Scary M's Sketch book

[Scary M]

[Scary M]

Massive !!!THANK YOU!!! to Henning and Morton from Flipped Normals for there super imformative tut's completely changed my sculpting, and its only taken me 10 F***ing years to listen.

Guys if your sculpts lack realism please pay these guys a visit on youtube, buy and listen and oh boy listen to there advise on schooling its so true. I feel truely Invogorrated. 

[AbnRanger]

2 hours ago, Scary M said:

Massive !!!THANK YOU!!! to Henning and Morton from Flipped Normals for there super imformative tut's completely changed my sculpting, and its only taken me 10 F***ing years to listen.

Guys if your sculpts lack realism please pay these guys a visit on youtube, buy and listen and oh boy listen to there advise on schooling its so true. I feel truely Invogorrated. 

Thanks for the tip. I have watched a few of their videos, especially the one about schools. There is no reason to go into massive debt going to these Private Art Universities. I do think it can be advantageous to enroll in some Community Colleges that have strong 3D Animation programs. It's economical and yet you'll get a strong CG curriculum that includes Life Drawing, Animation, Compositing and Storyboard classes. I went to one in the LA area, called Mt. Sac. It had a stronger 3D curriculum in just 2yrs, than most 4yr Universities that have 3D programs. So, school can be beneficial without breaking the bank.

Could you link to the videos you found most helpful for sculpting?

[Scary M]

To be honest it's any particular video sorry. there is, in their words 'no magic pill or golden bullet' just one piece of advice which they reinforce over and over.... don't use smooth at all!! Smooth is a very destructive action and instantly removes form, I never really realised just how much. So destructive.

Best piece of advice I can give in coat now based on my finding over the last 3 weeks is only use voxel broadly, for basic form alone. I am now using mostly surface. I will play more and more and when comfortable I'll do some videos, I'm very rusty in using tools. Been out of industry for a long time. Thankfully nothing has really changed apart from my stress reduction and patience.

If I can relate a workflow to Zbrush where I would dynamesh often to remove Stretching and artifacting. The way I have been consolidating my sculpts in coat as in if I push and pull my geo too much, like the rolls of fat on Mr whippy. I will drop quickly to voxel then jump back to surface. this removes stretching and artifacting. More even geo allows the brushes to function better another thought would be that I have setup one of the custom live clay brushes to add geo but only to a very low amount this way I can grow certain areas as I work without the box to surface consolidate step, but the custom brushes are STILL funky (no negating function on the clay buildup?) So I can't rely on this. I have tried to set this neg to flatten and the brush was nice but it failed to have the scooping ability of the Rapid bushes that are now my chosen pallete.

I'll keep playing.

Edited April 22, 2020 by Scary M

[Scary M]

Also massive bug bare You can't really effectively sculpt using hdr environment light UNLESS the hdr is fixed to the camera which it isn't as we rotate around the model the hdr rotates too. This is wrong the environment needs to stay put fixed to camera the scene can rotate but the environment should stay after all we have a icon at the top for rotating the HDR.

Currently I have to do all my Sculpting using the geometry shadows which uses the old lighting for basic materials. Better.

[Scary M]

Maybe that last statement is wrong it would be better if we could soften the geo shadows a little and blend in the HDR light like in the render room. soft HDR lighting and softer shadow on the a main light with directabillity that would be perfect as the shadows are too harsh you constantly have to rotate the model. It's a shame. 

[AbnRanger]

4 hours ago, Scary M said:

Also massive bug bare You can't really effectively sculpt using hdr environment light UNLESS the hdr is fixed to the camera which it isn't as we rotate around the model the hdr rotates too. This is wrong the environment needs to stay put fixed to camera the scene can rotate but the environment should stay after all we have a icon at the top for rotating the HDR.

Currently I have to do all my Sculpting using the geometry shadows which uses the old lighting for basic materials. Better.

In newer builds there is a newer Clay Brush, called BASE BRUSH. It's in the CUSTOM section of the Tool Panel, right beneath the Surface Brushes. Play with that a bit and I think you will like it. Especially the PLANE OFFSET and the Brush Modifiers you can add at the bottom of the Tool Options panel.

As for locking the HDRI environment, go to the CAMERA list menu > BACKGROUND > LOCK ENVIRONMENT

[Scary M]

'As for locking the HDRI environment, go to the CAMERA list menu > BACKGROUND > LOCK ENVIRONMENT'

Yup i found it already 

'Currently I have to do all my Sculpting using the geometry shadows which uses the old lighting for basic materials. Better.'

Negative function does not work when using the clay buildup option as a modifier

[chris_solo]

 

Leigh, Perfect mastery of 3dcoat! awesome sculpts!

Edited April 22, 2020 by chris_solo

[sprayer]

Did you tried to make matcap maybe it would better for you in issue with shadows?
Keep it up, good work!

 

[Scary M]

Actually it's a bugged install that ended up being deleted and reinstalled, I must have done something that I couldn't rectify with the settings, I bugged out navigation in old install as well. All rectified. Double clicking on the scene light then provides a perfect sculpting light. Now I'm happy and will play more.

Sprayer Thank you for that I will have a play today. 

And to Chris thank you but I hardly think I'm even close at Mastery. But thanks all the same.

[Scary M]

working this one for a little while.

[Scary M]

[Scary M]

Last one was a bit too Mhaaatt Dhaamon..

[Scary M]

[Scary M]

More refinement of Mr Whippy

[Scary M]

[Scary M]

Not enough mid frequency so i added a bit more.

[Tony Nemo]

Masterful, Leigh!

[Scary M]

Thank you Tony!  but I need learn so much.

I have finished this sculpt now to where i am happy here is the finished shot of sculpt and retopology

High detail below -

Projection -

Projected onto new topology -

and Wireframe below nothing to spectacular.

I hope you guys like it.

 

[Scary M]

Little Fun video 5x speed for you guys Part 2 will follow.

[AbnRanger]

9 hours ago, Scary M said:

Little Fun video 5x speed for you guys Part 2 will follow.

Leigh, have you tried enabling REMOVE STRETCHING during your sculpts? In some respects, it's like sculpting with the standard Surface Brushes with a modest amount of LiveClay tessellation added under the brush. Just wondered if you prefer not to use it.

[Scary M]

Yeah I turn it off on purpose, bit I didn't realise it had live clay? I saw how it removes clarity from brush strokes so I turned it off, ie you see the brush remesh the stroke after you perform it, in the split second afterwards.

[AbnRanger]

2 hours ago, Scary M said:

Yeah I turn it off on purpose, bit I didn't realise it had live clay? I saw how it removes clarity from brush strokes so I turned it off, ie you see the brush remesh the stroke after you perform it, in the split second afterwards.

It optimizes the mesh, yes, so it's not explicitly tessellating the same as LiveClay. However, you will notice that, like LiveClay, it tessellates more as the brush size grows smaller and the more the vertices extrude. 

[Scary M]

Ah the reason i hadnt noticed the Brush size dependancy was i was used to using the rapis brushes in the vox room and i just assumed it was the same resampling, thanks for head up Don.

Next Part up -

 

[stusutcliffe]

Hi Scary M, 

These are all great! But a question for you, I dont know if i am being dumb or not. A few posts back up the thread there is an image of a retopoed wire frame and you say Its projected. Whats all that about? I an not sure I am understanding it.

The way I work these days is ... I  sculpt in 3dcoat, vertexpaint then export it to Blender and render it ,as long as I keep under about 20 million polys , everything works out fine for me. Quick and simple

But Im always willing to learn  something new ( if its not to difficult!)

Or... when you say projected do you mean baked ?  I can do  retopo and bake , but life is generally to short for me to do that when I can get where I want to go as detailed above. And I think i have heard of projecting details but thats about it.

ta  Stu

[Scary M]

Hi Stuart, there are two ways to look at it, and it depends on what the result will be used for.

The first, I predominantly want stuff game engine or animation, therefore baked is a term to transfer detail to the game/film asset. dependant on the level of detail required I like to do a pass in zbrush or sculpt completely in zbrush, we get better results detail wise from the brush engines in ZBrush if we used an optimiesd quad poly mesh. re projecting detail is taking a high poly in this case voxel or surface sculpt form 3D coat and retopologising the subdividing retopolgy and projecting the fine details from the high poly sculpt to high poly retopology. This way if we have UV on the retopology it remains intact and it is a direct transfer of detail rather than a projected normal.

This is why 3d coat asks if we want to subdivde our mesh before we bake. A common workflow would be to take 3dc sculpt into zbrush, with retopology and re project details through all levels of subdivision on the retopology, then we can do very fine details in ZBrush then bring mesh back into coat for map baking. as the UV of retopology remains consistent this give best results

Games/Animation require a much optimised mesh for realtime and deformation, try animating a 20 mil poly mesh and watch even the most highspec system turn into a slide show. you mention as long as the mesh is around 20 million. retopologising may help you simply from  work with sense. The diffenrence working with a optimised 20k mesh compared to trying to work with a 20 mil heavy mesh is night and day.

or The Second if all your doing is sculpts for still images with no animation or game engine in mind simply sculpting in Surface or Vox is fine though i would say optimising the mesh wouldnt hurt for both detailng and work with. Hope that explains it.

Edited April 28, 2020 by Scary M
readabillity

[AbnRanger]

32 minutes ago, Scary M said:

Hi Stuart, there are two ways to look at it, and it depends on what the result will be used for.

The first, I predominantly want stuff game engine or animation, therefore baked is a term to transfer detail to the game/film asset. dependant on the level of detail required I like to do a pass in zbrush or sculpt completely in zbrush, we get better results detail wise from the brush engines in ZBrush if we used an optimiesd quad poly mesh. re projecting detail is taking a high poly in this case voxel or surface sculpt form 3D coat and retopologising the subdividing retopolgy and projecting the fine details from the high poly sculpt to high poly retopology. This way if we have UV on the retopology it remains intact and it is a direct transfer of detail rather than a projected normal.

This is why 3d coat asks if we want to subdivde our mesh before we bake. A common workflow would be to take 3dc sculpt into zbrush, with retopology and re project details through all levels of subdivision on the retopology, then we can do very fine details in ZBrush then bring mesh back into coat for map baking. as the UV of retopology remains consistent this give best results

Games/Animation require a much optimised mesh for realtime and deformation, try animating a 20 mil poly mesh and watch even the most highspec system turn into a slide show. you mention as long as the mesh is around 20 million. retopologising may help you simply from  work with sense. The diffenrence working with a optimised 20k mesh compared to trying to work with a 20 mil heavy mesh is night and day.

or The Second if all your doing is sculpts for still images with no animation or game engine in mind simply sculpting in Surface or Vox is fine though i would say optimising the mesh wouldnt hurt for both detailng and work with. Hope that explains it.

Thanks for sharing that last video, Leigh. BTW, there has recently been added a Reproject tool in Surface Mode, but I don't think it yet works with Retopo Meshes. I thought about asking Andrew if he would enable that, but after further thought, SNAPPING is basically the same thing. As you know, we can snap the entire mesh or locally with the Brush tool (SHIFT key with a smoothing value of 0 is the exact same as using the Reproject tool using a brush)

 

[stusutcliffe]

Hi, Thanks for the reply Scary M, Yeah I think I am getting it. I think I was looking at your sculpts and thinking what is he doing all that for when he can just render what he has already. So basically with these sculpts you are just thinking ahead,with thoughts about animation and games.

I used to retopo everything and then have a load of assorted maps to apply. So everyting used to take days to complete. The novelty of drawing little squares has worn off now . I used to use zremesher which saved a bit of time sometimes . But having just passed another significant birthday, the days are just flyng by so I try to spend only acouple of days per project. I have had an actual 'client' recently and I think part of the reason he asks me is that he knows he will get 3 characters emailed  out in about 2 days! 

I always wanted to do it the 'proper' way with all the maps and everyfink. But it turns out there is no proper way is there . Unless you are sending stuff down a pipeline.

Thanks for your speedy reply

[Scary M]

Stuart your soo right!!! there is no real right way. Whatever works for the person doing it. As long as it gets the job done that needs to be done!

New Video today -

Hope you guys like. Loads more to follow.