Smoothing a Bound Mesh (and adding sculpt detail from Mudbox)

[matthew_bailey]

I have a group of Meshes that I have a (sort of) Low(er)-Poly version, and a high(er)poly version that I sculpted in Mudbox.

To Bind the mesh, I need to use the Low-Poly version, as it is supposed to be for a project that will be played in Real-Time animation.

But.... I have a cut-scene that needs to have the high-poly mesh.

Or... At least LOOK like it has the high poly mesh from Mudbox.

Would I just extract the sculpt detail as a Displacement, or Bump map from the sculpt in Mudbox (The Sculpt from Mudbox will be used to create a 3D printed master for a toy based upon the animation) and then apply it to the mesh in Maya?

MB

[halfstone]

You have a number of options, but what you describe sounds about right.  Typically, you'd extract a Displacement and a Normal Map from your high-res Mudbox sculpt, and apply them to your low res mesh for rendering.   Of course, you would need a UV set that matches; typically you'd lay out your UV's on the low-res mesh first, then when you sculpt you would keep the topology the same - except you'd just up-res it in Mudbox.  If there is no difference other than regular density between the low and the high res models, you should be good to go.  

[matthew_bailey]

Thanks.

This is sort of what I thought.

One last question.

One of the things we will be doing, as I think I mentioned. Is making models (small statues and miniatures) of the 3D Models from the game/movies, and they will need to be on the higher detailed versions.

The Convert Displacement to Geometry should work to convert the posed models from a frame in the animation to 3D printable geometry (well, Caveat: With a bit of tweeking to the mesh to close holes, and to give volume to some of the objects that are just polygon surfaces), shouldn't it?

They are talking about converting a displacement map to geometry?

Or, am I going to have to export the geometry back to Mudbox to add back in the actual detail to a higher-poly mesh?

MB
P.S. We have two different versions of the UVs for different shots and jobs, but I can use whichever version of the UVs we need at the time