michalis

Yeah I know. See how I lost my temper? Whats happening here doesn't make sense sometimes. I'll write the tutorial just to help me learn 3DC, not a bad idea. The quality of disp. maps is my concern now. Looks heavy contrast and crisp, shouldn't be like this.

Hey haikalle, thanks man so much, I think I solved some of the problems here, 1. Subdivide BEFORE having a model in paint room. To hide doesn't help at all. You have to delete this mesh. 2. Now I can subdivide smoothly, bake normals and displacement. But I have to reopen the 3dc file without saving etc, if I want to paint tex, because a high poly retopo will crash 3dc!!! 3. Even so displacement maps are not so great, I have seen better days (blender, zbrush). The 3DC dis. look more like bumps to me as they should be. I used the tif export. I'll try some other possibilities. The right way is to subdivide 3-4 levels and bake displacement and normals from this model. But these disp maps are so thin (bump style). The same workflow works perfectly in zbrush, blender. I may write a good tutorial. FOR NEWBIES AND STUPID persons like me. I'll post it here and you or anyone else do the edit. My way to learn lol Here's the same scene with some displacement.

1. When trying different displacement exports, you have to re assign - refresh everything in bake tex tool. Not so clever but ... works 2. Frames to 1 after 3 subdivisions, I had to re snap just in case (it didn't make any difference) 3. I tried the 3ds or maya exports (didn't make any difference either. 4. I get this displacement map, as you can see this is useless. This supposed to have smoothing, I checked this of course. So subdivision of retopo is not working as it should. Of corse I hided everything except voxel model. But this made no difference either.

Thanks haikalle, I still get the low poly displacement, I subdivided it, tried to hide the paint model, the retopo model, I tried a lot, but I still don't understand it. Can I have displacement as in per pixel painting? Do I have to be in ptex or something? Doesn't make sense. But I bought this app... WHERE IS THE MANUAL? I don't want all of you writing and writing trying to help me. The videos of Javis Jones are fine but not enough for me. I'm stupid you see. I want the book. BTW when subdivided the ropo mesh, frames came to 0. Even menus working slowly. This makes clear that next time I'll retopo a low definition model, go to zbrush and sculpt UV paint etc. Or even better I'll export a fast voxel model and do topology in zbrush. It may not have all these fantastic tools but it works. I'll do the same workflow with blender (retopo sculpt textures) and I'll bring you the fine results just to show how applications work. I'm older than you guys and I'll not spent my time trying to understand the 'unreasonable'. It should be like this: 'bake voxel model as displacement map' to UV map n. Where is this menu? AND once more: wireframes are not so heavy for graphics cards. No I will not shell my 3DC, I gave Andrew my money, I had good reasons and some good time, and I 'demand' to fix this mess soon. Or just 'sorry I can't fix it' . And still I don't regret for the money and time I spent. This is the way things getting better.

@dimsana thanks, about anatomic work you probably wont see from me. A lot of anatomy in my work but not of this kind. I don't believe in anatomy, renaissance believed because these were shy people, ancients were not, they were touching their models. Just lets visit museums and see that composition and feeling is the key. In our days, american comics have a lot of anatomy but its not my concern. I may say that I don't like them. I prefer the 'belgium' school from this kind of art. Its a matter of discussion all this, has some philosophical meaning too. But about retopo model, some quad may be useless, you say, this supposed to be a study for this type of hair, have you tried to retopo such a model kind? No symmetry of course (there isn't). I also had in mind subdivision and displacement when doing this. Tell me what you think about these, I really like your comments here. @3dArtist wow thanks, its you again. But this doesn't work so far, I maybe do something wrong. In the first case, I do receive a displacement map that has the low poly information only. In the second, just another zero grey map. I want to talk about the poor performance of 3DC on my mac pro (16 threads 2 xeon). Voxels are fine, I sculpt smoothly here on a 5-6M single layer voxel mesh, can turn it to surface mode fast and back... all shaders work great too ... excellent so far. But when retopo, the limit is about 2000 poly, less than 4 frames per sec only ... and crash. Just for testing this, perform an auto quadra and UV, subdivide it and (you guessed) crash. After finished retopo, everything work fast again, except UV island, I cant move them. I mean its the wire frame that has poor performance not the full voxel preview or paint room etc. Wire frames... I think this has nothing to do with my machine, graphics card etc. This is a major bug Andrew, macs don't work like this, especially the pro. Do another mac build please and test it first. I already wrote it in bugs place and Andrew, really fast, gave me an answer, well he didn't understand what is the problem. Lets do another try.

Its a new topic because AT LAST this is my first all 3DC model. By the book... what book? Texture by shader. Its a 1700 quads model, rendered in blender. Question: how can I bake and export displacement maps from voxel model? What I get is a zero=grey map. I feel completely stupid Final render in blender, pity I don't have displacement maps, normals only.

Thanks Andrew. About normals, its somehow my fault, I'm confused, I exported the auto unwrapped UVs. I had unwrapped this manually but somehow this wrong unwrap exported. The auto unwrap doesn't work for me. How can it, when some islands overlap each other and when trying to repack them 3DC just crashes . I'm confused, I really need a 'good' tutorial about UV in OSX build 3DC. What I had from the existing tutorial was: "we'll not talk about UV unwrapping, lets see new UV tools" Well I had 25k quads here. Its a portrait. So did the usual, one island (T style cut, you know). CAN YOU MOVE 25k island in UV room? Not here, crash again, . Till then, retopo and UVs in blender and zbrush, you can move millions of vertices in UV blender editior. Now, just a 1M voxel tri model, exported from voxels palette, retopo in zbrush, sculpt details there, import and texture in 3DC. Thats all. Voxels is a 'real' sculpt experience, but I can live without it. I must say that my mac pro can't handle a 5M voxel model in retopo room. If it works fine on a pc, I really don't care. You have to make it friendly for a mac or to stop the mac version. Blender is a friendly mac app, I'll keep saying this just to show that this is possible. Update: As usual I found what's wrong here without any help. I should not expect to find this, written in a tutorial... My model was ~1.5 M as voxels. Subdivided as ~4.2M and turned to surface mode for some details. ITS IMPOSSIBLE to do retopo (2-4 frames per sec) in retopo room. I returned to voxels mode and now I can do retopo (its a ~5M now and works smoothly). So, NO RETOPO BEING IN SURFACE MODE. On the mac build anyway. Who says so? Am I alone? Create padding: This has a value of 64 by default. A complete mess when too many islands exist, especially for normal maps. Who says so, am I alone here? I lost my temper now, sorry.

Well, retopo (just for test not a good one). A 5M voxel model. Retopo room was so slooow 4 frames, my eyes... on a 16 thread xeon mac... Anyway I exported it to blender and please, see how wrong normals are, never show a so fatel error though from zbrush or any other app. There aren't any seams were the problem exists. Two months in 3dc now and still have these nonsense output. I like voxel sculpture, I usually export it as triangulated mess, do re topology in zbrush, sculpture and UVs there or in blender. I return to 3dc for some texture paint but never managed to do it as some tutorials say. Always wrong normal maps, crashes... so many crashes. The mac version doesn't work for me. So sorry. A 5 M voxel and this app is finished. Cant move UV islands, waiting waiting, crashing, my eyes hurt, just a moment, this supposed to run on a mac pro, right? You have to see how new blender 2.5 mac 64 bit build performs on this machine. Zbrush as a 32bit app preforms great too Two blender renders, one without normals the other with normal map on. Always this problem with normals. What I posted already in the WIP thread, used normals and displacement from zbrush, never from 3dc. Its that I like voxels... and texture painting... nothing else here. Retopo doesn't work for me, this is a major problem.

I have seen this problem too. For one reason blender imports this OK, so I do this first, discard the .mtl and then go to zbrush. I also use the 'set to global space' command every time I resize or move a voxel layer, or after importing an obj there. I'm not sure if this related to this problem though.

I enjoy seeing this kind of modeling, you know this. Drapery is somehow difficult in re topo. Drapery naturally is full of triangles. But you managed this.

Basically modeled and exported from SketchUp!!! to 3d coat as voxels. Imported to blender, deformation there, re imported to 3d coat, resculpt and topology, rendered in 3d coat no PP. Some fun. Its a 'retopoed' 20k faces model now with nice topo+UVs. The original SU file was 25k. A lighter to penguin like lighter. Its an experimental workflow. SketchUp has a great GUI for this kind of modeling, produces a terrible topology though. Its easy to import to voxels room as a ~2-4 M tris and do the rest. An ancient ruined temple is what I have in mind.

As for blender, select all vertices, [w], delete doubles. But in blender, another problem. Double materials. OK the best is to delete all materials and reassign textures. Zbrush complains about obj from 3dCoat too, just discards the .mtl I think. There's something weird with .mtl .obj that 3d coat exports. Not a great problem though. When 3d coat to zbrush, I do it via blender, clear mtl, fix scaling problems etc then export a fresh obj. I return many time to 3d coat for texturing but I deal with tex maps only.

"everybody seems to be getting along just fine as is" Not everybody, I'm trying to see what's right in this app not what's wrong. If I start complaining with what's wrong in my mac installation, I'll not stop. Some people will start to be offensive anyway. I learned my lesson by the hard way. I'm not so young So I'll not complain for a 'silly' lighting problem. I'm so happy with voxel modeling.

Now I had to import this model to SketchUp and render it with an app that doesn't support even normal maps. Only bumps. This is a static model. I exported it from voxels using decimation. A~15k model (95% decimation). Imported to blender, some sculpt modification (crisper) there, UVs (that was tricky due to triangulation), imported and projected some textures in 3d coat. Then baked the AO + textures(from 3dc) in blender. Imported to SketchUp as .3ds (the only option). Rendered there. Real time SU animation preview too BTW. My ctrits: This 15 k model looks almost crisper than a 5 M voxels one. And can be a part of a much larger scene in an app (SU) that can't handle too many poly.

Bad tutorial indeed, it comes from old versions. Camera projection comes from 2.49x too. Using deferent UV maps makes possible to 'project' textures with extreme accuracy. Even so i prefer to project textures in 3d coat now. Its more artistic. Then I can edit them in blender.

These are ok now. Here's some reference from athens museum. Its something I really want to model but its difficult. Have a look, not a thin man but great sculpture and really great anatomy.

Were do you want to paint? You need a canvas right? You need UVs and a blank texture, 1024x1024 or 2048x2048 map. Then you can paint on 3d model, clone from one to another or clone in the same texture (normal direction) etc etc. Can you paint in 3d coat without assigning UVs and textures? (ok ok lets wait a few more months) Can you do it in zbrush without having good topology and some millions of faces? And you always have to bake on an existing map sooner or later. I really cant see the point on your post. If someone wants to work with layers then needs to assign some layers. Texture maps is the same isn't it? "(am i understanding it right?)" No, I think not, you probably misunderstood something. There's a big confusion with blender tutorials anyway. Its a good reason not to get involved there.

I always retopoed my models using blender. Now I have 3d coat and this new blender. Lets try to retopo a hand now, I mean a complicated pose. Portraits are easy, hey just a moment, what about the ear? Video stopped before that. I prefer to model a head from scratch, no voxels, no retopo. In blender, straight topology using reference photos.

Hi Giuseppe, don't misunderstand me, MODO is a fine app, I just feel in blender like home. And MODO has a 32bit only OSX version.

Its great. BTW it doesn't look like a nazi zombie anymore. Noticed the helmet, thats all.

OK I'm a blender user too. Render engine is getting better and better. I'm still thinking to jump to LW, I'm not sure about it. I already tried modo and just decided to stay in blender. One reason is that I'm a mac user and blender community is the 'only' that fully supports 64 bit builds there. And it works like a charm. I'm wondering why only blender... this question goes to Andrew too.

is supposed to be but its not. v.249b is still the stable one. V2.5alpha2 64bit build is good for sculpt (millions of vertices) and rendering (extremely fast). You can have as many sets of UVs as you like and just clone from one to the other uv-map, using all the photoshop style mixers(3d painting). Is this your wish list? then just keep the map you want.

What do you know about blender? Its hard to learn due to bad documentation but do you know that all these are possible there? Its exactly my workflow. And its not an expensive app...

"lol Of course" of course, but that wasn't exactly my point. I've seen women dressed like this one (not exactly but close), people who's OK but always something is wrong there... if you know what I mean. And men too. As they get older this is getting worst. I'm old enough to see it. I still look like almost a hippie. I'm trying hard. Its all about the dress anyway. And the mask. Reality is beyond fantasy sometimes. Unfortunately.

Great model, that's a character alright, I've seen a lot of people like this one, they live among us. lol Do we live among them?