designamyte

Hey, very interesting vehicle to add much details. Should make fun . Also nice sculpting progress. If you find it useful to produce Class-A automotive surfaces, you can take a look inside this tutorial: http://3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=8052&hl=designamyte#entry62153 Especialy post #3 describes the clean surface look. cheers

I´ve worked with Lightwave 3D (6.0) years ago. And i liked it a lot ! But they have had stoped regular progress with its update politcs. Only heared big news of it, as Vers. 10 comes out. After vers. 6 i try 3Ds MAX, but never get warm with it. Later i learned Cinema 4D and since than, i saw always big progress in that software. And it has evolutionized UI´s. What means, its user friendly, by increased functions per release. I would wish to see more progess in Lightwave, and also with 3DS MAX. But unfortunetly, Since 3DS MAX 1.0 to 2013 the Interface not changed (pretty outdated) but it raised with tons of functions. What is a big contrast to functions vs. the desgined UI. Same here with LW. Its interface is the same as in Vers. 6 (heared that it would change with the CORE release). So for me this is not up to date. IMHO. Cause if more functions gets implemented, also the UI should be updated. To stay user friendly. As Taros and others mentioned : the best is, to try the software by yourself. Also its important what you want to do with it. For 3D visualizations i would prefer a software package which has very good plugin implementation to external renderers (biased & unibiased). For Game creation I would choose a software which has excelent Texture, modeling & animation abilities (So far i know industry proofed is: Maya, 3ds max, Softimage). For modeling only, you can use "Silo" or similar polygon programs. Today, i stick with Cinema 4D. It is a allrounder, and i can manage everything with it. I am happy with this program. My selection is a result of testing different software packages. cheers desmyte

Hi guys, thank you very much. I hope i find more time, for more work. Currently i am in my exam. So don´t have much sparetime...

Hi, thank you. Glad you like it cheers

Ok, i finished my little tutorial about hard-sculpting retopo-method. If you are interessted, check it out in the "Tutorials" section. cheers

Hi @Polygoon, i´m glad that you like it. I hope you get also nice results with your hard-sculpted object. Would makes me happy cheers

So my second part is finished. As i said, i hope it can increase your workflow, help you to get better results in the hard-sculpting area and so on. It is really cool, that i can create clean, homogenioues surfaces, with that retopo-combination. Remeber that you have different "subdivide"- functions. One in voxel-mode (merge) and the other in retopo-room (if "auto snap" is deactivated). And you can also experiment with "relax" function in retopo, when auto-snap is also turned off. By the way, my model has about 7 mil. polygons. I don´t have CUDA and i only have 2gig of RAM. But 3d-coat is amazingly performance friendly. Top software ! Feel free, to add new techs, to comment or to ask something. cheers designamyte

a) So, now i start my second part of my tutorial. For that i went back to the retopo-room. There i generate that flat polygons. I move some polygons out of the flatness, to get a solid volume i want to have. c) Before i subdivide the polys in the retopo-room, i have to turn off the "auto snap" function. Because if the auto-snap were on, my whole construction would get changed. So i turned it off. Why i subdivided the polys? Because if i merge the the "undivided" construction into the voxel-room, i get these triangle artefacts / fragments on the surface. That can be avoid with this subdividing. d) Back in the voxel-mode, i go to "merge" and click on "pick from retopo". I activate the "merge as skin" function. "Skin thickness" is set to "0". First, "outer thickness" is set to "10". I hold the "ctrl" key and press "enter". Now the surface from my character which is out of the surface from the retopo room, will be cuted away. Second time, "outer thickness" is set to "-10". Now i click on "apply". e) Voila, the retopo-solid is added to the character. Again, i have to call the "fill voids" function. It can be found under vox-tree, rightclick. As we can see, there are little problems on the cuting edges. But we can fix this. f) To fix the cutting-edge problem, i went back to the retopo-room. There i create a polygon, that contacts the uncutted surface. g) Now i slice the polygon with the "split rings" function. It´s pretty quick, easy task. The reason why, is because you can see, that more edges the polygon has, the more it fits on the uncutted edge of the characters body. h) After that, i have to turn off "auto snap" mode, because i subdivide the polygons in the retopo-room. If this function were on, my polygons would follow the edges, that are not fixed. That wouldn´t be good. So i turned it off. i) Back in voxel-mode, i do the process, i described in section d) j) I repeat the proceses with the other unfixed edges. k) Finaly i get these finished results: The retopo-technique is also comfortable to remove any pimples from your surface, if you have some.

Finished my first part. I hope you like it and i hope it is usefull for your projects & workflows. Feel free, to comment things or to add better techniques. This is only one way, of maybe other ways . In this tutorial, this workflow could also help you to redefine, to make a perfect uniformed surface of your existing one, that was made with brushes, for example. It is hard to reach a superb, clean, homogeneoues surface structure only with "brush" techniques, in my opinion. Oh, i forget...if you have questions, you can ask me of course. Don´t know if i have the right answers

a) I start with my older sculpted character. I make the back a bit smoothed. It is not necesary, but it helps me to imagine how it could be. c) Now i went into the retopo-room and i define the area with polys, which should get very smooth, unified surface later. d) I move the polygons a bit, to get a bulge. e) Now i went back to vox-mode and click on "merge". Than i click on "pick from retopo". f) After that, i click more times on "subdivide", to get a smooth surface. There is a similar function in the retopo-room, called "relax". I´m not sure if it is exactly the same. But the "subdivide" function is the same like in other 3d-apps you know as subdivision-surfaces. g) Time to convert it to voxels. I set a hook on "merge as skin". "Skin thickness" is set to "0". "outer thickness" is set to "10", in this case. I hold my "ctrl" key and press enter. Now i substract the volume outer of my characters surface. Second task is, to add my new surface-volume to the character. For that i change the value "outer thickness"=10 to -10. I click on "apply" and i get this result: ......................................( in this case it is important to "fill voids". Can be found under vox-tree, rightclick ) h) For the rest of the task, i smoothed out the edges, which were produced by the cuts of the "merge as skin" function. Done this with the "smooth"-brush in vox- and surface mode. Now i have a clean, homogeneous surface as a base, for later works.

1) This is the first goal: 2) and this is the second goal: My first goal, describes an clean surface, that can´t be done with brushes or that is hard to finish with brushes. Because of its uniform surface structure. This case can also be used for car-freeforms and other product-design stuff. In my opinion. My second goal is, to get surfaces like the preset-primitives, but more user-defined. More shaped and individual, without to load primitives or generate them in other apps. All can be done in the retopo-room. Very quickly. This case can be used for very solid, hard surfaces.

Hello, i thought i share with you some hard surface sculpting techniques. Some results you can see in my sketchbook under WIP. The way i done this hard surfaces, was with the "flatten" & "chisel" brush in surface- mode. I use also "draw with lines" function. But in this tut. i want to show you, how i done parts with retopo polygons, so that you have unique primitives / parts.

The bad thing about it is, that i lost my version "only organic". Anyway. If i find time, i will recreate some parts on this character. I don´t know if someone know / someone use hard sculpt technics, from "Retopo room". But i like it a lot. Because i can exactly define how a surface should folow my lines, or how homogeneous the surfacestructure should be. Cause if i try this with a brush, i don´t get,lets say NURBS- smooth-like surface structure. It ends up with an uneven surface. But within the retopo-room i can build it in subdivisions. Very fast. Don´t have to go out from 3d-coat. With this you can optimize your surface work from brushes. I will try to do some posts about it in the tutorials section. As i said don´t know how "well-known" this technique is. I don´t noticed it anywhere. But its pretty cool to generate clean surfaces like on cars.

Hello everybody, i like to do some sci-fi characters, objects and so on. The idea to mix organic and non-organic objects together makes me happy. Don´t know why. . So i started, long time ago with 3d-coat and done this unfinished character. Don´t know where it will ends... It´s more a comic styled version. So i don´t care much about the proportions. Care more about the coolnes. I hope you like it... cheers designamyte

Hello, i have a suggestion for the "2D Grid" function. I understand it this way: You have the possibility to snap on the grid to draw exact-precise lines. It doesnt matter which brush you have (except for the line-brushes, i guess). And now i have the idea to draw my own grid, better say my own lines, curves circles etc. It would be much more efficient, than to drag the "old grid" in that position you want to have, or to move the whole object. imho. But the most advantaget for me, would be to draw on the fly my lines, my curves etc. Because if you have some technical objects, you have to draw percise lines, circles, curves etc. Here is a mock-up for better understanding: ( i use often the pinch-brush, to sharpen things / edges out. And this pinch-brush doesn´t work with line-brush function or with poly-line functions ) Hope you get, what i mean. What do you think? Could it be helpfull? Is it easy to implement for the pilgway-team ? In my oppinion, as i said, it would save me from some headicks all the best designamyte