High Poly to Low Poly Mesh. Will it still work?

[whimsica]

Let's say I have a high polygon .mesh/skeleton combination.

Then I take the original just the mesh (maybe it was in 3ds) and reduce the polygons and export it as a low polygon .mesh? Will it still work with the original skeleton and deform correctly?

Can I just exchange the highpoly version for the low poly version and have it actually work?

Or does the skeleton file need to see the same vertices in the original high polygon .mesh to work correctly.

Thanks

Daniel Savage

[Falagard]

AFAIK it'll work as long as there is the same number of bones and the bones are named the same.

I've done it with clothing that I've attached to a body mesh and told the clothing to share the body's skeleton.

Give it a try and let us know.

Clay

[Kencho]

It should work if the modelling application does the polygon reduction well (in case you use automatic polygon reduction).
Of course, the resulting animation would look different as you have less polygons for the joints (usually), so some artifacts *could* appear.

Anyways, that way, along with normal maps generation from high-to-low-polygon models is what everybody does nowadays

[whimsica]

What are the normal maps used for? Textures?
Or to deform the bones?

I know what they are, but am not sure what they are used for.

Are they bump maps based on the original model, then used on the low poly model?

Thanks

Dan

[jmonw]

They are used to simulate a high-poly model using a low-poly one. You generate a map of the normals of the high poly mesh, then use this for lighting computation on the low poly mesh.

In a nutshell.

[pasta]

It should work if the modelling application does the polygon reduction well (in case you use automatic polygon reduction).
Of course, the resulting animation would look different as you have less polygons for the joints (usually), so some artifacts *could* appear.

Anyways, that way, along with normal maps generation from high-to-low-polygon models is what everybody does nowadays

You should olso check this GPLed mesh optimizer that has very good quality : http://devnet.sylphis3d.com/node/116