly in the first place because of the tricky geometry - in that case it would be much less painful to just to retopo from scratch.

    That's pretty much it, I suppose.
  • TomGT
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    TomGT polycounter
    Ah. I guess there is no real shortcut to it then. I do use Dynamesh on a lot of things including hard surfaces on Zbrush, and then later decimate that. But the resulting geometry usually needs a lot of fixing :/
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