High poly details to low poly - Help required

[cl-apps]

Hi all,

I have been recently pulling my hair out trying to find some decent tutorial information that isn’t out of date or required 3d Studio Max at some point.

Here is my dilemma:

I have created a fairly simple character in ZBrush which I’d like to use for some animation… So I need to create a low poly version which I did by exporting my merged model and importing it into 3DCoats AUTORETOPO room which did a fine job of retopologising my mesh for animation.

Now I want to bake all the details from the high poly mesh to the low poly mesh. I have tried all the tutorials on Project All / saving a morph target to clean up the details but nothing seems to project the details nicely. It seems like the main bulk of my model projects ok but any sub tools get screwed up with holes and general mesh defects.

My model isn’t even that high in polygons at around 500k - However there are some mesh extracts that I did to make some simple boots - could this be the problem?

Is there a way to merge all my sub tools to make the Project All more efficient / would this help?

I even tried xnormal but that just moaned that I had ngons in my mesh so I gave up with that too.

Modo’s bake feature seems to ignore my mesh altogether so Zbrush has given me the most joy so far, I just need to guidance from an expert to getting those details transferred.

I understand this might not be an exact science but surely must be done everyday for animation and game asset creation?

Any help would be great as I think I’m just going round in circles now.

[cgranjon]

You need two things for projecting your new (good topologized) mesh onto our sculpted mesh. First you need to append your new mesh as a subtool. Then the subtool that will be projected is the selected one, hidden subtools won’t be considered in the process of projection.
Finally, it’s better to subdivise your new mesh a couple times, store a MorphTarget and then project it with the ProjectAll feature. All you have to do then is use the Morph Brush to clean your projected subtools.

I hope my explanations are clear, if not tell me I’ll try to be more precise.

[Cryrid]

Generally I prefer using xnormal due to the control it gives, and it seems more hassle-free than trying to get a clean projection.

It’s better have to both meshes triangulated before baking in xnormal. Aside from avoiding that n-gon error, a triangulated low-poly would also help ensure that other applications wont triangulate it differently (which would cause the normal map to no longer match).

I tend to use Decimation Master when exporting the highpoly, which likes to keep things triangular. But either way, just in case, you could go to Tools: Export and switch to Tris.

[cl-apps]

Generally I prefer using xnormal due to the control it gives, and it seems more hassle-free than trying to get a clean projection.

It’s better have to both meshes triangulated before baking in xnormal. Aside from avoiding that n-gon error, a triangulated low-poly would also help ensure that other applications wont triangulate it differently (which would cause the normal map to no longer match).

I tend to use Decimation Master when exporting the highpoly, which likes to keep things triangular. But either way, just in case, you could go to Tools: Export and switch to Tris.

Thank you for this information it has given me hope. I hadn’t thought to export my mesh as tris. If this sorts xnormal then I might get a bit further. Off now to reinstall xnormal!

I did a bit of project all, messing with the sliders, but there were too many errors for such a simple model.

I did try creating a simple subD model in modo and sculpted that with multi resolution on and that worked nicely with mdd animation. So in two minds which way to go since my characters are so simple.