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View Full Version : Normal mapping between hi (quad)/low(tris) objects

JaredTaylor
03-12-2009, 02:53 AM
Hi, I am very new to game modeling, and am attempting to work out the workflow.

I have a human female game character, I made her in tri's. When I subdivided her for a higher detailed mesh to use for normal mapping it went bad (all forms of smoothing does) due to the tri's. I detriangulated her as much as possible and had an almost acceptable character. But wasn't happy enough.

Now I am retopologizing in Zbrush and a question comes into my head, is it okay if I do this?:

- Retopologize my character in Zbrush 3.1 using all quads
- Export/Import (obj) into Headus UVLayout2 and layout all my UVs
- Export/Import (obj) from UVLayout2 into Maya 2009 and tweak the UVs as necessary
- Export the model for later use
- Cut the polygons to form triangles that are necessary for curvature
- Use "Mesh -> Triangulate" to fill in the rest of the triangles

//The UVs will be cut too?//

- Export low poly mesh as lowpolymesh.obj
- Import the mesh that was exported for later use (before triangulation), subdivide 3x, export as highpolymesh.obj
- Import both the lowpolymesh.obj (triangulated, low poly) & highpolymesh.obj (quads, high poly) into xNormals to generate both the Normal Map and Ambient Occlusion Map.

//Is Ambient Occlusion used in games ? - note, we don't have a game engine, it is me and an accomplice trying to learn more about our respective interests, it will be a "3d" sidescrolling game.//

//What is a good texture size to be used for this type of game? The characters will be relatively small, so 1024x1024? Any reason to go to 2048x2048 or will it be unnoticeable?//

- Open the lowpolymesh.obj in maya, create a lambert shader and apply to lowpolymesh, go to bump map checkerbox and choose "file", and load the normal map that was generated by xNormal and change the attributes of the bump map file from bump to tangent space.

Did I miss anything? Is there anything invalid or incorrect about what I assume should work?

Thank you anyone for your time, I appreciate it =)
Dreamdealer2099
03-14-2009, 03:50 PM
Hey mate.

Well,maybe i dodn't understand smth. but as you said "I made her in tri's."It seems strange to me,why do you have to create a triangulated mesh at the outset of your character's production.Yes,as far as i know most of real time graphics engines work with triangulated meshes ony (so they don't have to tesselate it).But "quaded" mesh is created firstso it can be taken to Zb or whatever,also to create a proper rig and obly then when it's all done you can triangulate your mesh and import it into the game engine.I became even more embarrassed reading that you don't have any game engine at all:).Once again,maybe i didn't get it right.Then you ask whether AO is used in games.It's better to say that it's used in textures.You can bake AO,shadows,Global Illumination,and other render "passes" in texture maps,to be used later on your character,vehicle,environment.Of course it'll make it look more natural and plausible.What about the size of a texture,it doesn't clear what scale your meshes will be.(you said "relatively",but didn't mention what it's realated with).If it's really small 3 sm (of the screen space),i think 512x512 will be enough.Although it's really hard to say so far.Anyway good luck with your project and ask anytime if needed.
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