So basically im just messing around with maya trying to learn it to make game assets.
(no, i have tried max but the maya workflow stuck to me and its also a more ALL IN ONE softwere witht he animation tools)
I will also be doing a high poly mesh sculpted in zbrush from the low poly stuff.
Basically im just trying to make stuff for a viking times environment set and i would appriciate some advice on how to make models,model with texturing in mind,UVs and wether or not my models are too high poly to go straight intot he engine.
Posted some pics so guys please tell me what you think and what i am doing wrong. (self taught noob here) XD
Your models look nice, if those are the low poly versions, you could get rid of a bunch of loops there and they would still look good. The engine can handle a lot of polys but that depends on your whole project, if that’s all that’s going to be in the level it is more than ok.
Those meshes all look pretty solid. One thing to bear in mind, when trying to save on polys, is to delete faces that aren’t ever visible. Not only will it reduce your overall polycount, they won’t be taking up wasted space in your UV maps.
I’d definitely agree, for a base mesh, there’s certainly areas where some of that resolution / geometry could be optimized. If you’ll be taking them into zBrush, there’s really not much of a need to make them overly detailed in Maya. Just keep them relatively low poly in Maya, then bake out a map from the high-res version.
It’s typically advisable to keep things as optimized as possible. It’s a good rule of thumb. As an example, things like the bottom of your barrels. If the player isn’t going to see them then there’s no need for the faces at the bottom to be there. As such, they can be deleted.
Another example would be the doors and the walls. They’ve been modeled as individual slats. You could really get away without doing that, through texture work, normal / bump maps and the like. That’d shave a large amount of polys right there!
thanks for the good reply. i have tried to cut away any faces that will not be visible to the playe however a lot of these objects will have phisics applied. (door barricading is going to be a thing in the game like pushing a table or bed against the door s they cant get it)
also about the walls and doors as individual slats i did that on purpus although as im watching the polycound rise im getting worried. The reson for why i did it this is is purely asthethic. i want the scene to look real nice and detailed cause it will be a real time lit environment and as the sun passes over i want beams of sunlight to come trough the gaps of the slats
also i have nother question. if i optimize my assets more and sculpt them up in zbrush and decimate the hight rez mesh and bring them back to maya do i ahve to retopologize from the high rez mesh or do i just bake the normals in zbrush from the HP to LP meshes that iv alredy done?
If have your low-poly props UV mapped, you can use an application called xNormal to extract your various maps. You can export a super-highres OBJ out of Zbrush, and import that and the low-res from Maya into xNormal.
Enjoy
If you want to keep the individual wood pieces modeled I’d at least remove the chamfered corners, those are adding a lot to the poly count. If you really wanted to spend the time you could do it with textured planes and normal maps to cover the whole piece of the roof with one polygon.
Good work. Your models will work very well with vertex painting. Make a material and see for yourself it can take your projects visuals in a whole new direction. The ability to make something wet, old, clean or dirty is useful to say the least. Vertex painting also woks with BP.
Cheers!
Vertext painting? im such a noob can u tell me more. i was thinking of painting my textures with mari once im done with the PAINFUL UVs but im intreegued?
IN FACT!!!
what do u guys think is the best way to do texture paintign and how can i get the best quality results.
good old paint the UVs in PSD?
paint onto the 3d mesh in mudbox or ZBrush? (<— i LOVE that idea a lot)
or should i use MARI thoguh i dont know a lot about mari but very willing to learn as i think it is defently leading technologically. Although im not sure how usefull that is to me as its seems to be VFX orientated then game asset creation but as i said i dont know much about it i guess ill just have to try out for myself.
For textures, I personally use a combination of Photoshop, Mudbox and Substance Designer. We tried to integrate MARI into our VFX pipeline here, but the overwhelming response from our artists was ‘yuck’. It’s got a horrible UI and isn’t intuitive in the slightest. Mudbox blows it out of the water in terms of usability. The only real selling point behind MARI is its PTEX workflow, which is irrelevant in videogames.
thanks crow man that was very helpful 
saved me many hours and headaches
I’m sorry for going off-topic but why do you call Maya “All-in-one” (with animation tools), as far as I know Max has all the tools you need?
Yeah i know max has all that but due to mayas history of being an “animation” softwere the tools and plenty of extra features make it an “all in one” for me where as many people i knew preferred to model in max and animate in maya. so i just learned the maya modeling workfolw and now i have grown fond of it meaning theres really nothing that max can offer me right now that i need and cant do in maya.