I have built a detailed terrain with 5 subdivisions- 26mil polys at its highest 10,000 at its lowest. I’m trying to keep aproximately 1/8 of the model to add more subdivisions to for the highest area of detail. I have tried the decimation master, creating subgroups and deleting polygons. Nothing is working- it just keeps crashing. Have tried bumping up the memory capacity to 1024 but nothing seems to work. Can someone help me please.
Thanks
What end result are you after? Are you hoping to export your model at the highest level or will you use a displacement or normal map for the low level mesh? If the latter then you could use HD Geometry to add in the extra detail where you want it without having to reduce the existing density. There are other options but it would help if you explained your intentions a little more.
Hi Marcus,
Thanks for replying- I was planning on exporting the model at its lowest subdivision and then apply the high res 8196 displacement map in Maya based on the high division model in zbrush.
Then I want to extract the peak of the terrain and add a few more subdivisions to get in the extra detail. This is where i’m having problems- when I try to create subgroups and delete the extra terrain it crashes, same happens when I try to delete extra faces or when I use the decimation master. Not familiar with the HD Geometry option- do you think this would be the way to go?
Thanks
OK, thanks. There are two ways you could do this (back up your model first).
A. You could split the mesh into two subtools:
- Go to the lowest subdivision level.
- Use mesh visibility to hide all but the part you want to high detail.
- Press Tool>Polygroups>Group Visible.
- Press Tool>SubTool>Groups Split.
This will make two separate subtools based on the polygroups. You will be able to add a further subdivision level to to subtool you want to high detail. Before doing this, crease the edges by pressing Tool>Geometry>Crease. This will make sure the edges remain the same and match the other subtool.
Providing you assign UVs before you do the Groups Split the UVs will be split and then you can use the Multi Map Exporter plugin Merge Maps option to merge the resulting maps into one.
B. You could use HD Geometry to add the detail. See here for more info: http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/HD_Geometry
In order for HD Geometry to be included in a displacement/normal map the HD Geometry subdivision slider must be at its highest level, and the ordinary subdivision slider must be at its lowest level.
With either method you can really only divide one more time. Anything above that would be pointless as your map won’t be able to hold the detail. (An 8K map can at the very most hold detail from 64m points. Subdividing 26m will give 104 points, already more than the map can hold.)
HTH,
For Decimation master, it shouldn’t crash if you have enough memory (even if not…). Decimation Master is running its own dedicated process and is fully 64 bits, then 26 millions of polys shouldn’t be an issue.
Just to know, is the crash happening only with this mesh of with all models?