High Poly Model to Low Poly Model?

[zwiglm]

Hi

I am new with 3D modelling. I got some very nich high poly model (apx. 70k faces)
What is the best way to get a lower poly count for such a model? Is it a tough hands-on job, or are there modifiers that help?

Cheers,
Martin

[pabloescobar]

This is not the "best" way to do things with high/low poly... you can use Multires or Optimize modifier in 3ds max, but the results are not good...

The best way is:
Make the low-poly version first (UV mapped properly) and then you can use ZBrush or even you own 3d soft to increase the polys and put more details (to extract the normal map, guessing you want do this).

[zwiglm]

Aah, thanks for the help.

Ok, let me rephrase my question:
What am I doing with a perfectly beautiful modeled character, when it's got to many faces?
Throw it away and do a worse one myself? 
You want to use this char - what would you do?

Cheers,
Martin

[pabloescobar]

I will remake the char (as lowpoly), using the highpoly as reference... You can "freeze" the high poly version and start a new one, just trying to keep the main silhouete of the highpoly version (without details).

you will figure is more easy remake the char as lowpoly than remove the unnecessary polys from the high version...

Due to power of the new video cards, is hard to say how much is low... but as general rule, you can consider something around 1000 ~ 2000 polys (2000 ~ 4000 tris) as low... above it is medium poly ammount... but what really care is the total ammount of polys in your scene (landscape+objects+characters+npc+etc+etc+etc)... it means, you can have your main actor (character) with a lot of polys and all other objects in scene with poor polys... this is one thing you must balance yourself... 

[JukkaKevät]

It's usual workflow to first do the high poly version and then derive the lowpoly from it. There is not any one method above other, everybody finds their own.

Here are some numbers for lowpoly:

Max Payne 2 had 5000 tris for characters
Half Life 2 used about 8000 for important characters like Alyx (no normal maps)
Unreal 3 uses about 5000 for monsters and humans, but with normal map

[sgrippa]

Aah, thanks for the help.

Ok, let me rephrase my question:
What am I doing with a perfectly beautiful modeled character, when it's got to many faces?
Throw it away and do a worse one myself? 
You want to use this char - what would you do?

Cheers,
Martin

As an option you can use some polygon reduction tool; you can test two of the most known as Okino Polytrans (for Max) and VizUp (Stand alone). I'd suggest VizUp that seems (thought I'm not a modeller at all) to output the best progressive mesh. If I remember well for each one you can download a working demo for testing.

[lichtkante]

Hi, wouldnt it be possible to use jVipers Progressive Mesh LOD Tool to do that job ?
Just a thought ..

[zwiglm]

As an option you can use some polygon reduction tool; you can test two of the most known as Okino Polytrans (for Max) and VizUp (Stand alone). I'd suggest VizUp that seems (thought I'm not a modeller at all) to output the best progressive mesh. If I remember well for each one you can download a working demo for testing.

Do you have any links and/or additional info about these.
Until now I just have found "Polygon Cruncher" from Mootools (http://www.mootools.com) with a quite reasonable price

BTW. Thanks for all the help.
Martin

[sgrippa]

Sure, you can find VizUp at
http://www.vizup.com

and Okino at
http://www.okino.com

Vizup comes with a full feature demo (the only limitation is that you can't save) and a couple of mesh samples.
For Okino i'm sorry but I don't know much more that I've said before.

[zwiglm]

Now, there's a quick answer.

May I ask you about your personal choice and (of course subjective) reason.

Greetings from Austria,
Martin

[sgrippa]

My personal choice (I've got too a collection of very high poly models from turbosquid) falls on Vizup, essentially for the ease of use.
Like others I'm trying to develop a game and high polycount meshes are obviously unacceptable. Vizup seemed to me a good combination between budget and ease of use.

Just my 2C

[Albertus]

getting back to the original question : high polys -> low polys

Some 3d packages supply a special feature called : topology tool
I quote from Silo

quote

Topology Tools

After sculpting in Silo or another software, you can use Silo's Topology Tool to sketch new topology over your mesh, or use any number of Silo's tools with surface snapping active to constrain all your geometry additions and edits to your scultped mesh to easily form new topology.

unquote

Never used Silo but I suppose that Topology  tool can be used to obtain a low poly mesh starting from a high poly one

Din anyone try it ?