Mudbox preps

Before I take the models in to mudbox I need to make sure everything is in order. All of the UVs need to be properly layed out and everything need to be properly aligned. All of this is done but I also noticed something else. When you smooth something in Maya or Mudbox the program will average out the edges like you'd expect but sometime it can get rid of any hard edges to want to keep on your model. This could be a problem because when I got to create the normal maps in Mudbox I will be sculpting on a mesh that isn't exactly the same as the original mesh, this could cause the normal maps to not line up correctly. To fix this I added extra edges in Maya before taking it into Mudbox. These edges are positioned very close to any edge that I want to remain sharp, so that when you smooth it, the edge won't be completely smoothed out.

Here's an example.

 Original model

 

Model smoothed without extra edges added

Model smoothed with extra edges added

You can see that there is a big difference and that the one with the extra edges is much closer to the original.