Member Heath_3d Posted July 30, 2009 Member Report Share Posted July 30, 2009 Hi Andrew, Another feature that would be useful would be a "cage mesh" generator in retop. This is basically the idea that when you subdivide your retop you can generate a version of the un-subdivided mesh that will result in the same approximate vertex positions when subdivided in an external program as when subdivided in the retop tool. It's essentially the same idea as the cage mesh in Zbrush. regards, Heath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member rimasson Posted July 30, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 30, 2009 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member GabeM Posted July 30, 2009 Member Report Share Posted July 30, 2009 I'm new to this application, though I've been using ZB for a long time, so I'm not new to Digital Sculpting. I've been testing out the V3 demo, and one thing that's bugging me a lot is sculpting only on a high resolution surface. The lack of topology limitations is great, but I really miss the control of a lower polygon cage mesh to make large changes fast. It's slowing my work flow dramatically so far. Something like an eye for example, using the wire frame with different levels in ZB, I can sculpt it in just a few minutes. Trying to do the same thing In 3DCoat has taken me over a half hour, and it's still not looking right. I normally rough out the entire head in that time. Maybe if you don't have a low poly cage, there can be something like a (lattice = Maya) (FFD modifier = 3ds.Max) that can be created using the re-topology tools. If I want to make a certain shape, like an eye. I can just draw the topology on the mesh and move the lines in to place by selecting and moving like traditional 3d applications, or painting with the brushes. Instead of having to do the entire thing with the sculpting brushes on the high res model. A sub division toggle for that would be nice too. A base mesh could be used like that too, and maybe have smart sub divisions as you alter the voxels. Maybe this is something already in the program, I haven't found yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member 3DArtist Posted July 30, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted July 30, 2009 GabeM- That feature has been requested by me a while ago and others also. I think this would be really useful. +1 from me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Heath_3d Posted July 31, 2009 Author Member Report Share Posted July 31, 2009 No doubt full SubDiv capability would be cool, but just a cage mesh for output to an external program would make me happy. Just to clarify why this is so important, I'll give a quick rundown of typical use of a sculpt program in my(and many others) workflow: In Maya/Max/Blender etc. You only want to be skinning/rigging/unwrapping etc. as low poly a mesh as possible. At render time you put a couple of subdivision on the mesh(smooth in maya, Subdiv in Blender or Turbosmooth in Max etc) so that the rendered model is pretty. Because the subdivided model changes the look of the model so much (eg. a cube becomes a sphere) you generally flip between the subdivided and original version while modeling to make sure the final model looks right. sooooo...... When you voxel sculpt your model and retop it, and the low poly retop automatically snaps to the surface of the hi detail voxel sculpt, when you bring your low poly version in to Maya and apply your smoothing..... BLAMMO! Where once you had nice curves and well defined hands you've now got a flat butt and stick fingers. Hence the cage mesh. It basically pushes your low poly models verts out to where they need to be in order to end up roughly where they should be when a couple of levels of smoothing are applied. Hope this clarifies a few things. Regards, Heath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Taros Posted July 31, 2009 Report Share Posted July 31, 2009 History levels for voxel sculpting are really a nice idea, but don't forget, you are not working with subdivision levels like in other tools, that are using polygon meshes. Voxels are point clouds, and you are adding and removing points. The mesh result, that we see is like a "coat" over the clouds. The biggest problem is to manage the history level of voxels. The points differ always. I don't want to make the idea bad, but i think it is very hard and you cannot compare voxels with polymesh editing. This are completely different worlds and needs different workflows. And by the way: I would like to have a voxel history too. I am not a mathematician, but I am curious what the future will bring... Be creative Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Heath_3d Posted August 1, 2009 Author Member Report Share Posted August 1, 2009 Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting a subdivision workflow for sculpting(thats what Zbrush is for). I'm talking about a relatively simple tool that pushes your low res Retopology mesh's verts out from the voxel surface to the point that when you apply a catmull-clark smoothing to the lowres model in an external program, the resulting smoothed mesh's surface ends up as close to the voxel scuplts surface as possible. This is how the cage option in ZBrush works under the tools-> geometry menu. That's the only reason I mention Zbrush at all. Regards, Heath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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