Cineversity

Hello,
The polypen is a great improvement and simple workflow for retopology of a highrez mesh.

My question now is, is there a procedure, workflow or best-practices to then bake a normal map from the high-rez source mesh to use on the new lowrez mesh? (normal, bump, AO, color, etc)
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I assume there is some way to associate UV coordinates from HRmesh to the LRmesh, but it’s not apparent how.
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I guess I’m looking for anything similar to how Zbrush or Modo handles this workflow…I know it’s a standard practice in game-developer community.

Thanks in advance—

I use R16 at home for grad school and we have R16 on all the workstations at my office, where we are doing our first Unity-based augmented reality game using a zSpace display.

Hi DiaperGenie,

This question sounds like a great “Request a Tutorial” topic. It is certainly a topic that needs attention.

To get the information across needs some steps. I’m not certain that a single post here can cover all the information needed.

Edit: I suggested here first “Bake Sculpt Objects”, but I deleted it, as it needs one more step before, see below/edit

I’m happy to move this topic into the “Request a Tutorial” forum, just let me know.

All the best

Sassi

Hello Sassi,
Thanks for the quick reply. Yes, a tutorial on this process would be welcomed.
- As for baking a sculpt, yes that works beautifully for a sculpted object, but I’m more likely to start work from a high-poly mesh that is either a scanned 3D object, point-cloud data or more common a purchased model like the zygote anatomy, ( http://www.3dscience.com/3D_Models/Human_Anatomy/Collections/index.php)
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A little background:
I’m probably a lone-wolf in this area compared to the typical broadcast/motion graphic C4D user, but anything that helps me/my team improve the C4D to Unity workflows better and more predictably is welcome. I know C4D fairly well, about 8 years of 3D motion graphics use, but starting early last year I’ve begun chasing the Augmented and Virtual Reality projects. Oculus Rift, zSpace, etc using Unity and all the game dev requirements is fairly new territory - so anything helps.

I’m starting to use Allegorithmic’s Substance Designer/Painter for material/texture creation. And Mixamo for rig/mocap. I hope those workflows will find a happy partnership/integration with C4D sometime soon. It would be a well timed move to catch up with all the AR/VR markets/opportunities that are ready to explode.
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BTW: DiaperGenie is the name of my MacPro workstation - the small black trashcan mac pros. Not sure how it became my username on the forum, but I like it.
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Hi DiaperGenie,

No worries about the username, I have seen more ...let’s say exotic names here. I try to use the names that people present, preferable the ones in the post itself, if.

The “Bake Sculpt Objects” didn’t fit, so I deleted it, only to start it all over again, but this time with one step before!

Manual> Reference> CINEMA 4D> CINEMA 4D Visualize, Broadcast, Studio Sculpting
Project Mesh

With that you can go ahead and project your new “very low resolution” mesh over the existing mesh. Level it up, until it becomes as similar as possible. Then use the step to “Bake Sculpt Objects” from the highest level to the lowest level. I have not done this with the Pen Tool as object source creator, perhaps it needs a little “Normal Move” to be projectable, just a wild guess here. (Sorry)

How does this sound?

I did this one time along my own description and it works nicely. I guess the main part is of course to decide the balance between polygon amount and texture (Normal/Displacement) size, as this can get you pretty big file. I certainly suggest OpenEXR here and avoid anything like Tiff and such.

So far I get periodically only from a single other artist those kind of questions here, but yes, I think that theme is certainly since nearly two decades in discussion. In the early ‘90s it was my first idea to do my PhD in VR representations of architecture, for preplanning aid. But the CPUs at that time where just not affordable for the University I wrote my doctor work, so I did it in Computer Animation. Today, I see it will certainly grow faster than ever, for film, advertisement and games, etc. I certainly believe that there will be a demand for it.

My best wishes

Sassi

P.S.: As I like to go one time through, even if I use a cube here instead of the Polygon Pen, my concern was more to take a low res object project it, and while this needs for the projection a lot of sub-divisions, the bake process allows to store the data nearly complete into the textures. All steps are in the file. The Tiff that I rendered was 2.6 GB, so I replaced it with two OpenEXR files (10% of the size…compressed even smaller)

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/JJ4seR73JbbxQOBAuRsW1335SKIvUgMj5rEm2NsALjk

In the image you can see the cube, not rendered, and then the rendered sphere-face. :o)

For a tutorial, that needs to be more researched, how it works with all kinds of models and shapes, which takes time. I do not pretend that this is “all there is to is”, not even close.

Thank you Dr. Sassi,
I’ll poke at my files with these methods to see if the project mesh or might work…
I’m downloading your sample now—

Thank you again for the quick response/research.

If I find a good solution, I’ll post it back here for the community.

cheers,
jamie

You’re welcome, Jamie.

If something is not working, perhaps it needs to be “extended” a little bit, Normal Move would be my first idea, just to have something that allows for projection. Let me say it differently: it might need some “air” to shring properly, not much though.

Enjoy the exploration and thanks for the offer for feedback: This makes it fun!

Sassi