3D Model Guideline

 I started with updating my old models

First the lantern bulb got changed to a flame to fit the oil lantern aesthetics and I add a wire around the glass.

 Retopology

I realized something.... after spending days modeling a high poly model just to realize I will need to basically remake the entire thing again but in lower poly to bake. BUT, why not just make the low poly first with all the tri's tucked into edges from the get go, game model style. 

You don't need to worry about topology because it doesn't matter. rounded corners have all their tris tucked into some random vert, etc, as long as there isn't any huge deformations. THEN. You take that absolutely complete low poly model, toss it into zbrush. Dynamesh to automatically make it perfectly quaded, then use the auto polish tool to make the edges smoothed and rounded. 

Then decimate and import back in. Then all of a sudden you have the perfectly edged high poly model that will be baked to perfection without doing holding edges or figuring out how to hold edges on weirdly shaped hard surface models without it looping around and holding another edge of some part that is supposed to be round. 

Just ignore all of that and just use tri's and booleans as much as you want, then just manually cut lines and snap verts. I'm still trying to figure out the reason why people don't just use triangulate to automatically and messily complete a booleaned hard surface model. 

Like it shouldn't be any different, if you can't see the wireframes the model would look clean. Even if you import it into an engine, it automatically tessellates anyway so its like not like tris are a big deal as long as its used on flat surfaces. 

The high poly can be whatever, the messiest topology ever but as long as it looks clean, its okay since its used for baking only and nothing else. Is this the secret that I've been told for so long? They tell you to model the "correct way" and until you understand it, you are allowed to cheat. This is the cheat method? 

Boolean all those absurdly annoying shapes in mere minutes that would take hours to do by hand. triangulate. export to zbrush. dynamesh. polish. decimate. import low and high to substance, bake. Repeat for all other parts until you have it all completed. Here is the secret, he uses max but its mostly the same