My First High Poly Model & Normal Map Bake

[Rhino]

High Poly Modelling, aka Sub Division modelling aka Next Generation Modelling is something I've been putting off learning for some time. Mainly because its not needed for the types of models I tend to make but I thought I better have a go at it sooner or later.

So I decided to make this Bulkhead Door for ehhh, "practice"

At first it was quite a challenge to get into the new work flow but think I've pretty much got it now after reading lots of different tuts and seeking a little help from [R-DEV]Stigger etc

Here is my High Poly modelling, weighing in at a whopping 83,522 polys (167,287 tris) and 3 ounces

And here is my Low Poly model weighing in at 328 polys (647 tris).

And here is the Low Poly Model with the baked normal map from the high poly and the diffuse texture ontop

Basically for thous of you who dont understand the normal map baked off the high poly version helps makes the low poly look like it has more detail than it really has in the model, but reflecting light in different ways to make the object feel smoother and adds indents etc

Modelling the high poly model like I said was quite a challenge at first to get my head around the new workflow, but after I got into the flow of it, it was really easy to add lots and lots of details in and it was much funner than normal modelling since you can get carried away with the details without having to think about optimization or poly counts just making it looks as round as possible
If any one is interested in learning high poly modelling I can recommend these tuts as the main ones I used:
An Introduction to Subdivision (High-Poly) Modeling Tools and Techniques - Cgtuts+
Using High Poly 3D Models as Normal Maps In Theory & Practice - NFSCars Forums

Hopefully I can take these new skills into crating many more high quality objects with detailed normal maps baked from a high poly model


Cheers for reading

[McBumLuv]

Wow, very impressive Rhino.

Are you sure that's "practice" door, and not say for an LPD or something?

[00SoldierofFortune00]

So did all these polys cause any stuttering or lag? That's a beastly looking door and a beastly amount of polys, so wondering how it would function ingame. Almost looks "Crysis" like.

[Rhino]

Cheers

So did all these polys cause any stuttering or lag? That's a beastly looking door and a beastly amount of polys, so wondering how it would function ingame. Almost looks "Crysis" like.

They cased a little bit of lag in max at some points, mainly when rendering the textures etc but the idea is that you use the low poly model ingame with the baked normal map off the high poly. The high poly dont go any where near the game its only to get the normal map off of. And ye this is how models for Crysis, UT3 etc are made thou there engines are designed to use models like these much more effectively than BF2 and have a much better normal map system. Thou BF2 has a very good normal map system for how old the game is, just not as good as Crysis or UT3 etc

EDIT: SoF here is a wireframe showing the normal texture ontop of it which was baked off the high poly model which makes it look like there is indents etc in the main model by the engine lighting but as you can see by the wireframe, the model itself dose not have any indents its just how it looks by how the lighting is reflected off the normal map

[00SoldierofFortune00]

Cheers



They cased a little bit of lag in max at some points, mainly when rendering the textures etc but the idea is that you use the low poly model ingame with the baked normal map off the high poly. The high poly dont go any where near the game its only to get the normal map off of. And ye this is how models for Crysis, UT3 etc are made thou there engines are designed to use models like these much more effectively than BF2 and have a much better normal map system. Thou BF2 has a very good normal map system for how old the game is, just not as good as Crysis or UT3 etc

EDIT: SoF here is a wireframe showing the normal texture ontop of it which was baked off the high poly model which makes it look like there is indents etc in the main model by the engine lighting but as you can see by the wireframe, the model itself dose not have any indents its just how it looks by how the lighting is reflected off the normal map

Nice, that looks sweet. Never knew they based the texture depth off of lighting.

[Froztbyte]

dats the sexiest door ive ever seen

[Z-trooper]

Nice to see you finally take the step mate nice to come back to this

[cyberzomby]

Nice trick to make low poly stuff look better if I understand correctly Nice one!

[Bringerof_D]

i feel a new carrier model coming

[Rhino]

Nice to see you finally take the step mate. nice to come back to this

Cheers

Nice trick to make low poly stuff look better if I understand correctly. Nice one!

Pretty much yes. Normal maps are used on basically all models but normally they are generated off a texture via a program which can't really get the depth or detail you want. This way you can really get really good quality depth and detail into your normals

i feel a new carrier model coming

Could be a bunker door

[Rangu]

hehe, looks great!