High detail hard surface workflow question (VFX)

#1

Hey everyone. I’m working on a high poly hard surface model and i’m getting a little stuck on the workflow when it comes to painting/rigging. This is a personal project that i’m doing to improve my modelling and to learn rigging and animation in Maya.

I’m at the point where the modeling of the exterior of the heli is complete and i’ve UV’d about 80% (still need to do the guns and some nuts and bolts).

I plan to paint this is substance painter but i’m unsure what is the best/correct workfllow for a high detail mesh.

Most of what I can see online talks about games where a high poly mesh is baked down on to low poly mesh and that is the mesh that has the UVs and paint. If this was for a VFX project (I plan to do some renders and maybe some animations) what would the correct workflow be?

I’ve tried smoothing the mesh then exporting to Substance Painter but then I have a very high poly mesh that will be difficult to rig and animate. If I export the UNsmoothed mesh to SP then some areas don’t have enough topology to get smooth paint lines.

Am I approaching this wrong or what would be the best way to paint this model while still leaving it workable for rigging and animating.

lowpoly_airwolf
lowpoly_airwolf.png1659x567 130 KB

Unsmoothed Mesh

highpoly_airwolf
highpoly_airwolf.png1750x600 142 KB

Smoothed Mesh

Thanks for any help and sorry if in the wrong section.

#2

I always assumed they still used the low poly model. Especially because these same models have displacement maps added to them at the final render, so it seems counter-intuitive trying to paint over a surface that already has a million bumps but you want to add your own normal maps.

If this helps, I did find a tutorial where someone made a Pixar quality character (or car? Ha)

If you look at the UV unwrap, it’s clearly the low poly version and not the final turbosmooth quality.

And you’re also just in luck. I have a Helicopter tutorial sitting at the top of my toolbar and it appears to be the same thing again. They paint over the low poly version.

I hope either tutorial helps you with your project.

#3

Hey Jordan, thanks for the reply and links. Ive seen Andre’s other videos but never this one so thanks for the heads up. His work is phenomenal and a big inspiration for how I approached this build.

I’ll do some tests of working on the low poly model and see how that goes. Maybe im just a little short of geometry in those areas where im having issues.

You mentioned normal maps. Are they used outside of the games industry? Or is that line getting blurred with game engines being used for more than just games now?

#4

Yes, normal maps are used outside the game industry.

There’s actually a big misconception. That a model being high polygon means it doesn’t need textures.

A normal map contains 3D information, which is necessary for guiding the lighting in a scene and makes a surface look less flat.