First attempt in 3dc

[michalis]

As a newbie in 3DC (5 days) but having some experience in 3d (zbrush, blender), here's my first attempt. A two hours sculpt study. Thank you for this great app Andrew, you achieved something so close to real art, so spiritual.

A question: How can I bake this (800000 poly) voxel sculpt in a low poly model? These tutorials didn't help. The only I achieved is to have a low poly export but terrible triangulated normal maps. Or a full res output too. In two days I easily learned retopo and texturing but I like to bake just a voxel model to a displacement and normal map.

[splodge]

I'm really impressed with the rendering of it. He looks like he's made from real clay! Was he rendered in 3D Coat?.

As for baking the dude:

Export the model by right clicking on the layer in the voxtree and select Export. 3D Coat will then give you a panel where you can specify how much to reduce the number of polygons by.

When the export process is complete switch to Retopo mode and in the Retopo menu select Import to load your exported model by back in. This will overlay the low poly model over your voxel object where you can then select 'Merge for pixel painting with normal map' (baking). When done you switch to Paint mode and your baked model should be there ready for painting or exporting.

[philnolan3d]

If you'd prefer a model with all quads another option is to quadrangulate the model by right clicking it in the vox tree. Quadrangulate & paint will bake the depth and color automatically. of course neither of these methods will be very good for animation, for that you'll have to manually retopo it yourself.

[michalis]

@splodge

Thanks, I tried that and guess, crashing again and again, I really don't know whats wrong. Yeah, its the internal 3dc renderer.

@philnolan3d

Thanks, it was the first I tried, its not working, terrible displacement this way, please see attachment.

[philnolan3d]

Hard to tell what went wrong without knowing exactly what you did. I had a 4.6m triangle sculpture open just from something I was playing with earlier. I hit Quadrangulate & Paint and left all of the default settings. The only thing I changed was in the merging to the painting room settings I turned on Auto Smoothing Groups and set it to around 70. When it was done I got this, which looks exactly like the voxel version, only a slightly lighter shade of brown:

[michalis]

Here some more. This WIP is stopping, without a tutorial I'm lost, sorry. Low poly exports and wrong normal mapping, thats all I have...

Update: Thanks for trying to help subnolan. I need some tutorials that's all. I believe in reason, not experience you see.

[philnolan3d]

Well there are plenty of tutorials on the Tutorials page.

http://www.3d-coat.com/tutorial/

[michalis]

I have some experience in 3d modeling, I wrote some blender tutorials too. I despairingly need to export a hi res model from 3dc. A quandrangulated one. What's the reason to sculpt in 3dc? A nice displacement map baked from hi poly mesh, not bump style painting. These tutorials are not helping me, sorry.

[philnolan3d]

A nice displacement map baked from hi poly mesh, not bump style painting.

Actually that is the main reason to sculpt in 3DC. 3DC started with just the painting room (of course is wasn't called a room at the time). Painting depth onto the model and exporting it is the way it competed with the high-poly sculpting apps. Now, the generally accepted workflow is to sculpt up to medium res in voxels, retopo and UV, then move to the painting room and do the rest of your color, spec, and depth there. If you'd like you can also export a displacement map from there. That's how I did the orc in my avatar. I exported the low res mesh along with a displacement map which I used in LightWave to render the finer details.

[michalis]

Thanks so much, I really appreciate this. BTW Your avatar looks great. Now what I'm asking is to do some real sculpturing here, a clay like, Alberto Giacometti* like, not SG like. So I need real displacement or much better higher res exports to zbrush. Vortex is great and really helps to feel free as an artist. Retopology on what I have in mind is out of question.lol Have tried to copy some ancient greek sculpt masterpieces as a practice. You know what? I need the same face hi resolution everywhere. Vortex generates triangles, so I can export from there any res tri model I want. Not bad, I already work this sculpt in zbrush. What you have to understand is that this funny sculpt here needs 10-100 times more faces than the orc. No CG tricks here, that's why it looks like a real clay. I already modeled and rendered some nice more CG like scenes using 3dc, thats fine.

To find a completely new in CG world workflow is what I have in mind, a more close to tradition art. And voxels is important for this.

*Alberto Giacometti:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti

[philnolan3d]

Thank you, you can find higher res versions of the orc on my site. I'm not sure what kind of poly count's you're talking about but To be honest currently the only way 3DC will handle such high polygon counts is with an extremely powerful computer. It just isn't meant to handle hundreds of millions of triangles. 25 million is about as far as I can push it on my machine. BTW you keep saying vortex, I think you mean voxels (short for volumetric pixel).

[michalis]

lol voxels yeah sorry. I also have a 16 threads machine here, 2 quads xeon running MACOS or Windows

A free clay style sculpt really loves hi poly modeling. A photo-realistic portrait with eyes, pores, hair etc much less. (when rendering after displacement etc is another case of course). Its fun isn't it?

[michalis]

Thanks to Philnolan's support and patience I can work now, here's a higher res export plus displacement from voxels sculpt. A blender internal render, nothing special but OK.

[Taros]

Thanks to Philnolan's support and patience I can work now, here's a higher res export plus displacement from voxels sculpt. A blender internal render, nothing special but OK.

I like it. Very nice. Very near to reality.

[ditus]

a perfect look, it looks very nice, yes indeed very close to reality, it fits perfect this look ^^, hmm, it reminds me on someone. but i forgot his name.

its hard to do a better look!

[michalis]

Thanks, that's very kind of you.

@ditus: Someone from the blenderartists forum said that it looks like Tom Cruise. Haven't seen him naked yet though

[ditus]

Thanks, that's very kind of you.

@ditus: Someone from the blenderartists forum said that it looks like Tom Cruise. Haven't seen him naked yet though

i dont think tom cruise would be that stupid, to trap into your trading trap.

[rimasson]

i love tour first renrel. It looks ualmost real, with it's hand made imperfections.

[ditus]

i think a strange sect is moving around ^^

[Jake_H]

I like the way your renders are turning out - as well as the looseness of your sculpts- keep posting your WIPS.

[michalis]

Yeah, thanks. The trick is simple, two lights plus AO. A warm and a cold light, AO at 40 % lighting at 200. Cold light rather opposite camera, power at 0.4. Basic warm light almost from the top. Material is the default, just colored somehow.

[michalis]

This is ridiculus, a parody of classic sculpture (from greece to renaissance). Haven't finish the female figure yet (adopted from Rodin's famous composition, its a parody after all). I love 3dc. Some pp in phshp.

[Javis]

Really great... I am loving the organic, very clay-like look and feel of your work here. Please keep it up. I enjoy your work.

[michalis]

Thanks geothefaust from Oregon.

Here's another test, decimated to 20 000 triangles, not significant loss, thats great. Exported to SketchUp, rendered via podium (kerkythea clone). A 'quick' SU scene in 5 min just for fun.

[michalis]

Here's a new one, all made in 3d coat, exported in zbrush for details and modifications. After five min work I exported a zb test render, some PP and here it is. Not much in zb, it just happened.

[AbnRanger]

Nice work thus far..

[michalis]

A first render test in blender, this gonna be a part of a much larger scene, is decimated to 15 000 poly, UVs and textures first pass.

[Eric Dandoy]

Very beautiful work.

[Javis]

Thanks geothefaust from Oregon.

Here's another test, decimated to 20 000 triangles, not significant loss, thats great. Exported to SketchUp, rendered via podium (kerkythea clone). A 'quick' SU scene in 5 min just for fun.

The pleasure is all mine.

The image from the post I am quoting, is simply stunning. I really enjoy it. You definitely have a flair for the Ancient Style. I really love it.

[michalis]

Just started a new sculpt. This one from greek archeological museum of Athens. This ancient warrior, wrestler, whatever. A masterpiece. Anyway started with the traditional way this time, it was so boring so imported to 3d coat and... lets have some fun. Nothing wrong with the traditional way (blender), I just want to learn something about real sculpture, not topology.

The last one is a quick test for textures (pshop).