Low-Poly vs. High poly vs. Clothes
 

Hello,

I'm quite confused about the way to setup a character before animation. I'm told to have a low poly model connected to a high version. What if I still want to make changes afterwards? Can I make them on the low version, and have the high one update from it? Also, where do I have the clothes? On both or on the high model only?????
:banghead:

I'm confused.
Thank you.

you can use a low poly model as a wrap deformer on a high poly model but you dont need to. You can rig the high poly model if you want to. I'm not big into character animation so someone should be able to give you better advice about that. As far as clothes goes do you mean cloth? you can have the cloth on the high and / or the low but it depends on whether or not your machine can handle it. Again someone with more experience e.g. Kurt or Mike can probably help you more than me

Alan

while I'm building the character I keep it as low resolution as possible. when I get to a point that I cant keep it low anymore,
I lay out the uvs -cut merge etc. ( its much easier while it's low)
Then I make a copy of the char and smooth it and go to the next level of detail. That will be the one that I smooth bind and render.
then I cut up the low res and PARENT the pieces to the joints.
I put the high rez on a layer and hide it. I use the low rez parented version just as a stand in while I animate. Since the computer does'nt have to calculate any skin/muscle deformations
I am able to scrub and playback real time and get most of the
animation. then I hide the low rez and do some playblasts with the high rez and do any tweakin I need.
The low and high rez are not really connected. except that they are on the same skeleton rig. Some times I can gain speed by setting keys at the bind pose and detaching the the high rez skin (w/keep hist on) before I animate then reatach later.
Any cloth, jiggle, SDK muscles goes on the high rez since thats what renders and it would only slow down playback of the stand in.
Avoid changing after you bind as much as possible because you get extra tweak nodes that have to calculate and you cant delete history with out losing your skin weights.
That's how I do it and it works good for me.
Joe

Thanks alot for your help...

Just to recap simply...

Have a low poly model parented to the joints.
Have a high poly model that is bound and has all the deatail inclusing clothes and what not.

Sounds simple enough.

Thanks again!