High Poly vs. Low Poly

[Brander_Rly]

Why is necessary to create two "versions" of the model we are creating? It's only for bake textures from the highpoly to apply on the low poly later on or it has other reasons?

[kanga]

Nope no other reasons, it is for baking purposes and the hipoly acts as a template to draw the low poly on. Big studios could use the high polys for cinematics if they needed to. Mostly a high poly is no good for animation because it doesnt have to be so I guess there would be an animatable hipoly made from the concept hipoly. That version would most likely use displacement and normal maps derived from the concept model.

Hope that was no too confusing!
Cheerio

[paineyes]

Hipoly are also used in promotional materials like boxart and just simply image files for magazines, gaming sites

Personally i take it a general thumb of rule that if something isn't meant for close up (like characters or weapons) and its just a simple minor prop (like a stone on a pavement), then you can just go straight and do a low poly of it.

[swag]

From my experience you should only skip the high poly if you are going to go with a very low poly asset (like for a mobile game). Even doing minor assets for a AAA game still needd the high poly (to round out the corners and such).

Plus it's good practice.