Manta Syandana

[Lilleth]

Here is my concept for the Manta Sayandana. I am currently having trouble figuring out how to compress the polygon count without ruining the model completely. The compression is important because it can’t even make it into the workshop, let alone the game if it has too high of a polygon count. If anyone can help that would be great. I created this model in the Blender engine and can’t seem to figure out any methods of reduction that work. I understand bump and normal maps, but the model loses major shapes when I reduce the polygon count with "Modifiers" like "Decimate". Any suggestions?

 

[Ev.00]

can't help with your problem sorry, but i did want to say that it looks pretty cool good job

[Chaya_Sar]

Might want to thin it out some. A little remodelling is going to be needed. Its to big, thats why the polygon cap is there. Looks cool though.

[RobWasHere]

You done it via sculpt mode? You need to make a retopology. Basically recreate whole geometry by hand and apply baked normal map to it. Might be quite time consuming compared to just sculpting, but in result you get a mesh with the same look but with much much less polys. Mirror modifier cut time need in half.

 

Edited November 4, 2015 by RobWasHere

[ReizoRyuu]

There is no "compressing" or whatever in 3d modeling, you simply have to make a lower polygon version of it.

I don't know blender, but I'm sure it has polygon tools? As long as you can create individiual triangles/quads, that's how you would do it.

From the looks of it, looks like you used some kind of auto smoothing build tool or splines.

[Lilleth]

I would think the reason for the polygon cap isn't for the size of the model, but for the ability of the model to run smoothly in the game. You can easily create a small sayandana with far too many polygons. Thank you though. 

[Lilleth]

Thanks for the video! I will check it out now!

PS Yea I didn't mean compression i guess. I meant lower the poly count. sorry for that miscommunication. 

[BabyKurama]

I would say make it thinner, feels like it would be to big to run around and fight with. But that's just me 

else it as a nice design to it

[Cynaris]

It's like a facehugger, except it hugs your back, ew

 

Not a fan. Not to say it's poorly made, just not a fan. 

 

Ewie ewie.

[Lilleth]

Do you guys mean thinner or smaller?

[theRCB]

Do you guys mean thinner or smaller?

 

thinner and smaller. Also, you can essentially just use normal map to get the extra detail you end up cutting out.

[_Connor]

Most of that surface detail can be baked to normals. Rotate your camera around the model and look at the outside edge i.e Silhouette of the model. Any polys that aren't adding to that shape should be baked to normals. That shape should easily fit within 7500 tris. 

Damn i'm jealous of people who are competent in zbrush but have no technical knowledge. I hate zBrush D:

[Lilleth]

Most of that surface detail can be baked to normals. Rotate your camera around the model and look at the outside edge i.e Silhouette of the model. Any polys that aren't adding to that shape should be baked to normals. That shape should easily fit within 7500 tris. 

Damn i'm jealous of people who are competent in zbrush but have no technical knowledge. I hate zBrush D:

Yea i tried the "remesh" and "Decimate" modifiers but all of them destroyed the halo section at the nape of the neck and also the main shapes around the flippers and collar area. RobWasHere's idea for manual Retopology is probably what i'm going to have to do to fix this ideally.

[_Connor]

Yea i tried the "remesh" and "Decimate" modifiers but all of them destroyed the halo section at the nape of the neck and also the main shapes around the flippers and collar area. RobWasHere's idea for manual Retopology is probably what i'm going to have to do to fix this ideally.

decimate and remesh are tools to optimise your mesh and edge flow inside zBrush to continue sculpting. They aren't one click tools intended to magically turn your sculpt into a game ready model. You always need to manually retopo your sculpts. 

[Lilleth]

decimate and remesh are tools to optimise your mesh and edge flow inside zBrush to continue sculpting. They aren't one click tools intended to magically turn your sculpt into a game ready model. You always need to manually retopo your sculpts. 

So in the professional industry they still do this? They haven't figured out a way to just do it in one click? That's strange. I guess it makes sense though  because topology is complicated. 

[_Connor]

So in the professional industry they still do this? They haven't figured out a way to just do it in one click? That's strange. I guess it makes sense though  because topology is complicated. 

I don't consider this weird at all. I hate to throw around the term "the Industry"  because it is never defined, that that's besides the point. As far as i'm aware there is no magic one click fix to retopo, like we're starting to get with UVs. There are tools like topogun which can make it really easy, but topology for complex shapes is still something that changes considerably based on the way that shape deforms. 

[ReizoRyuu]

So in the professional industry they still do this? They haven't figured out a way to just do it in one click? That's strange. I guess it makes sense though  because topology is complicated. 

 

No there isn't and I doubt there will be since you would be asking a computer reshape something without destroying the topology, especially with complex shapes.

Subdividing is easy, and is how sculpting programs came into being, but the opposite of that is really hard/impossible because you are asking it to basically recalculate the entire thing without any paramaters regarding constraints, because those constraints would be almost as hard to define.

 

That's why when I teach people 3d art, I teach the entire pipeline and never start off with sculpting.