pgson
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Posts posted by pgson
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Since this sculpt started heavily in 3D-Coat, I thought I should post where I am at on it. Human Kain's progress:
Just the blocking on most of the pieces before I retopologize it all and refine it.
And here's his detailed sculpt with where I am on the diffuse texture:
Hair is Fibermesh right now. I'm trying to block out some stubble for him, too. It's a work in progress and feels too much right now.
The head and body with the arms separate. Most of the arms are never seen, but I want a cohesive form to work from. His body is only going to be used when he's turned into a vampire.
Detailed hands:
Without the paint and hair:
What I am hoping works, as I've seen online is hopefully possible, is to take the Fibermesh and export it as Maya curves, then convert the curves in Maya to polygon strips/cards for the various hair sections, so I can render his hair in something like Cryengine. I wonder if anyone has attempted this, or can think of a better way?
Anyway, his skin is mostly done. I need to further add moles, splotches, scars, and tweak it out. I'm shelving him for a bit right now, though, because I'm doing a Lieutenant Raziel sculpt for the 15th anniversary of Soul Reaver 1 that's coming up in a couple of weeks. At least I hope to have the preliminary sculpted features done by then.
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Try reinstalling 3D Coat? Have you had any driver (particularly graphics driver) updates, lately?
No to both. Haven't had any issues with retopology prior to this. Thanks for the suggestion, though.
Use the MOVE VERTICES (should be Move Elements, because it moves edges, faces, loops and rings, too) to move some of the Verts around and see if you don't have some overlapping verts somewhere, that's wreaking havoc. Sounds like it might be that mesh. Another way to inspect it is to go to the Retopo Menu and choose "Select Faces" >
If you have overlapping verts or some stray verts, it will create a triangle or ngon. That tool will highlight any of those.
Thanks. I've sent you a pm with an obj of one of the tries at this. I've gone ahead, though, and taken the retopoed mesh into 3Ds Max to uv it. No issues there. In 3D-Coat, I was able to select the faces with no problems.
I am thinking it might be due to the vertices being so close together, even if they aren't directly overlapping, as this is a tiny mesh with a very tiny edge to those nails, since they are fingernails, and it's that edge that's been the issue in adding seams. I know 3D-Coat (at least it used to) had issues with making really thin meshes. Maybe it's just having a hard time with that edge.
Edit: I should add, the mesh I sent doesn't have polygons for under the nail like my other tries did, which would be why I would need to add a seam to separate that portion. However, if you add a a seam anyway along the edge, the crash should eventually happen, and unwrapping the mesh, with or without seams, should still show the utter mess it becomes.
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Same result. For a moment there, it seemed like it might be working better; 3D-Coat didn't crash, but the uvs were still screwed up. A second attempt at opening it and unwrapping caused it to immediately crash.
I was thinking maybe the reference mesh was the problem. But, it happens when I bring in just the retopoed mesh by itself.
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I'm having a major problem with the retopo room in 4.1.09c. I'm only doing some tiny nails for a character's hand. A few polygons each. It not only won't break into uv islands right, it crashes 3D-Coat when trying to add seams/unwrap every time.
I've tried this three different times, in three different, simpler ways. Same problem:
Uvs attempted to be applied:
Only one pair of them looks remotely right. The checkerboard island breakdown on the model shows the others are all screwed:
Even floating the mouse around in the menu causes crashes:
Adding seams eventually crashes fully it:
Pretty crazy. I've retopoed similar tiny/thin pieces before without any issue on previous versions, like multiple buttons and rivets. I just tested again adding seams to another mesh and unwrapping and it worked fine.
Windows 8.1
AMD 6300 processor
ram 12 gb
Radeon 7700
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Thank you very much
Heh, ah so more fun to look forward to, eh?
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Yes, that is coming next. I need to rig him and put the sword in his hand, once I'm done the sword.
Yeah, I am taking away from it all that I jumped into the pool head-first, basically. I never modeled before, and this was a completely new world I stepped into and there was a lot to learn. I didn't pick an easy starter project, either. I probably am still doing some things the hard/wrong way, but hopefully I'll avoid the huge pitfalls I stepped into with this going forward.
There was one moment I did almost quit this. When I finished the sculpt and the polypaint on the head and body, then found out that Zbrush didn't like me going into HD Geometry so late, and so it crashed every time I attempted to get any map other than the diffuse out of it. I searched and searched for how to solve this. Anyway, after all of the other problems, this was about the last straw. If I couldn't get the model out of Zbrush, it was worthless to me. I figured someone was trying to tell me to forget it. But, anyway, it worked. I never, ever, ever expected it to take anywhere near this long, though.
Thanks, man.
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After feedback from fellow fans, many final adjustments made. Shrunk the neck, his crown pieces, worked on his face. Worked on lessening his skintone saturation, worked on hue. Altered proportions on his guantlets, his pants, elongated his legs so he's a full 7 heads tall, modeled an entirely new cape to be more folded over up top, wider at the bottom, fixed his earring's shape and color.
Final renders:
Final comparison shots to the original games' model:
And with that, this model if finally DONE.
I can finally add him to the finished work gallery and move on. I'll finish his Soul Reaver sword and pose him with it.
Thanks for the help along the way, and sorry again for so many large pics. Here's to greener pastures from here on out
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Thanks a lot
One final bit of tweaking left to go, hopefully. -
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Updating this. I wound up having a major hard time trying to get this all working. Chopping the model up in Zbrush, I went about trying to get it pieced back together again. Had a crach course in Zbrush's issues, used Zremesher and 3D-Coat to retpo it, then back to Zbrush to reproject the details. The highest I could go in subdivisions still wasn't enough to reach the detail level I had in 3D-Coat. I discovered the projection brush in HD geo mode could do it, though a painstaking process. It would not come back to haunt me until much later that I followed the description in their online Doc, rather than the video. In the Doc, it basically tells you to go into HD Geometry divisions if you can't go any higher on normal, but it doesn't specify to go into this earlier in your divisions, like the 1-5 million point, as the video tutorial says. So, memory issues, crashes, and inability to get normal and displacement maps is what I wound up with far later after painting and uving the model.
It then took me quite a time to figure out how to get the maps, which program and methos was best to get the maps, and all of that.
It's been an experience...
I'm about done. I thought I was, or fooled myself to thinking I was. However, the proportions on his face aren't quite right, and the skin is a little too saturated golden. So, this is almost done... Just thought I'd update since it's been dormant forever. Finished the model in Zbrush, retopoed and uved in 3D-Coat, some with Zremesher, smoothed normals in Maya, polypainted, then Photoshop for tweaks and other maps, metalness (or specular, depending on the item), gloss, etc. Rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 2:
Final Sculpt in Zbrush:
Little barrage covering months of banging my head against walls :p I need to fix the face, then maybe this can finally be finished...
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I've had that issue on the previous versions, but found it was that I has the layers off when trying to move the Islands. I don't know if that's your issue, but if the layers are on and it's still happening, then it sure sounds like a bug.
Edit: Sorry, I didn't see digman answer already.
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This is fixed in 16C - see first page.
Issue mentioned by Javis fixed as well, but the build 17 is still not uploaded.
:thumbs up: I'm downloading it now. Thanks.
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I haven't downloaded the latest, but I don't think this was covered as an issue.
With 16A, I brought some meshes over for UVing. When trying to just create a new UV set other than default and name it, 3D-Coat crashes every time.
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That's a really, really nice piece, that cockade. By the way, ajz3D, your guy has reminded me from the start of the actor, Rod Taylor (The Time Machine (1960), for reference), which is a good thing
Especially if you put him in a military uniform:
Hm, his images might help for additional references.
Great stuff, everyone.
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I'm honestly sorry this happens to other users, but in a way I'm also glad that I'm not the only one. So I know I'm not crazy.
After the problem with the first mesh and having to redo it, I followed those supposed ways to make sure the mesh is prepared right when going into surface mode. I still got holes. Nothing over 1 million polygons in volxels, or if so, I decimate after first running clean surface, smooth all when bringing into surface mode, etc. My main mesh, head and body, only had two holes after a lot of detailing, but even two after building up so much can be a dead stop. Zbrush runs its close holes features in a couple of seconds. 3D-Coat analyzes how many holes there are first, which takes on high poly models anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. Then, once it knows how many there are, it takes the program another round of analyzing, or running zig-zag marches between vertices (no idea what is taking so long, really; I mean it knows where they are already, doesn't it?) up to sometimes 5-15 minutes, or more, to finally close the holes. That's if it doesn't crash, or lock up entirely.
You get to the point whee you want to sure up the topology to add micro details, too, and then the hole-fest can occur. The skin preset on the build brush seems to do a great job without depth to just even out and increase the surface topology ... until you analyze the mesh again and holes have magically occurred. Even if the holes aren't occurring, or not that much, the other issue is the explosion of the polygon count for me. A head of 1-3 million becomes 7, 10, finally 11 million, just to add in manually some surface noise, creases and cracks. A base mesh from 130,000 worked on to the point of adding in details at something like 5 million, wound up for me 33 million polygons, and with all accessories fully detailed, I'm looking at a model that's over 100 million. Something's wrong there, and you can't decimate and retain the crispness. Even trying at just 20% decimation is a noticeable difference, so forget 75-80% that it says it can do...
Anyway, I do hope it gets resolved.
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In addition the the holes and tears (which have become the bane of the program for me), I think I should ask if maybe the tablet people use could be part of the issue? I have a regular bamboo wacom, and this has been happening since using version 3.7 on the Mac, and now it happens in all version of 4 I've used (I'm using this latest beta, 4.0.0.9): sometimes my strokes hang for a few seconds, then the program catches up and a far too deep stroke appears, or other times nothing at all, yet the polygon count increases a lot on the mesh. I undo, and continue on, but that's odd.
Also, when just opening the program, or after doing major operations like a move with the pose tool, closing a hole, etc., my wacom no longer works, or using it to zoom in, rotate, or move the model can cause the model to flip and shoot across out of frame. It's completely unregulated movement (on Orthographic view). Sometimes also the brush strokes stop working with pressure, hang, or it confuses pressing to create a stroke with expanding the brush size. Basically, some truly schizophrenic behavior. Most times this is fixed by clicking outside of 3D-Coat and then back into it. Sometimes it needs a full restart (and even rarer I've only been able to resolve it by a full restart of my system). Again, that's happened on 3.7 on Mac, v4 stable release, and the betas on PC until now.
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Even if the pictures aren't the exact pose you have, if you can get your model rotated so the legs, for instance, are in a close perspective of one of the pictures, and model it to match, you can start to find the shape. It won't be right the other way, but you just repeat. Rotating the model to the next view, fix what's not working, and find inbetween the truth of what the form is. If that makes sense. It's what I've been doing and seems to work. (I usually have something like ten pics, at least, I'm looking at on my second monitor. It's a wonder my neck hasn't gotten whiplash yet :p) And if you're already doing this, then never mind.
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Thanks, TimmyZ. Your post there is completely how I'm viewing things. I also notice that Zbrush seemed easier to navigate after I've used 3D-Coat for a bit. I'm working on human Kain some more in 3D-Coat today, but I plan on finally finishing elder vampire Kain's details tomorrow, or later tonight getting started on it. Next I'll have to learn texturing in Zbrush. It's a great thing there are tutorials in the world, lol
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Been a while. I've been fighting to get this done. Fighitng is the word.
First, for posterity: I did indent his features just a tad, as you see those cracks coming down from the center of his eye, those are running along that line under the eye loop (I had to search for the names of those muscle groups, but you get what I mean) and I had that part indented a bit already. It needed a little more to match the original model. That, and a subtle increase on the eyebrow ridge, and a couple other minor and subtle changes. With that, I also completed the scar on his front and back. Did this all a couple of weeks back, and have been in detailing limbo since. More on that in a moment:
This all went fine. However, the model is just huge. I've split it up into parts, because it was over 33 million polygons and it could never be brought into anything. The crown pieces added and it tops ... 57 million. You want to know what the entire model is, all accessories now detailed, or most of them (until I just about had it with doing it in 3D-Coat)? Over 100 million. I think that's pretty excessive, and it's not because I'm doing it the wrong way anymore. On each of the meshes I cleaned the surface after going almost directly into Surface mode with not much in Voxel. I made sure there were no holes. I iterated slowly, built up with the suggested clay build on Rapid 2, or with even the regular buildup brush. I went back in and shored the topology up with either of them on no depth, or the build brush for getting to the fine detailing. The meshes get huge, and they also get lots of holes. Not all of them. The more volume the mesh has, like a thick torso, the less it will get, but even that got a couple. Once the meshes are in the millions, then tens of millions, it takes time, a good/great amount of time, to close holes each time. I'm not talking holes you can see. I am talking invisible ones. I found that using the close hole tool works better a lot of the times if the program is really hanging with the close hole option. Either method takes far too long. Anywhere form a few minutes, to ten to fifteen, and this is with me having more ram. I have 12 GBs now. I thought I was going to have 16, but I forgot this PC came with two 4 GB modules installed, not one 8 GB. Anyway, the holes are killer, as they just take too long to deal with. I've spent more time on that than probably the modeling. Not to mention that the detailing also has its issues. I'm using Artman's skin preset on the build brush for this all. When trying to detail something larger using a texture Alpha of mine, or one in 3D-Coat already, the brush hangs for sometimes five, or more, seconds. The process becomes slow, very, very slow. Bottom line, I don't blame the brushes, but I think somewhere for true micro detailing, something is wrong in the system for optimization. I also think things in that voxel menu like close holes, remove intersections, etc., need further optimization as they just take decades to complete. Sometimes, the program crahses, too. This might be only related to this latest beta, but I recently had the pants mesh with one hole left that not only the program would not close, but it also crashed, saying always that I was out of virtual memory. I've set the virtual memory to 24 GB, and even tried closing the hole on a new file with just the pants mesh loaded -- which at the time was only slightly over a million polygons. It still crashed the same.
I'm going to report this ticket with the details. I have to reproduce the crash and get all of the code stuff first.
Speaking of that mesh, I brought it into Zbrush and it closed the hole in less than two seconds. That's what needs to happen in the options here. Or, actually, holes shouldn't be created in the first place. I'm using the brushes at minimal depth, or even at no depth if I use them to simply even out and increase the topology and I'm still getting them, no matter what I do. That should not be. This mesh was so annoying, it actually had tears in it and explosions. I got so fed up, I cut off the parts once, then again, and rebuilt the thing, and then did it again, until those damn tears stopped. I detailed it, by God. But that was about the end of me and 3D-Coat where fine detailing is concerned. Because of this all, I have decided I will do the detailing in Zbrush from now on. I tested it and oh man, it's instant fast. No problems, no holes, no stress... No time consumed with everything but what I am sculpting on. Also, the meshes come in a little more than half the size I export them at with absolutely no loss of fidelity there (I've checked very thoroughly), and I cancel every time reducing them on export. I just mention this because there seems to be an awful lot of wasted polygons happening that aren't, obviously, needed.
I am a little sad, because I want 3D-Coat to succeed and support it fully (not just because it's great otherwise, but because I am very happy with the company philosophy, and with the people I've met here in my short time). I'm going to still use it to build the model up to the point that it needs detailing. I've just wasted more nights, all-nighters, and most of the past 2 months since the first mesh was practically ruined trying. I mean, I gave it more of a try than any real sane person should. However, this is how it is. I love the ease of the building in the program, but for me, on my end (make note that I realize I'm in the minority with problems like this, and that it isn't happening for most of you), it's way too much stress, time (time wasted is the killer here), and aggravation to continue putting myself through. Everyone, I hope, understands where I am coming from on that, that I am in no way against the program, in general. Like I said, it's going to be what I use to create the sculpts still; no doubt about it. But everyone has to find what works best for them, and using this workflow now, I hope, will be what's best for me.
Anyway, I feel like I just needed to make sure I wasn't misunderstood. Now, speaking of sculpts, I have some more I've done while either waiting on the memory to arrive, or after particularly frustrating periods with the above mesh:
The Soul Reaver:
Made to the exact proportions of the original model (lined it up in the sculpt window to make sure):
I was able to upgrade the bottom of it to really show off that this could be an actual skull used in the forging process:
And I've also taken the elder vampire Kain above and started the sculpt of him when he was still human:
Using the Lamblight Depth settings BeatKitano had in his thread, modifying it a bit. I can finally see some decent rendering out of the program also now that I realize AO and DOF need to be off entirely. Here, I'm able to add more of those features Beat mentioned above to make him seem more "alive." Since he's human and his face isn't the hardened almost mask it becomes thousands of years later.
The ears aren't sculpted yet, and part of the hair blob is overlaying them. They're not really pointy. Funny, they need to be when he's turned into a vampire, heh.
Other things aren't done, like the hands. I need to offset the abs slightly so they aren't completely symmetrical, that type of thing, but I took his design and kept his features here matching where possible on the body, or giving the hint that what he becomes could have come from this starting point. Looking forward to making his various armors. I'm waiting on an answer on the ZBrush forums about how to possibly reduce my file size even more, as Zbrush will not load its own file on my system if it goes over exactly 2 GB. Decimation Master did a fantastic job reducing the model parts and preserving the details, but it's still 1.75 right now. Little much if I have to texture. Meanwhile, I can keep modeling these other things.
I do want to finish completely one model soon, eash :p
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Thanks, BeatKitano
. I figured you were talking about the depth of his features along with the cracks and everything before. However, I'm not trying to revamp the model like that, but to faithfully recreate the GlyphX model as close as possible. -
Finalized the detail. I see maybe a couple of cracks on the back crown I need to add to, but otherwise, this is about it. I doubt that there's any more I could really add, or etch in, and I now need to add in the scar. Plus, the model here has increased to 33 million. It's especially a problem if the crown pieces are on. To combat the issue that apparently I have to deal with in the large polycount regardless (in order to get this detail with these brushes on my end), I've bought another memory module, which will up my ram to 16 GB from 8. I hope that's enough. I can export the model, after a long while, but with Zbrush not being able to load it, that's useless right now. 3dMax can load it, but I don't think I can texture with that program. I'd love to stay within 3d-Coat for the texturing, but is there some discount for those who already have the educational version upgrading to the full version? I definitely can't shell out close to $300 for a new license.
Anyway, here's the update:
I love what I've been able to achieve, so I'm not about to give up on it. I'll get it finished somehow. I could split the head and body, which might help, but it's still about getting the full obj exported for texturing eventually, if I can't do it to the level I need in 3D-Coat.
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Did a pass over the face and most of the upper crown. I might do a little more on the upper crown area, but this is popping much better. The neck area is a bit soft compared now to this, so I'll tackle that, too, and anything else along the body. It's definitely closer to what I wanted to achieve.
Hm, shame though the fidelity on the pic goes down significantly here with the attach file method I've just noticed... I've been trying to avoid uploading so many large pics this way, but I guess I'll have to do it like this instead:
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Thanks, BeatKitano
. I probably will push it a bit more in one more pass before I add in the scar. I think using the buildup brush with those textures eats deeper into the mesh faster without adding more polygons, so I'll use a bit more to sink in some areas. I might be also erring on the side of caution from the last mesh using the same settings and it cutting too deep and giving me a lumpy look, especially around the jaw and lip area.chingchong, he's a vampire whose evolved a hardened, almost flaky metallic-looking skin over a couple of thousand years. It's never explicitly said it's metal, or stone, but it's similar in look, at least, to tarnished, flaking metal, or weathered stone. I think it's probably still actual skin, just made harder by his evolution and cracked with browns and greens tarnishing it from his corruption. The artist who originally came up with the idea described it as a golden almost metalic body with a crown he evolved by his sheer will and ambition to be ruler of this land, which is a pretty awesome description. The bronze shader here for showing the model seems to fit this pretty well.
Once I complete this model, I want to do one where he was human, before being turned a vampire, and his earlier vampire stages seen, when he didn't have these features. There are also e bunch of different armors and outfits for those other games, too.
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Kain's head and body are pretty much detailed. I only have to add the scar on the front and back of him (and I'll probably give him one final pass):
Using the bronze with Cavity shader to show the details. It's hard to show them otherwise when there's no color.
I lost a day of work a few days ago, when I decided to try merging down the detailed eyelids without shoring up the mesh of the head in that section first, then saving without thinking about it. I have previous saves, but that day had to be redone. I was also a bit suborn and tried chopping the head off an earlier version and merging it in, but the boolean intersection message killed my try every time.
But, other than that, it's gone well. The head and body, without the separate crown pieces, is 20 million polygons, so it did climb a bit. However, I did add a ton of detail. I used the skin preset, so the Build Clay brush (sorry I doubted it earlier:p) and the regular buildup brush with some rusty rock textures cropped for alphas and brought in for the skin base and then the sharp preset to etch the cracks, and then back and forth until it was what I wanted.
After I get the scar complete I'll dive back into the other pieces to add detail to them, and then finally I can get this thing painted.
Trying to get every little tiny detail exact on this model sure takes its time. Most other models won't have to have this much scrutiny, or time involved. It's worth it to get it right, though.
Looking for Advice on the best method to Detail Models
in Finished Projects
Posted
Thanks, ajz3d