ekunzendorf

Hey Digman, THANKS for forwarding this. My original schooling is in painting and drawing as well. The quality of these images is excellent! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

Hello all! I put my asbestos undies on, and started a post on CG Society pointing to the Jedidiah video tutorials I did. We'll see if it makes any impression. I was appalled that a simple statement of faith and request that the software not be used to server prurient purposes would draw such attack. The unreasoned, knee-jerk reaction is sad. Not what I expect from thinking individuals. And the moderator's behavior in closing the thread is worse. It really is nothing more than persecution when you get right down to it. Ah well... Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

I say welcome too! Develop away, and don't listen to the nattering nabobs of negativism in this family. We gripe and snarl at each other, but the fact is that when one of has a problem, everyone still helps out as much as they can. From a character development standpoint, topology is the end of the modeling process. Without a properly topologized model, animated deformations become problematic if not impossible. That means that it doesn't matter whether you start the model in 3D Coat, Mudbox or ZBrush, you almost always have to retopologize. Game rez models have special problems and need specifically placed points. AutoRetopo, as good as it may get, ain't gonna cut it as a final solution. The modeler will have to split polys and sling verts not matter what. And starting with a base mesh doesn't solve the topology problem. 3D Coat, in my humble opinion, offers flexibility as sophisticated as any program out there. With it, you have several different options: -Start in 3D Coat and sculpt then retopologize, UV map and merge to PPP. Export to 3D app of choice, rig and animate. Or... -Merge a model into 3D Coat's voxel room and detail. Retopo OR reimport your mesh into the Retopo room and snap the mesh to the voxel sculpt. Merge to PPP, paint and export. Or... -Merge part of a model into 3D Coat's voxel room to combine with custom built voxels. Retopo, Merge to PPP, etc. Or... -Import a hi-rez mesh from Maya, Mud or ZB, Retopo and UV map, then merge to PPP, etc. Or... -Import a mesh directly into the paint room. I'm sure I've left something out. It seems like what some are arguing is for the Surface or Sculpt room should be more ZB or Mud like. Or maybe this new tool will give 3DC an edge, I don't know. I can say that the mesh that this new subdivision technique creates is quite disorganized and rendering it would be a witch with capital B. So you will have to retopo at some point. I have used Mud 2010, ZB (3.2, I hear the new version is better) and 3DC. I work on a laptop, and I can develop more characters quicker with 3DC. It is just that simple. Your mileage may vary. Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

Great stuff, Phil! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

Spacepainter, no joy on the link. Greg, unless you want to get your hands dirty making the tools, you will always be at the mercy of whoever makes them. At least programmers try to talk to artists when designing the tools. I agree with you that their knowledge (or lack of it) does shape the industry in much the same way as paint and paintbrush manufacturers shape the way painters paint. Seen any lead white paint lately? Thanks to the "lead poisoning" scare a pigment that has been in use for thousands of years is now almost non-existent. Give you another example: I used to carve small wood figures called Netsuke out of boxwood and ebony. I looked and looked for tools that would work for what I wanted to do; they simply didn't exist. Tool manufacturers limited what they made to certain common shapes and sizes. The smallest were expensive and they wouldn't reach where I wanted. So I learned about steel, forges and sharpening and made my own. Most Netsuke carvers make their own. But it takes away from wood carving time. A lot of time away from carving. That is why most artists leave it up to the programmers; writing the programs they might need take too much time. It also requires a mindset that is somewhat different from the way artists think. Currently, I write MEL scripts to extend Maya's toolset because the capability doesn't exist within the program. Time spent writing them takes away from 3D Coat and animating. I have found that you sort of have to accept that balance if you want to create digital art. I teach, so I can do that. Most animators can't. Speaking of teaching; I gotta get to class! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

Hey michalis! No offense taken at all! At the point you describe, several things happen. First, Photography makes it into the mainstream. This threw the whole idea of paintings/sculpture as depiction out the window. Also at that time, and as somewhat of a consequence of photography, you began to see the rise of impressionism and the primacy of the artistic idea. Suddenly artistic expression becomes more important than what is depicted. After Impressionism, things developed rapidly toward the notion that the idea, be it color in the case of the Fauvists or mechanical motion in the case of the Futurists, is worthy of the effort needed to create it. What you also saw around this time is the rise of the art dealer or gallery owner. Very quickly, they and the art critics became the arbiters of taste. It was through this system of galleries and critics that many of these artists became famous. And pretty rich. This is also the time when the artist as bohemian became an almost stereotype for the fine artist. This is highly ironic because Picasso died with a net worth right around a billion dollars! The fine artist became an outsider whereas before, art was considered a fairly respectable profession. If you look at a chart of art movements, it is fairly linear until the early 20th. Then it mushrooms into a plate of spaghetti and becomes hard to track. Where I believe modern art falls apart is when it entirely rejects strong drawing, painting and compositional skills in favor of pure concept. Without these strong foundational skills, the artist simply doesn't have the framework to express his or her ideas. Where does all this apply to 3D? IMO, 3D Graphics started as and continues to be a commercial medium, not a fine art one. Indeed, the practice of illustration (another medium that really arose in the 20th century) and the creation of CG have more in common with art pre-1900 than it does fine art as practiced today. And I'll go you one better: the way comic books and movies get produced has more in common with the way they produced art in the Renaissance than it does with the individual nature of fine art production today! Think about it, in DaVinci's time, artists would enter the atelier at an early age and begin their training by grinding colors. Then, when they got older, they would begin drawing copies of the masters who went before them. As they developed, they might be given the background to work on, then a figure or two. The best of them were allowed in their late teens to do the underdrawings/paintings for some foreground figures. The best of those would then get to work on the main figures. And finally, after many years, the student became a master and was allowed out on their own. In a comic book studio, the apprentice begins pencilling backgrounds then progresses to background characters and over the course of fewer years eventually works on main characters until they might finally get to manage their own comic book. Pixar, Disney, Naughty Dog, Blur et al. produce games and movies in much the same way. Fine artists can grasp the same tools they use, but they are not a studio. Creating a movie, or even a 3d short takes a lot of work! Some of it is quite tedious. And it is team based, which art today largely rejects. These teams contain fantastic artists/illustrators, sculptors and animators. They also contain great writers and thinkers. In many respects, I think the great 3D movies of today are the Sistine Chapels of our time. That may be a stretch, but I don't think it is that big of one. I'll also submit that many excellent artists work for those companies. Architecture, as you describe parallels this discussion nicely. As the tools to create buildings became more widely available, more people with more dollars than sense had some awful buildings created, but some great ones too. Keep in mind also, that history does tend to weed out the dross and exalt the better aspects of art. We are in the beginning stages of the digital revolution. Lets see what happens in a hundred years. I doubt I'll be around, but who knows? Anyway, screed off! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

Talking politics on a forum is like wrestling with pigs. Everyone gets dirty, nothing gets solved and the pigs love it. AbnRanger, thanks for your service to our country. As far as software design and what is created with it. Keep in mind that creating art using the computer is quite a bit different from creating it with pencil or paint. Making marks with pencil or paint is simply a matter of putting them to paper or canvas. Using the computer is quite a bit more complex-there is a much steeper learning curve associated with using 3D Coat, ZBrush, Maya, Blender, LW or even Photoshop and/or Illustrator for that matter. Getting a physical expression of that work is more difficult still. Giving more people access to more powerful software is what truly drives and has driven software manufacturers since this whole thing started. What people do with the software cannot be blamed on the software makers. Of course, once that learning curve is overcome the software allows the artist to create extremely polished works with not so much effort. Think about drawing a perfectly modeled and lit sphere on paper. Creating it in a 3D app is simply a matter of pressing some buttons, setting up a camera and rendering. Creating an animation is the same; the animator no longer has to create a drawing for each frame. (of course the process of rigging is technically difficult, so the analogy breaks down a bit). Now, as to what people produce...well, they mimic what they see as successful. It pains me to say this, but it has always been this way. The great master artists copied the artists who went before them. For example, the Renaissance masters learned by copying what greek statuary was left after the dark ages. They depicted religious subjects because the Church was buying. The Classicists like David and Ingres copied those masters and used myths and allegories as their subjects. They did so because that was what sold, mostly to the middle to upper class. It had nothing to do with "art" as we know it today. Also, keep in mind that one could not, until the late 1800's, simply be an artist. It was guild based and highly restricted. Look at the paintings produced during those times. Very derivative; they are practically the same painting painted over and over and over again. Very polished, but very similar. Artists studied their whole lives to produce those paintings and sculptures. They worked hard to polish their craft, and frankly, that is a lot of what we really admire today. So, what would you have gotten if you'd have put the ability to create polished work in the hands of the general public during those times? Lots of greek gods and goddesses and myths and religious subjects. Their Hercules/Polyphemus/Athenas are our Master Chief/Orc/Elven Princesses, don't you think? Do I sometimes think that putting such powerful software in the hands of the general public is like giving guns to monkeys? Sure! Would I change it? nope Nope NOPE! Because, like or not, while I admire master art, it was about as innovative as anvils. Nowadays, true art is more about ideas than it is subject. The anything goes mentality of post-modernism, while chaotic, has allowed the computer to become a powerful force in art. Face it, it wasn't that long ago that the term computer art was considered an oxymoron by the vast number of artists. So, I tend to ignore the derivative crap out there. Keep in mind that one person's derivative garbage is another's gem. If you don't like it, ignore it; and find sources you do like. I would say Disney and Pixar are quite innovative in their storytelling, but I have to say that as well animated as Tangled is, it looked and sounded an awful lot like Little Mermaid[/i] to me. Does this take away from its success? I don't think so. As I said the character animation was spectacular. Pixar has a magic touch; lets hope that Cars II is as good as the original! So to recap: What makes money, makes money. Artists follow the money. Software manufacturers make money by making software that allows artists to follow the money. To change that equation will limit somebody's freedom and bring the whole thing crashing down. But that is just my opinion. I could be wrong! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

At Jacksonville University, we have a modest animation program. I am in my 4th year here (although I have a lot of previous experience teaching). The beauty of Michelangelo is that everything he did, he did on purpose. NOTHING was left to chance. The anatomical "distortions" are there for a reason. The hands, the head, the fact that from one angle, the statue looks powerful and confident from one direction and fearful and apprehensive from another. It is very cool when you get down to it. That is the beauty of Mich's art. He knew all the rules, but bent them to fit the story he was trying to tell. David was the runt of the litter in his family, but M. depicts him as this big, powerful youth who nonetheless has to face a bigger and MORE powerful giant. He shows him at the moment he gets a look at his opponent. Both confident and fearful, how cool is that? M. worked under a very idealized canon of anatomy. He also worked at a time when artists were distorting anatomy to tell their stories. The Baroque period went completely overboard IMO, but M. really ushered in that period. Tom K, I certainly agree with you, but looking at a person is actually a lot more difficult than making up anatomy out of whole cloth as many artists do nowadays. I love the big shouldered creatures that would pop their own heads like zits if they lifted their hands over their heads. Anyway, just my 02. Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf users.ju.edu/ekunzen

That's odd. What are your visible triangles, and what is your graphics card? I got a slowdown on my iMac with 8 million visible triangles when retopo'ing the Jedidiah model. My iMac has an ATI card and the box has 4 gigs of RAM. Here is what is odd, though, my laptop only has 2 gigs of ram, but has an nVidia card which seems to cooperate with 3D Coat a lot better. I can work with the model AND capture screen with NO slowdown on my laptop, despite it being slower and having less RAM. Weird! I hope this helps! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

Hello all, Let me put on my asbestos undies and dive into this discussion. Anatomy is a funny thing because you have the "true" anatomy: that which everyday people conform to; idealized anatomy: heroicized anatomy that "old masters" used to tell part of their story; and stylized anatomy: anatomy that is SO distorted from the true that it is not recognizable as anatomy in some cases. I recognize that these definitions are arbitrary, but please bear with me. "True" anatomy: we see it every day. Humans 6-7.5 heads tall. All body types from flabby endomorphic to chiseled mesomorphs to stick thin ectomorphic body styles. The possible variations are almost infinite, but because we see them every day, they are almost boring. Idealized anatomy: accepted by ancient greek sculptors and comic book artists everywhere. Generally 8-9 head tall people, muscular (even the women), symmetrical features. All the things we see as "great" about heros comes in part from their proportions and depiction. Interestingly, by limiting themselves to telling stories with characters having these proportions, the old masters limited themselves as to what they could depict. An 8 heads tall beggar in the street looked silly, if you think about it. So did they adopt a more "true" anatomy? Some did, but others went to... Stylized anatomy: the only definition that works here is the complete distortion of anatomy in subjugation to the "story" of the character, sculpture or painting. Think ogres and fantastic characters, but also think Picasso, Cezanne and a cast of thousands of "modern" artists. This type of anatomy has no "rules" unlike idealized anatomy, so ANYTHING can be depicted. Unfortunately, because there are no "rules" like idealized anatomy, and isn't viewable like "true" anatomy, it is very hard to learn from copying it. michalis is right, trying to recreate an african mask in 3D Coat would be TOUGH! As much as trying to recreate the head of Michelangelo's David. (BTW, look at the proportions of the hands of the David to the head and rest of the body. That is the beginning of what is "wrong" with that statue.) Either would be a great exercise in learning 3D Coat. Anatomy is the foundation of detail (that is a great way of putting it, AbnRanger). I have found that capturing "true" anatomy is a matter of experience (think LOTS of drawing!); capturing idealized anatomy is a matter of learning the "rules" and applying them to your art; and capturing stylized anatomy is a matter of exaggerating and at times throwing out what you know to tell the story of what you want to depict. I don't know if that makes sense, but its my .02 cents. Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

Hey Jimiclay, I always hate suggesting such simple stuff because I don't want to offend anyone, but I get caught by the simple stuff so often... Say, I just noticed that there looks like some freeze is on that sculpt. Is the voxel layer set to surface? You might want to convert it back to voxel if so. I've never Merged for PPP with the voxel layer set to surface before, so I don't know if that is it. Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

Hi Jimiclay! Cool sculpture! When you exported to the paint room, was/were the voxel layer(s) hidden? That has caused a black texture in the paint room for me! Welcome! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

Hi michalis, I use Snapz Pro X from www.ambrosiasw.com. If you can fit it into 5 minutes, Jing works nicely and is free. We at JU are soon going to try Camtasia because it lets you add keystrokes to the video, or so I 'm told. But Snapz Pro captures screen, voice, audio from the mac. Then it uses QT to compress the video to whatever codec you want. I strongly recommend using QT pro (if you have Final Cut Pro, you have it already) to recompress if you need it.) If you have any more questions, let me know. Have a great Christmas! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

Thanks michalis, I'm on break now, so I am going to try to continue the painting tutorials. Have a great Holidays! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

Hello all, I haven't posted for a while because I haven't had much to add to the conversation. It seems that high frequency details aren't getting handled by the Texture Baking tool. However, my understanding is that most people added that type of detail in the paint room anyway by extracting normal maps from the voxel mesh at merge time. It handled Jedidiah's beard pretty well though, so I never thought to add wrinkles in the face. I don't use displacements all that much, but I remember hearing that if the silhouette isn't effected, use a normal/bump map. But if the contour of the object needs changing at higher resolutions, use a displacement. michalis, thanks for the advice. The mental ray approximation editor offers not one, not two, not three but FOUR (count'em FOUR!) methods of subdivision. Four very poorly documented methods! I just picked one that I saw used in a tutorial somewhere and fine tuned it to meet my needs. I WISH it were as easy as Blender, believe me. Anyway, poke holes in the tutorials all you want! That is one reason why I post them! That is how we learn. Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

Hello All, I have posted another tutorial video in the Jedidiah series. This concerns exporting a displacement map directly out of the retopo room. Special thanks to michalis and especially digman whose persistence made unlocking this problem possible. The key is to have NO geometry in the paint or sculpt room. Any geometry or maps present in the paint room will screw up the Texture Baker's displacement. Also, I found that a 16-bit tif 0 is black, not normalized works great for Maya Mental Ray! You don't have to correlate the Alpha Gain and Offsets to the scale of the object (although you may have to on other objects mileage may vary). Find the link here: The image below is the imported low rez geo with the default phong rendered with displacement and normal map applied. Let me know what you all think! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

michalis, I can only submit that maybe the displacements don't look good to you because they are exported for Maya, not Blender. Mental Ray for Maya uses black for zero not gray. 16 bit tifs don't displace the surface for some reason. EXRs do. BTW, when I output to 16 bit gray 0, the maps looked similar to what you had. The tutorial is to go from 3DC to Maya, not Blender. As I show in the video, it works. Not perfectly, but it works. One thing I would like to be able to do is specify a higher polygon MV mesh. Right now, my original model can only be subdivided 3-4 time to 300k. I'd like to go at least one higher. I would also like to be able to extract displacements directly from Voxels; but after asking the question here (http://www.3d-coat.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=6816) I found that merging to MV first seems to be the only way to do it. If you know a different way, PLEASE post it. I would be extremely interested. Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

@michalis, With all respect, you should go back and watch the whole tutorial. I don't use the texture baking tool, I exported from the Textures menu. This creates a hi rez mesh that shrink wraps the voxels. Then from that, I export the 32 bit displacement as an .exr. I use the Export command from the Texture menu. My understanding is that from here, 3DC compares the hi rez mesh to the low rez and generates a displacement. And it is a displacement, not an AO. I know what those look like. Are there seams? Yes, but I say that in the video Does it pull details from the voxel? Yes, the MV mesh does. I am working on a laptop, so I didn't push the rez of the MV mesh by subdividing my low rez mesh. I don't have the most recent version of ZBrush. 3.x or whatever I used last didn't export working displacements on the Mac, ironically, so I didn't work with later versions. The images below are jpgs of the exr files generated by 3DC. They are a bit blow out, but do these look like AO to you? The one on the left contains all the normal maps I painted. The other one came from the MV mesh generated from the voxels. Hope this sheds some light here! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

Hello! AbnRanger, thanks for the input! You are right, the Texture UV editor rocks! I didn't know about it, but now that I do, I will talk about it in my next tutorial, when I can get to it. I was going to ask if anything like it existed! My students are finishing up their work for this semester, they decided to each retopo and paint their particular part of the bike, but they also have a final project due as well as redoing any of the other three projects in the semester. I will try top post the results when they come in. Michalis, I appreciate the critique. You are right, painting is a slow process. The next one I may accelerate it and do a voice over. Don't let not knowing everything about the program deter you from making a tutorial. I didn't , and obviously, I don't know everything! ) I've only been seriously using the program since August, and there is PLENTY about the program that is new to me, or that I haven't used much. The Quad tool is a great example, although I do know it, I just prefer to work point by point. And for heaven's sake, if you know a better way, by all means create it, write it, post it! That is how we all learn. Now, as far as the exporting displacement maps to Maya. You say it is wrong, but I don't know what you mean. Yes, there are some seams in the displaced model, but it did work and did displace the surface of my model. Combined with the normal map, the seams were very hard to see. When you say it isn't a displacement map, what do you mean? It creates a 16 bit .exr file that displaces the model. In fact, I found I had to hide my normal map, or it wrote that to the displacement too. That is why at the beginning of movie, I deleted all the maps before creating the displacement. Is it perfect? No, but it is the best method I know that works with Maya and Mental Ray. If you know a better way PLEASE let me know. And of course, I hope later builds will be able to export seamless displacement maps. Thanks again for the critiques! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

Hello! I ended the last retopo tutorial by merging for Per Pixel Painting. Please find the first painting tutorial at: Enjoy! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

Thanks so much y'all! I have been away from this thread for a while. I just added the first painting tutorial at: It should be finished converting shortly (9:34 EST sunday). Thanks again! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

Ahem, There has been a tutorial on exporting displacement maps: I did one for Maya, but the process for any software simply involves figuring out which works for your software. The tutorial may be found at: I cover going from voxels to retopo mesh to exporting all types of maps from 3D-Coat. Hope it helps! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University users.ju.edu/ekunzen

Yeah, I ran into that too. You can also check the invert mirror checkbox, that will allow you to see the symmetry as you retopo. Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf

Hey thanks for the plug, Tony! The great fact of the matter is the there are SO many ways of doing things in 3D Coat! I have found this is a clear sign of robust-ness in any piece of software. The is its great boon, but it can also make things difficult because searching for the "perfect" way becomes the enemy of the "good enough" way. And as a result, nothing gets done. Does this mean we should never look for a better way? Of course not! That is how we improve! Otherwise, we continually flog away with only the tools we are comfortable with, even though there might be a better, easier way to get to the final result we want. And of course, the final result and the process we use to get there may be completely different from sculpt to sculpt, further complicating matters. So with that in mind kay_Eva... Your technique with the scrape tool is great, I envy you your ability! But I might suggest using the Muscle tool to sculpt the muscles of the neck, chest and arms. When using that block to sculpt the body, think about using something like the closed spline tool to carve out the front and side views of the body THEN attack it with the scrape tool to cut in details. Alternately or in conjunction with that technique, think about using Phil's curve based proxy character as a start. THANKS PHIL! And detailing is the next thing I'd think about. One thing I've noticed about voxels (and Mudbox, ZBrush, etc) is that they tend to look soft. Now, what you showed may simply be a rough sketch, and you plan to go back later and put details into the model. That will really tighten down on the forms. Unfortunately, if the forms are out of proportion, detailing won't improve things. Given that this appears to be a fantasy character, you shouldn't worry too much about that. Anyway, keep sculpting! The biggest mistake would be to stop! Hope this helps, and have a great day! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University

Hello Again, I have finished the retopology on my Jedidiah Wilkins character and I have recorded movies on the process. Due to a mistake on my part, I uploaded all but the first movie earlier this week. I just uploaded the first movie about 45 minutes ago and it is compressing. You will be able to find it at: in about an hour (9:32 EST). Enjoy! Excelsior! Eric Kunzendorf Jacksonville University