The Perils Of Low Poly
ghastlycomic
Posts: 2,531
I've been experimenting with low poly modelling so I made a little low poly figure in 3DCoat. I made the mesh with symmetry so that the texture map is only half the figure. In 3DCoat everything looks fine when I take it into the paint room and start making the texture map. When I check the exported mesh in MT Mirror it tells me the mesh has perfect symmetry. But when I import the mesh into Daz Studio there are distortions on one side of the mesh.
Any ideas what I can do to fix this?
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Comments
Okay so it seems the fault lies with Daz Studio and not 3DCoat.
For some reason Daz breaks symmetry when it triangulates the mesh for rendering. It seems to randomly decide which corners to triangulate to and this random triangulation causes deformations in the texture map. Is there a setting that will make Daz maintain symmetry when triangulating the mesh for rendering instead of just randomly throwing up a mess of traingles? Some of the choices Daz makes with it's triangulations are really poorly implimented.
So I learned something new today about low poly modelling. If the vertixes of your quad deviate too much from a planar surface the way that quad triangulates at the time of rendering affects the way the texture is applied to the quad because the quad becomes either convex or concave.
With high resolution modelling this isn't so much of a problem because most of your quads are more or less square in shape and all vertexes are on the same plane. With low poly modelling where you're sometimes really pushing the shape of a quad it can have a dramatic effect on texture map when it comes time to render so you're better to triangulate a vital polygon manually so you can force it to be convex or concave based on what geometry works best for the model rather than leave it up to the whims of the rendering engine.
This must be why Open GL and Iray rendered the model with more texture map distortion than 3Delight did. The three engines must use a different method of triangulation.
I had expected low poly modeling to be pretty easy but it's actually pretty challenging to do well when the solution isn't to just throw more polygons at the problem. I wonder if the Germans have a word for something that is both fun and frustrating at the same time.
Yes, they do...all 3 are using differing triangulation and subdivision algorithms.
The Real peril of going low-poly is that there is only just so low you can go before you go full potato... You do not want to go full potato... It's not Pretty...
Micheal 4 went full Potato...
.
LOL
Ah decimate, it's always good for a laugh.
The retopo in 3DCoat is works great for making a low poly cage. So far I've found it's easiest to retopo my high resolution sculpt either manually or autotopo and then fix the bad geometry manually in a medium resolution polygon range and then start deleting edgeloops and fixing n-gons as they crop up. This makes it easier to create a mesh that will animate and UV unwrap well.
This is really....disturbing
That's gonna leave a mark. How does his food go from his stomach to his intestine? I mean...do people have to just sit there and watch his food traverse the air between his upper abdomen and lower? I hope he doesn't bend over to pick up his keys at just the wrong moment!
"Oh God, it's that guy at table three again!"
"You shouldn't make fun"
"I'm not; I just hate cleaning up the Wednesday blue plate special every week."
"You're right."
"Y'know, no tip is big enough to make up for cleaning up a half liverwurst sandwich and split-pea soup."
"You're right again. I'll be in the kitchen."
Well to be fair to decimator, M4 is over 129,000 Polys normally, and this M4 was decimated to ~1600 polys. Meaning I rounded more polys off of the initial number than the was remaining... at 5000 polys and careful weightmapping, he isn't too bad, and at 7,000 he's almost passsable, if you don't look too closely.
Now if 3d coat can get him doen to 2500- 3000 polys without melting his face, I might just have to look into it.
It was a terrible gastric bypass surgury accident...
A magic act gone horribly wrong. You know, the one where they cut a guy in half...
Maybe it's Pac-Man trying to wear a human disguise.
I came here expecting a low-poly figure tied to the railroad tracks, Perils of Pauline style, and now I'm very disappointed. :p
--MW
I have officially co-opted the phrase "full potato". Nobody in real life knows what I mean by it but that's part of the little inside joke constantly running inside my head and it's way funnier than any iteration of "fail" that I could come up with!
Let me get this figure rigged first.
Ha ha, that is funny. Daz should rename decimator to make model into patatoe.