Retopo tools

[artist_in_a_box]

Hey guys, figured id just start a thread instead of post every day with a new thread and new problem, normal maps giving me some sleepless nights lol, and i havent even gotten onto the main mesh yet.

I am posting on my wip aswell, but i think im gonna try and get any problems im having posted on here as this is realy where it should be.

thanks for any help given or advice e.t.c, it is much appreciated as i really have to tip my hat to you guys who learned this all on your own, seems anything more complex than a cube gives me nightmares lol.

Scroll down to the bottom for my first post on the new topic.

[Dennispls]

Well to be honest everyone has their own methods of doing things.
Some might start with the low poly and completely rework it to a high poly.
Some or should i say most will do it the other way around.

Its all a matter of preference really.

As for the tools you were referring to:
Stay away from them and just do it manually.

[Flava-Fly]

This isn’t a retopo help, to be honest it’s something I struggle with myself, but I heard about the ‘decimation master’ tool in Zbrush while doing the Eat3D fountain tutorial and while I haven’t got to that part of the DVD yet I quickly ran it on one of the hi-polys that comes with Zbrush and it was excellent for optimising the polys! Could be what you need to get the reduced mesh you’re looking for but as I said I’m not totally sure how the outcome looks in terms of nice topology.

[artist_in_a_box]

Ok, the latest in a long line of issues, are these wierd lines along the edges of the butt plate normal? The HP mesh has a rounded corner and to reflect this i chamfered the edge of the low poly, even though the result is a bit beter after the chamfer im still getitng these streaks. They also appear on other parts of the mesh, even when i split the butt plate away from the butt body and render it alone. Im not sure wether they are acceptable or wether they are geometry problems or should be fixed in photoshop.



Cheers

ben

[Ghostscape]

Looks like your low poly has some bad smoothing groups. Tangent-space normals rely on the underlying vertex normals and then modify those on a per-pixel level. Unfortunately they have some degree of inaccuracy and so if you have really bad smoothing on your low poly, you'll get weird and wavy normals. That explains the bad lighting across the object.

If you're talking about the splotchy lines across the chamfer on the buttstock itself in the large picture (which I think you are) that looks like a resolution issue, as it looks like when you get to the curved sections it is aliasing somewhat poorly (make sure you have anti-aliasing and super-sampling turned on, assuming this is Max). Other than that, realize that nobody will be that close to that, and if they are, you may want to consider uncreasing your texture resolution.

I have no idea what is going on in the inset image, but it looks like a bad bake - the side looks like it miscast or something, and I'm not sure what is up with the top area.

[Dennispls]

Yeah double check to see if your cage is not intersecting with the low poly geometry.

[artist_in_a_box]

Thanks guys, it turns out it was an issue with the low poly edged not matching right witht he high poly, was actually incredibly simple once i noticed it, it doesnt look perfect now but it looks better than what it did, thanks very much for the help, watch this space, still a logn way to go ... lol