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GA2211: Hard Surface and Organic Modeling This course covers advanced modeling techniques used for building organic and hard surface objects and environments.
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Week 8: High and Low Poly Modeling, Levels of Detail
Vehicle Examples:
Vehicles can be built at many different polygon efficiencies. Here are a smattering of vehicles I have built, from my 333,000 quad Vespa, to my 2,123 tri Cargo Truck, anda few others. Click on the images below to see larger views of each. For this project, you are building both a high-poly detailed version of your vehicle, and creating a lower-poly count cage of that same vehicle.
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Levels of Detail:
The idea behind levels of detail (LODs) is that at great distances from the camera, you obviously won't be able to see as much detail on any given model. LODs are used in games to create on-the-fly swapping between meshes as you (as the camera) advance toward these objects, or they advance towards you. In this case, they are used to conserve memory and allow the processor to dedicate it's focus on only what is in the foreground. Animation productions may use them as well to conserve render time. Large 3d space ships for instance may need to be very low poly at extreme distances, but in closeup shots, we might need to see every rivot and scratch along the hull. Zbrush takes advantange of LODs as well as part of the subdivision hierarchy system. In the image below, you can see some low poly and high poly varriations which I used to detail the Cargo Truck model seen above. I first built the cargo truck low poly, then for some parts created a midpoly stand-in (which you will learn more about when you start working with zbrush). I then detailed this model at a very high level and exported the detail as normal maps back to the low poly form. This way I never really had to use an LOD group, just baked all the high poly detail into a few maps. The videos and written tutorials that follow cover how to implement both the baking of highpoly detail into texture maps, and how to use LOD groups to switch between resolution levels on the fly.
Here you can see an example of a Level of Detail group in action.
-At the Closest level is my highpoly tire: 15,260 quads
-beyond 120 units, the model switches to my mid-poly: 1,568 quads
-beyond 600 units, the model switches to my low-poly: 120 quads
One can always bake this high poly detail into a texture map for a low poly model using the approach outlined in this video:
WATCH THIS VIDEO on Creating LOD Groups in Maya:
Or---- Read this tutorial on LOD groups:
