Jump to content
3DCoat Forums

Leigh's Sketchbook


LJB
 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Contributor

ARRRRGHHHH................... All morning to install printer!!! God bless you microsoft you A*S&H$%*S! Seriously really Its a kodak printer i have wasted half a day! I'll have some updates on this guy tonight then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

awesome work again Leigh. That turnable came out nice. I know you are still working a lot of areas, but I can already see strong this character will be. Very pleasing to the eye. You said this will be for a fps? For mobile or something? Just wondering. Also, thanks for the feedback earlier. I agree with you. I think the cloth on my character is just to real and that was my intent..haha. It was just a study, but I kinda felt and knew that type of cloth would not work for game. I've been spending a lot of time hardsurface modeling lately, haven't done much character stuff in about a couple of months. So I kinda like to see your character work to re-vamp my motivation and energy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Hey Alan Sorry i missed that last post. Its a Showcase FPS Demo for myself and Mental Fish so I'm trying to work as tight as possible. PC based.

Im Trying desperately to avoid the rigidity I see in many of this type of model, I think im getting it but Ive been working on this now for 20+ hours, So I'm getting a bit blind to it.

I Need to take closer look at the Leg material and Work those folds correctly, Still lots to do here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

Hey Leigh, thanks for sharing. The update is looking nice. I know what you mean after working on a project for a while you start going blind to it. The only thing that is bothering me is the cloth, not that it looks wrong, just looking a little too bumpy. I'm not sure if you have worked on those areas or not. I'm pointing out to the pants and longsleeve. In my view, the cloth doesnt look bumpy on the turnable you uploaded before. I like to use the planar or flatten brush in Zbrush to establish some planes to help break the bumpiness. Is there something similar in 3d coat?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Contributor

I wanted to give a little update as to my current findings here.

I have most definitely taken things as far as i can take them with this sculpt (in 3DC) making little to no progress further than the image before.

I have tried various things to 'Go Further' but the pipeline becomes too disjointed for me to wish to continue.

My first issue is if i work something this detailed i need to be able to stay in this software to complete the project and my system is already stressed with this file as is. going further takes things to un manageable polycounts, and projection of details to ordered topology just isn't tidy enough for me in 3DC. So first wall. I may try a little test using the normal map for detail but Im not sure this will offer the finite detail i want here. sad.gif

Second issue is LC Tools. I changed my mind initially ( After reading that James E had used these tools successfully on a project) and spent much time detailing this guy using LC crease but in the end the system chugged so much I started to get errors (Mesh explosions) and saving work yielded broken files so I soon got fed up of trying this. No Holes though so progress in that area. Stability and saving is letting this down for me currently.

So moving forward i take each of the pieces into ZB and work on 3dc retopologised pieces after projecting details down. Im not liking the Dense quad export workflow too many little pinches for my taste.

I will bring him back for texturing in coat but thats a little way off just now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I got quite far with last project (the ara ang one) but unfortunately was not able to finish it due to a bug in the exporting of displacements. Hopefully that bug will get fixed and I'll be able to finish it up in LightWave. Up to that point though I was pretty happy and got as much detail as I wanted without needing to leave 3DC.

I will say about the LC tools, they look pretty good now but it is sometimes a little hard to figure out what the workflow should be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

I have most definitely taken things as far as i can take them with this sculpt in 3DC.

And that, I might add, is pretty far. Very nice work sir! The fabric is looking quite convincing now. Looking forward to see him when he returns from ZBrush.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

Nice to hear what you are doing with your pipeline Leigh. Is your problem mainly because the voxel detail needed for your final normal map is just not stable? Too much trouble huh?

It would be nice to see your zbrush progress as well.

Thanks for sharing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

Hey Leigh, nice work on this so far! In regard to your performance issues I'd be curious to see how you break down your sculpt into manageable chunks. In my limited liveclay testing I've tended to stick with smaller sculpt layers, no different than how I would with pure voxels. This always worked best for me for performance prior to live clay so I stuck with it. I'm pretty obsessive with building up large shapes and then breaking off pieces for detailing - probably too much in fact, but it does seem to reduce my problems with performance and stability and gives cleaner bakes in the end, which is all that matters I guess. I can see where you've done that in your last image as well as areas where I would have broken things down even further. I tend to break stuff apart even at clothing seams and overlapping materials as I go. Sometimes I think it's overkill but it does seem to help.

Ultimately I think zbrush is still going to give the best performance for managing large, dense object sets. Thats just one of the huge advantages zb will continue to have over the hardware dependent sculpting programs.

Llooking forward to seeing the final!

James

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Michallis a better option for me is to Import the Highres dense Quad output and group split for subtools then Dynamesh with projection for More optimal Ordered quads. Problem solved Thanks for posting all your findings in the zb4r2 thread. Made think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

@Jedwards Thanks. For me I like the sculpting, Too much breakup and i feel im just moving pieces around. In ZBrush I will probably break it up a lot more because thats the more conventional approach. and Yes Perfomance is MUCH better for me there. Im leaving LC alone for time being until bugs are ironed out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Advanced Member

Hey Leigh, nice work on this so far! In regard to your performance issues I'd be curious to see how you break down your sculpt into manageable chunks. In my limited liveclay testing I've tended to stick with smaller sculpt layers, no different than how I would with pure voxels. This always worked best for me for performance prior to live clay so I stuck with it. I'm pretty obsessive with building up large shapes and then breaking off pieces for detailing - probably too much in fact, but it does seem to reduce my problems with performance and stability and gives cleaner bakes in the end, which is all that matters I guess. I can see where you've done that in your last image as well as areas where I would have broken things down even further. I tend to break stuff apart even at clothing seams and overlapping materials as I go. Sometimes I think it's overkill but it does seem to help.

Yes I was going to say this too. In 3dCoat I break all sorts of things down. Like Eyelids for example. I found it really hard to sculpt the eyelid in voxels without smooshing everything so I started giving it it's own layer. I used to hate the idea of seperating the head from the body in order to add detail but once I discovered the Merge all Visible command, it has become second nature to attach an ear as a sublayer of the Head layer, so that I can increase detail of the face without forcing the ears to also increase in resolution. And then when I want to see what it looks like completely connected, I can just choose a blank layer and use the merge all visible command. In this way I feel like I'm cheating gravity.

Not that I'm nearly skilled enough to give anyone good advice, I will just follow up on what I THINK jedwards was saying. Looking at your model I would have each one of those pockets on a different layer, I would have Belts or Buttons or Collars, etc in their own layer too. So that they can be much higher res than the rest of the clothes. Then once I would want to combine them, even just for a quick autotopo test, I would Merge all visible in an empty layer, and hide the other well organized and labeled layers. So if things don't look right, just delete the merged layer and continue on with the Modular Voxel layers approach. Don't like the position of a pocket? Just move it as a layer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Contributor

Nice update, makes me wish we had a proper trimdynamic/polish brush in 3dcoat, particularly the alternate mode (raising surface at the sample level)mellow.gif. Establishing planes really helps sell the volume, the addition of claypolish in the dynamesh pipeline made me realize that, and the clothes folds in your character demonstrate that point nicely: it was slushy/muddy and now it looks like a real waxy fabric.

Yup 3dc Chisel dont work at all correctly. zb h polish is perfect for cloth cos you can pick multiple angle planes quickly with ease.

Id like to say a voxel/Dynamesh workflow is perfect but Dynamesh scale is Tricky to balance against Voxel volume resolution. you would have to bring the item into ZB and scale up to maintain a perfect Projected Detail on the smaller pieces of the model.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Member

awesome work Leigh. very inspirational too. I'm liking how this character has progressed. Did you seperate everything in 3d coat with the copy tool and just import everything as subtools in zbrush? Just wondering. My only crit is perhaps a little more weight on those larger pouches on the left with the mags. Its nothing big.

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...