Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

Hey guys/gals

After reading about Shiver-Tail having a high-poly Tsaesci model I'd thought I'd post a little info about high poly models.

Keep any high poly models you have (don't save over them with low-poly version). 3D max (other may have this too) can "render to texture". Basically what it does is: lets say you have a really high poly model with a texture applied you can add lights and shadows (with 3d max) reflections, whatever. You then can render all those "extras" to the texture. Then you can optimize the model to the amount of polys you want then apply your new "high-poly texture"

I'm bad at explaining-sorry

Update: here is good example of texture baking and the use of normal map

Monster Poly

Model started out at 6 million now its 6k-awesome

Thank you for the reassurance RA.

What ra is saying is this: 3ds Max (versions 7 and above, I think), can use a high poly model to generate various texture maps. The main one of interest is the normal map, which is used to fake detail on a low poly model to give the appearance of a much higher poly model.

Ambient Occlusion maps might also be of interest to anyone doing models for Oblivion, though they would have to be baked into the diffuse map.

There are specialised software packages that are used for the creation and generation of normal maps from high poly meshes (ZBrush, Mudbox), but they are not required to do such a thing.