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[WORKFLOW] Sculpt - Retopo - Baking - Posing - Detail reprojection


Petar Ivanček
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Hello all!

I have been trying to integrate 3D Coat into our production pipeline for days now and I am running out of ideas.

Here is the pipeline

1. High poly sculpt is created [3D Coat]

2. Retopo mesh and UV-s are generated [3D Coat]

3. This retopo mesh is sent of to animators for posing [external application]

4. High poly details are projected back to a posed retopo mesh [3D Coat]

5. This new, high poly mesh is imported back into sculpt room for final detail pass [3D Coat]

6. The same posed mesh is used as a retopo and tweaked to match the new posed sculpt [3D Coat]

7. Both high poly and retopo mesh are exported [3D Coat] for map baking and texturing [external application]

 

Some considerations before you answer

1. The Pose tool cannot be used as there are MANY iterations on a pose before a client decides which one to finalise

2. Displacement, vector displacement and depth maps exported from a Paint Room (MV Bake) produce a substantial detail loss, both in external applications and 3D Coat.

3. However, there are so many import/export options that I might be easily missing forrest for the trees.

4. If there is a better workflow for the task, I would love to hear it!

 

Thanks for your time, I would really appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.

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Hi, and welcome! :)

Couple of things, regarding your considerations:

1 + 4: What is your guy's purpose of posing both your sculpt and retopo mesh? The workflow I've used and seen at most places keep the same high res and low res models unposed for baking purposes. Whenever an update is needed for a texture, just re-bake your new details with the same scene file, no need for the new poses. So long as the UVs have remained the same throughout the process after it's hit 3DC, it shouldn't have any impact down the pipe. Export new textures and apply them in whatever engine or DCC you're using.

2 + 3: Bake using Per Pixel. MV is left in only because of backward support with scene files. Per Pixel produces superior results.

 

Regarding your pipeline:

As noted above, why not use the same 3DC high & low res meshes for baking, and not with the posing? Unless there is something I'm missing in your pipeline, it seems unnecessary and causing problems. 

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HI, and thanks for the FAST reply.

The reason why a posed model is sculpted is because some muscles, tendons and other stuff (clothes) behave differently when in rest pose (either T or A) and when in "action" pose. We model secondary forms unposed and then do tertiary forms (skin folds, muscle bulges etc) when the pose is decided on.

Regarding your answer involving PP. I will try it, but, doesn't in only do surface bumps?

Or to ask it differently: How can I get actual surface change with a normal map?

Or are you saying I should bake Displacement with PP? - the tooltip says "Baking displacement with PP may produce bad results, because PP does not work well with displacement" :D

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Just to let you know, I tried this:

1. Bake with PP with displacement

2. Texture Baking tool -> Export to EXR

3. Load retopo model and import that EXR

4. The results are FAR FAR superior than what I was getting. They are not perfect but much better.

Will try tomorrow at work with an actual model. Thanks!

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Hello again!

Unfortunately I cannot get this to work. Last night I was on OSX and got the results described above.

Today, at work (Windows) I cannot reproduce the steps with the same results.

Can someone point me (or describe) the actual steps of getting the displacement out and back in using the same mesh in 3D coat? I tried that, to eliminate the potential mess of external application, but it also doesn't work.

Help me solve this, I don't want an entire team using that software abomination called Zbrush.

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  • 5 months later...
On 1/25/2013 at 3:53 PM, digman said:

Yes, here is one way. You will have to test to see if you like the results.

Load your model by the micovertex method into the paint room choosing a higher carcass level. Once loaded under the textures menu import the displacement map, adjust the depth of the displacement if it is weak under the paint layers panel for that layer.

Now under the file menu choose export, Right Under the normal export option you will see 3 choices of the amount of true polygons you want the displacement map to be converted to. The higher amount of polygons the closer the model will be the displacement map.

Important----Remember to choose one of the 3 choices and do not click on the normal export option.

The three choices of true polygons is based off your carcass polygons. The more true polygons you have for your carcass model the higher the amount of true polygons can be can be created. Just test different carcass levels and you will see what I mean.

Choose one of the true polygon amounts as stated above for exporting and then export.

Finally, load that model into voxel or surface mode.

Note, there is no exporting of the above fashion for PPP mode.

When your are ready to retopo your voxel or surfure object you can use your original uv mapped low polygon model as your retopo mesh. Import the model under the retopo menu in the retopo room. Choosing to snap the retopo mesh to the surface of the voxel or surface object mesh.

Play with both ways. Snapping and not snapping. Sometimes snapping to the surface will cause some vertices to go off where they should not be on complex models or very thin areas.

Done.

 

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