Model Polycount

[Renzatic]

Quick question here. I've been doing my thing, making this neat shutter here. Things were going great until I looked at the bottom right of the screen and saw my polygon count. 900 on the dot, and I haven't even converted the thing to tris yet. Since this particular mesh is gonna see a good deal of repeated use, I'm thinking 900 is probably pushing thing a bit.

 

I can get it down to 680 by dropping the objects in the detail layer. Most of those can be replicated in the normalmap. But I don't want to have to start welding away my rounded edges and weathered detail unless I have to. What exactly can I get away with here?

[greebo]

The rounded edges are probably the best candidate for a decent normalmap, methinks.

[Springheel]

680 is a bit on the high side, but it's not a deal-breaker. What's more important is the number of polys that are shadowcasting. If you can get your shadowmesh down to a reasonable level (and it looks like you could probably get it to 150 or less easily), I would think the model would be fine. A simplified CM will also help.

 

There's also nothing wrong with making a usable version at 680, but then a much lower poly version for mappers to use in places that aren't going to draw a lot of attention.

[Baddcog]

There are deffinately places you can cut polys and notice NO difference in shape or smoothness.

 

The shutter 'pieces', all the planks that go horizontal to block the window have way too many edges.

Here's a paintover of how I think it should be.

 

Red is how it should be, green is wasted polys.

The thing is is that those polys serve no purpose, They don't add to the silohette and smoothing will make those edges round anyway. Also, the frame really only needs to be a frame, it doesn't need polys split for any cross parts. They can all be 'floating polys' meaning they don't have to share verts. Make sure you delete all backfacing polys (is there one behind handle that will never be seen, or on the sides of the trims inside shutter frame?)

The handle could be simplified a bit to with no visible loss of detail.

 

I think you can keep a beveled edge on everything and cut the polys in half easily. This version of the model might give you a slightly nicer normal map, but I think your normals should pretty much just be the wood grain/metal.

The hinges could be cut down and I think look just as good. You can also use alpha planes like I did for the doors,cut the polys ALOT, and have all the skinable hinges for the doors work on these too.

 

I would make the collision just a cube so they can open/close. Would be hard to shoot an arrow through anyway.

 

I think it's a nice looking model though and we deffinatly need some.

 

Like spring said a simplified version for out of the way places would be good. Get rid of all wasted polys in high detai lone first, then just delete the back side of everything. Authors could stick that up in high windows that can't be reached with black tex behind and it would be fine, might wanna make a right and left one though as they can't flip it around. doesn't even need a shadow mesh, could be non-shadow materials on it. Still a cube collision would be good.

[Renzatic]

The only reason why I'm not too anxious to start killing off my curves is because I'm afraid it won't fit the details in my high poly model. I have alot of dents and bumps aligned along that one sharp edge, and I'm afraid that trading off that extra detail for a single flat angle would make the ingame result look goofy.

 

I think I can get away with culling most of edges on the fins, though. That'd save me about 80-100 polys right there.

 

Keep in mind that this marks the first time I've wrapped a high poly normalmap to a low poly object. I could be coming at this all wrong for all I know. I might be adding too much detail to show up in a 1024x UV, deforming things too much, assuming certain things won't work (like above), all this stuff. Even if I'm going too crazy, It's all good practice. But after all these years of practicing, I'd like to make something that's good for something beyond just looking kinda pretty.

 

Anyway, you've seen my low poly beta, this is the beginnings of the highpoly mesh I intend on using. I'm trying to keep the details down to stuff I think would look good in a normalmap without messing with the basic shape too much.

[Baddcog]

That's cool. Didn't know you were doing a high poly as well. But honestly I'll stand by what I said.

 

The main reason is it's gonna be easier to unwrap with only one beveled edge. And by looking at the high poly I think those details will show just fine on the mesh like I painted over.

 

Normal maps can do amazing thing to quite simple base meshes. Again I will point to Pink Dot's ship lamp. If you looked at the low poly with no tex you would think "pretty cool, but kindof blocky, don't know how it'll look in game"

Once you see it in game you pretty much drop your jaw.

 

But it's up to you anyway, good practice and all.

[Renzatic]

Again I will point to Pink Dot's ship lamp.

 

Again? That's the first I've heard about it. I wouldn't mind checking it out, though. How easy is it for a contributor without access to anything but the Thieves Den demo to get?

 

Edit: Started reducing the model. When I finish it up tomorrow, I'll have it down to a much more reasonable 466 polys.

[Baddcog]

Sorry, I mentioned that in Jeroba's models thread. Not sure what you have access too. I'll try and find some pics so you see what i'm talking about.

 

Forgot about the rope coil, this is probably the best example of low to hi normal action

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=126348

 

The map, this isn't the easiest to see in game shot

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=115500

 

Oh, here's the best shot of the hi low and normals

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=115086

 

Let me know if you don't have access, but I think you do. Same modelling forum

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The sad thing is is I am really starting to understand how normals work best now but I have yet to actually make any low/hi poly models tto make normals out of. I did the metal chest in Thiefs Den in 3ds max but actually did all the hi-poly stuff flat and rendered to a flat map instead of building the high around the low.

 

I think the main thing to get really good normal maps is to have beveled edges just because you need a nice smoothable surface so the normals can do their job. One bevel is enough. But if you make square edges you get a sharp crease that the normals can't overcome. A 45 degree abgle on the corner is enough to smooth well.

 

I did notice that the ship lamp does have some sharp edges on the ladies but they still look pretty good. I think they are small enough to get by, I also think PinkDot was probably pushing more polys on the low than he wanted to. Beveling the ladies probably would've added 200 polys.

[Renzatic]

Got a problem here. Think it might be UV related.

 

First, this is the final model and current UV. 356 polys before tripling.

 

Secondly, the high poly model. I've started redoing it, I wanted the bumps and dents to be a bit more subtle.

 

Now, I run it through xNormal, and get this(the original is 2048x2048). There's some funkiness in there I can't explain, specially along the inside of the main body of the shutter. It gives me bumps that aren't supposed to be there, and other things that absolutely blow my mind. You can really see the problems here. Some of it is okay, some of it...not so much. The whole thing looks a bit too sloppy for my tastes.

 

I think I have two problems here. The first is my UV might be a little sloppy. Unwrapping is the one thing I'm least good at here. The second is that errors are showing up where I have pieces of the model intersecting. That might explain the problem I'm having along the inner lining. The intersection problem I can fix, but I'd like to have a profession opinion on my UV before I redo it.

 

Also, those models are really amazingly impressive. Definitely gives me something to work forward to.

[Baddcog]

Well, I can't give you a 'professional opinion' But this might help.

 

I'd do 2 things.

 

First, the polys on the inside of main body. they are made of a skinny row, a wide (middle row) and a skinny row. Get rid of that and just make them 1 row. Then 'float' those trim pieces top/bottom. No need to waste polys building around the trim. It'll also give you fewer polys so easier to uv and less trouble shooting.

 

You can also save uv space by putting those trims inside the window holes (just turn 'em sideways and leave some space). You got a lot of wasted space in the uv, you could get better resolution by moving stuff around.

 

Then I'd take both the hi and low poly models, select all of the faces on the 'flaps' and detach them. Basically make 2 objects, 2 normal maps. Then you'll render the outer frame as one, and render the flaps as another. That'll get rid of the weird overlaps I bet.

 

Then just put em back together (or just save the original) and copy/paste the textures together in photoshop. Since you have them uv'ed in one piece everything will line up. (But I'd compact the uv'es more first.

 

I know alot of guys over at polycount forums (and excellent place for modelling help) that do very details models and characters do them in several pieces.

[Renzatic]

How's this?. Everything is fitted nice and snug, no stretched pieces, and I've left enough room to fit the fins in later. Lets see how this works.

[Baddcog]

Yeah, much better use of uv space. Fewer seams to if you welded the verts, that means fewer pixels in game. (No matter what, all games add verts at texture seams)

 

I might leave a few pixel gap where the red stripes are though. You might wanna try a normal pass first, if you have any weird issues by those red lines then maybe space em out.

[Renzatic]

I can't weld my UV exactly like that, since I can only sew edges in the UV to corresponding edges on the model. For example, the orange lines represent what I've welded in the UV, which is all I can weld without totally messing up the layout.

 

Things are better in Xnormal at least, but nowhere near perfect. I've gotten rid of those weird bumps along the inner wall of the shutter, but I'm still getting seams where there shouldn't be any, like on welded or contiguous surfaces on the UV.

 

I'm officially stumped.

[Baddcog]

Those red lines I drew were meant as places to leave space just incase those polys were close enough to leaves issues

 

But yeah, if you weld or sew as many edges back together as possible it's best overall.

 

----------

 

Could you post pic of new normal AND a screenshot of your high and low in the same scene together. Is it possible that parts of your high poly go inside the low?

 

If so you might want to try a 'cage'. I've never done a cage but it could be a really simple frame outside both the models. Basically it would do the projection direction instead of the high, the high would only project bumps then.

Maybe either the cage or just making sure all high poly verts are outside the low.

 

I know I've had issues with the Doom3 normal creator and I had to do some photoshop touch-ups. Have you tried the Doom 3 normal tool?

[Renzatic]

And here you go...

 

The high poly/low poly comparison. Since I have yet to detail the new HP mesh without the fins, I just took my high poly model and sprayed some dents on the thing for testing purposes. I only ever zsub from the HP mesh, so the results from both would be similar.

 

The resulting normalmap in Xnormal (just realized I used an older version of the UV for this shot).

 

The finished product. The outer edges are about perfect now, but that seam in the middle of my inner surface shouldn't be there.

 

I think in the meantime, I'm gonna look up some tutorials and try out those cages you mentioned.

[Baddcog]

That's looking pretty good.

 

You do have some poly overlap on the corners where the hi is inside the low, but that doesn't seem to be effecting it much at all. That would be the main reason to use a cage (the cage would fully encompass everything - nothing would show through)

 

The seam I'm not sure about. Could it be that your low poly is built 'around' the upper and lower trim, but the high poly isn't? Maybe making the normal stretch some? I still think you should simplify that part of the low poly from 3 rows to 1 and not worry about the overlap with the trims. It looks like you might have quite a few rows of polys there but it's hard to say in the shot with both meshes.

 

Looking again I think your polys on that crease might have a bit of a kink in them, like one row is pulled back a bit from the rest. I'm starting to think you have 5 rows of polys where I thought there were 3. One of those rows is very skinny and not planar to the other rows.

 

The good thing is most of that will be very hard to see anyway with the flaps in there and it would be very easy to clean that up in photoshop.

[Renzatic]

There are 3 rows in that middle section, two rows for the beveled edge, and one fatter row for the inner lining. The weird thing is the seam is showing up on the plain edge, there aren't any cuts there to cause a crease. I'll post a close up shot of the area once I'm back home.

 

It's possible that it's the high poly mesh is causing the problem. Before I take it into Zbrush and start subdividing, I start making edge loops all along the model to make sure my topology is as smooth and uniform as possible. Some of those cuts could be causing my problem.

[Renzatic]

I figured out what was causing the weird seams. Basically, any solid piece of geometry that blocks a ray from hitting it's intended surface will cause a mark there. I noticed it because the topmost fin was clear of any seams along the top, while the ones below it had metric fucktons of them.

 

So, I had to separate each high and low poly fin, save them to their own files, then render each out individually. I've still some seams, but at least I'm seeing some improvement.

 

A single fin.

 

Who would've thought that doing a simple shutter would've been such a pain in the ass.

 

Also, while I'm not expecting a 1:1 conversion, I thought the resulting normal would have a bit more fidelity. It looks stretched and blurry, even at 2048x2048.

 

This is the source high res in it's entirety. As you can see, it's nowhere near as detailed.

 

And lastly, The diffuse texture

[Baddcog]

So the problem is the high and low intersecting? If so either expand the high larger a bit so there are no intersections or try using a cage, would be really easy for those pieces I think.

 

I'm thinking you need some stong lines in the frame that determine the junctions of pieces of wood that make the frame and the diffuse should also have different grains on those sections.

I'd also add an Ambient Occlusion pass to the diffuse for some subtle shadows. We've realized that in flat lighting normal only shadows disappear leaving tex with no ambient occlusion looking very flat.

 

The blurryness might be caused because the details are so fine. Not sure on that. But you do have alot of really small grainy details. Have you looked at it in game yet to see how it turned out?

Might be a good idea to do before changing anything.

[Renzatic]

Actually, I was planning on cutting it up, since the tutorials I saw on using cages in Xnormal were about as clear as mud.

 

Then I discovered how to bake inside Modo. Now, I'm this...THIS...much closer to getting what I want. I've got the sharpness and clarity, but's too weak. And it's a different type of normal (tangent based, object based, can't remember which), which I can't adjust easily inside of PS.

 

The result.

 

It's been a slow, steady progress towards completion. I tell you, though. I'm getting sick of looking at the thing.

[Baddcog]

Wow, that's a really weird colored normal map. Never seen one with mustard colors before.

 

Does look like the seam issues are gone though.

 

I'm curious to know if that normal will show in D3 correctly.

 

Once you get through this though you're going to have a pretty good idea of what to do the next time right off the bat. I think we'll have a great looking shutter obj too

[rebb]

Doom3 requires Tangent-Space Normal-Maps. This seems to be an Object-Space Normal-Map.

[Baddcog]

I'm searching polycount for good info on cages/normals. Since it is relevant to this thread I will post links I find here.

 

Currently I'm scanning the 'end all be all normal map thread'

This post has good examples explanations of different normal map types

http://boards.polycount.net/showpost.php?p...p;postcount=103

 

Ben Mathis workflow tut page 2 has cage info

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow_2.htm

 

That's all I have time for now

[Renzatic]

That helps a bit. Thing is, all these tutorials show off UVing organic models. I need to learn how to twist architectural objects in such a way that keeps them seamless and flowing, but still easy to see exactly what I'm painting on when doing the diffuse. Spreading everything out and relaxing the flow makes things too confusing to paint tiny details on.

 

I think I'm gonna be spending the next couple of days learning about cages and hitting up some advanced UV tutorials...and also probably begging for help from the Polycount/Modo guys.

 

Hell, I'll do that right now.

 

You are right, though. Once I'm done, I won't have nearly as much trouble on my second mesh.

[Baddcog]

From what I gathered on the cage the workflow is basically:

 

1-use the lowpoly mesh (or a copy rather)

 

2-use 'push' -a max tool to expand verts outwards- different then scale because push moves them away from each other, scale moves away from center. Push would be more like 'fatten' or 'swell'. I'm sure your program has something similar.

 

3-has to have the same number of verts as your low poly.

 

4-can be editted however you want, single verts wahtever.

 

5-must fully enclose low and high poly models.

 

I know X Normal has a slot for importing the cage like low and high.