workflow question

[jibberishballr]

There’s a lot of threads on the forum and I was wondering If someone could direct me to a good tutorial on high poly to low poly workflow, using dynamesh. I understand the sculpting process, but get stuck at the point where I have:

1: Dynameshed
2: Sculpted with multiple subdivisions
3:?

I now have a 6 subdivided dynamesh that I want to put onto a low poly. I have tried qremeshing which gives me decent topology, but i lose the subdivision levels, leaving me without an option to make a normal map. I’m stuck at this point.

[Doug_Jones]

You can use DecimationMaster to bring down the polycount after leaving dynamesh and then QRemesher. It’s really a better practice to go from low poly to higher as needed. With Smooth Normals selected in rendering, some, not all faceting will disappear. Shadows may be blotchy though.

[jibberishballr]

You can use DecimationMaster to bring down the polycount after leaving dynamesh and then QRemesher. It’s really a better practice to go from low poly to higher as needed. With Smooth Normals selected in rendering, some, not all faceting will disappear. Shadows may be blotchy though.

I understand how to get the topology looking decent and the polycount lower, the problem I have is when I do that I lose all the subdivisions and the detail that goes with it, leaving me with just a base low poly mesh.

[Cryrid]

There used to be a good tutorial on the wiki for using Qremesher to create a low-poly model and then projecting the results back with Project All, but I can’t find it in the new docs nor do I know if their design even supports having such tutorials instead of just quick references. You can read it here but there are no supporting images due to it being cached.

You’d basically just use QRemesher on a clone to create the low poly model, then use Project All to get the detail back. Subdivide, Project, Subdivide, Project, and repeat the process until you have enough subdivisions and geometry in the low poly to recreate all the detail.

The easier option is to retopologize your sculpt into a lowpoly model (whether you use qremesher, zspheres, the topology brush, goz, etc), and then use an external program like xnormal or 3dsmax to bake the maps instead since this doesn’t require the lowpoly and highpoly meshes to be the same.

[jibberishballr]

There used to be a good tutorial on the wiki for using Qremesher to create a low-poly model and then projecting the results back with Project All, but I can’t find it in the new docs nor do I know if their design even supports having such tutorials instead of just quick references. You can read it here but there are no supporting images due to it being cached.

You’d basically just use QRemesher on a clone to create the low poly model, then use Project All to get the detail back. Subdivide, Project, Subdivide, Project, and repeat the process until you have enough subdivisions and geometry in the low poly to recreate all the detail.

The easier option is to retopologize your sculpt into a lowpoly model (whether you use qremesher, zspheres, the topology brush, goz, etc), and then use an external program like xnormal or 3dsmax to bake the maps instead since this doesn’t require the lowpoly and highpoly meshes to be the same.

ahh I think I may have seen that video. Could you explain how xnormal doesn’t require the LP and HP to be the same? I would have just done it that way but thought I needed to have the meshes exact.