Jump to content
3DCoat Forums

Steps to take in the rooms to get a final result


v377
 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Member

I have a few uncertainties and maybe I get a little clear insight with this post :)
 

I Sculpted an organic character with multiple layers (upper body, legs. feet, tail, arms, hands, eyes, iris, ears) + some layers with ornaments applied on some parts (so I will have my main parts "procedural" in case I want to modify the ornaments).

I have understanding of UV and topology and watched videos on it. But I wouldn't like to go on wrong path so I am asking a bit of guidance because I am just at the begining with those steps.

Questions are:

1. I used Fill Voids after selecting all layers - is it doing it for all ? ( I am asking because for example if I try apply shader on some selected layers it doesn't work - it just applies to one of it).

2. I didn't yet go to Surface Mode and I do not know know if I will need it to for this character. Anyway, going to UV and Retopo it would be a pain to retopo every part. Should I merge all the layers in 1 layer before going to the other rooms ?

3. What else should I do in Sculpt Room before going to Autopo, in order to have a good mesh and not a messy one that would require a lot of tweaking ?

4. If I want to have my character animated in an external animation program and after that in a game platform like unity or unreal are there different approaches I should have regarding the mesh ?

a. shoud I paint on vertices and skip UV workflow? or it is out of discussion if I want my character to go into those programs ?

b. what bitmaps should I have to build and export from 3DC in order to have similar result in those programs ? displacement, normal, metalness and roughness ? If I use smart materials and also paint room should I export with the option with color and glosiness ? 

5. After I have topology + baked maps generated, is it a way to connect what I will do in the Sculpt Room to the retopo and paint rooms so I don't have to do modifications manually ?

I mean, in baking microvetex I think it wont be very hard as I just have to repaint a bit the areas but how about the retopology ? Should I just go to the retopo room and delete some polygons and recreate others in the parts where I modified the mesh ?

Please excuse my nubish way of questions but still I have more dots to connect in real work, despite the fact that I watched a bunch of videos :).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

I want to animate the character in Houdini and try make a short animation with what I build in 3D Coat plus some effects in H

in the future I will go to Unity or Unreal for a small game I have in mind

the short animation I want to do is just to connect what I allready learned to do in Houdini yet it might be easier to just take what I create in 3DC and Houdini and build a small game.

my plans are big yet hard to achieve in 1 man :) but I worked and still work a lot to improve.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

I will also try a pose in Mixamo to see if there are any good results in some exported animations. If not I will try tweak the animations in Houdini.

Hopefully with a good mesh I won't need to tweak a lot the animations I can get from Mixamo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I never used displacement on Unreal, only albedo, normal (GL), metalness and roughness using roughness/metalness workflow.

After you have topology + baked maps generated, you get the final model. You can back it to sculpt room but need to perform the same steps again (retopo + bake).

 

Bake.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If I want to have my character animated in an external animation program and after that in a game platform like unity or unreal are there different approaches I should have regarding the mesh ?

- As i know, no. 

Shoud I paint on vertices and skip UV workflow? or it is out of discussion if I want my character to go into those programs ?

- Check this post

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Should I merge all the layers in 1 layer before going to the other rooms 

Is a good practice, unreal allows to add multiple materials to 1 mesh, therefore it is possible to link different textures to each material. But when importing it is necessary to select unite meshes because the character must not have separate geometries.

Many times we have that, we work in separate parts, we create a new layer with all the merged parts (decimate after merge to work easily). To that layer we do the retopo, and then we hide it and we bake the rest of the well-detailed layers.

It is tempting to paint using surface paint and then bake, I never do it because the weight of the project increases.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

Thank you for the answers. I understood almost all and it cleared the clouds :)

1. "To that layer we do the retopo, and then we hide it and we bake the rest of the well-detailed layers." >> can you please detail this a bit or link to a video ?

2. "It is tempting to paint using surface paint and then bake, I never do it because the weight of the project increases." >> from this I understand that most people does not use vertices paint but bake maps and UV paint. Correct ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/3/2016 at 8:55 AM, AbnRanger said:

I always try to run Auto-Retopo on a more "dumbed-down," less-complex/detailed version of the model. Once you have successfully used Auto-Retopo, then you can discard the dummy version. Reason is, it gives the algorithm less guess work and fewer calculations to perform, fretting over details that normal/displacement maps are going to provide later in the pipeline.

It can work pretty well in the right situation. You can try fewer guides than in this video, and it should do alright

 

 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/4/2016 at 8:20 AM, AbnRanger said:

If you get a clean, low-poly quad mesh with UV's you can follow this series of steps:

1) Import Mesh into Retopo Room first

2) In Sculpt room, under GEOMETRY menu > Retopo Mesh to Sculpt Mesh (new in build 4.5.40)

You now have your low poly mesh in the Retop room and High Poly in Sculpt room. As you make large-scale edits to your Voxel/Surface sculpt, you can use the CONFORM RETOPO MESH option. With smaller-scale edits, like brush strokes and such, you will periodically want to step into the Retopo Room and either click SNAP for the entire mesh or do it in a localized fashion, using the BRUSH tool (or SELECT tool > make specific selection and then SNAP in SELECTED section of the Tool Panel)

 

 

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...