What is your process for 3d character development?

Alright so im getting into character development what i know so far is that you have to make high poly,convert to low,baking/norm mapping,texture.
Questions are 1) I have a high poly mesh ready to be converted to low poly but is there any free program for retopology.
2) What is your method or process to creating in game characters such as programs you use,methods, etc

 

For a free tool with retopology I would recommend you take a look at Blender, I have seen a few tutorial out there on how to do retopology with the sculpting workflow, check out CGCookie I think they have somethings.

In terms of workflow, when I was playing around with 3d I really liked Modo. Good polymodeling tools, improving sculpting tools and it had its on retopology process.

 

There are no fully automated retopology tools that produce professional enough results to be considered final production ready game assets, especially models that require animation.

There are great tools built within blender to assist with doing retopology ( magnetic snap tool, CTRL click to extrude along high poly faces etc ) and there are even some third party tools being developed by the CG cookie guys to even make it more easy , not sure how far they are with it. That been said it only takes ~2 hours or so to do a retopology for a character with the built in tools.

 

im not so familiar with the snapping tool, what does it do?
and after i convert the mesh in blender to low poly using decimate after that i go to edit mode and still have to many vertices to be able to have a decent uv unwrap , how do i make it less as well as have my mesh even for a uv unwrap?

 

I see you are still looking for a magic button to do it all automatically

Forget about the decimate modifier.. you do not create low poly retopology models with this modifier.

For your low poly model you create a new mesh from scratch. Yes you actually have to do some work here LOL.

Then enable the magnetic tool (snapping), choose "faces" as the snap to target, when you select this there is a toggle button to the right which enables projecting individual elements on the surface of other objects.

(I have not evaluated every software packages programatic retopo tools , some might serve as a good means to get started with the new low poly mesh, although I did see a video from a Unity related developer doing a character conversion and even he mentioned Z-Brush could not do a good enough job automatically and he did it manually again in the end )

 

So in blender i make a new low poly base mesh but where do i get the reference? my sculptris model causes to much lag to work in blender
& yep i see the snapping tools your talking about but im kind of new to what they do.

 

Then duplicate the high poly model and decimate the duplicate enough so blender can handle it.( keep the original unaltered for the final high to low bake move it to another layer )

This duplicate is then your reference to snap onto.

Then create a new mesh ( use a plane ) and activate the snapping tools and then create the rest of the model via extrusions (highlight one or more vertices and use CTRL Key and left mouse click to do extrusion ) The new vertices will snap to the duplicated model.

You really need to go look around on the internet for a proper tutorial or two since you mentioned you know nothing about all of this and you cant expect everything to get explained to you here in these forum posts??

Enjoy learning

 

thanks alot! your info just helped me extremely as well as this tut i found on it http://www.blendernerd.com/retopo/
& yea i see all the work you have to do in this retopo such as making the right extrusions and its probably my least fav part in character design lol

 

There are several techniques that look fine from within Blender but which either have to be avoided or adhered to if you want to use that model in XNA.
This is a summary of the most common things that catch people out:

• All the model objects (meshes) and the armature must be centred at the same location, ideally zero (X = 0.0, Y = 0.0, Z = 0.0 in the Object properties.) Set the locations to zero in Object mode and make all changes in EDIT mode.
• All the model objects must have a scale of 1.0 (one.) Set all the scales to 1.0 in Object mode then do all changes in EDIT mode.
• The model objects must not use rotation. Set all the rotations to 0.0 in Object mode then do all changes in EDIT mode.
• Every vertex must be weight painted or added manually to a bone vertex group. Any loan vertex will cause an error when importing in to XNA. To check you have bone weights for all vertices pull the model about in POSE mode. Any un-weighted points will be left behind when posing the armature.
• The XNA model class only supports UV wrapped textures. Blender's shading only work in Blender not in XNA.
• The FBX importer only support keyframe animations from Blender Actions and will not work with Blender's curves.
• In XNA set the 'Content Processor' for the FBX model to 'SkinnedModelProcessor' or whatever your processor name is - this is the most common oversight.
• glamour models