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Freeform Mecha with Surface Tools


artman
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Very unfinished,some parts are still just mockups(rocket laucher,shield,maingun ect...)

Shield is gonna be much bigger,gigantic medieval-style shield. :)

I used Toothpaste with hard pen for the base,Sf.Clay with hard pen and SF.Pinch for hardsurface details.

I'll try to get a day off and finish it friday...

post-1195-12693640791995_thumb.jpg

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Is that 61 mil triangles. You are really finding the limits of 3d-coat. The model really shines. Really good pose.

Yes, 61mil on my puny old quad with only 6gig of ram...Of course highest single voxel layer is only 15mil. :)

With all wires and gear it will probably go up to 80mil.

Im glad you like it!

Thanx!

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Looking good so far Like the Detail I'm looking forward to seeing the blocked out areas become consistent with the details too.

Question if you don't mind, hows performance for you at this level this is one of the more complex sculpts I have seen (Cos you show your Vox tree (Which I think is important))? I find when I push many many layers and I can get instability. But I'm not complaining bitterly, I get that with other software too when things get complex. Though it does occasionally beg the question how rigorously things are tested at more complex ends.

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Question if you don't mind, hows performance for you at this level this is one of the more complex sculpts I have seen (Cos you show your Vox tree (Which I think is important))? I find when I push many many layers and I can get instability. But I'm not complaining bitterly, I get that with other software too when things get complex. Though it does occasionally beg the question how rigorously things are tested at more complex ends.

The voxtree is 35 layers(much of the branches are collapsed in the screenshot)

-First,I keep all layers invisible except the one on which Im working.

I only toggle visibility of 4 or5 layers at the time for working purpose and all layers ONLY for rendering purpose.

With all the layer visibles I can still rotate viewport like a boat on stormy sea and also... surprisingly rendering in render room works.

Any sculpting is a no-go(even if it still works) and even slightest operations except navigation can get slow up to 3-4 minutes.

Anyway,I had PLENTY of time to work with nearly all my layers visible when I was in the 100k-1mil range.

Its in that range that all my design is performed.So I dont need to work while seeing "everything" after that stage.

Brusheswize performance is never an issue when I work.Merging time either.

I work nearly exclusively with Surface Tools and I switch from surface to voxels all the time.

I work with Surface tools from lowpoly to highpoly and I switch with the Cube Icon and not with the ENter thing

(because I want ALL surface tools avaible)

I know Surface mode is somehow intended to add hires details and not leave it...but I really dont like voxel brushes

(except maybe airbrush)

Even at very lowresolution I still use nearly exclusively Sf.Clay brush,I do eveything with that brush.

(I will post some organic stuff soon).

The reason I switch to voxels is only to refresh topology.Like reloading your gun in TimeCrisis. :)

Fps is always between 150fps and 50fps( for Multimil layers)

Merging from surf to voxels is always below 1 minutes even for lenghty sculpting sessions(30minutes).

The reason I get no performance(fps) and merging delay issue is because of brushsize I use.

There is always a proper brushsize for all given resolutions to get a very fast surf-vox conversion time.

If I cross that radius I get EXPONENTIAL decrease in performance.

Also I dont use Pose at all.

Move brush barely(only at very early stage).

My only problem right now is Stamp mode :( ....the dragging count as a large radius brush stroke

so I cant use it on multimillion layers without the dreaded delays....

so what I do instead is :I use it like I dont care and instead of converting from surf-tovox- I export the .obj from Surface mode and remerge it instead.

Thats all..

(of course if I ever get a decent computer..its gonna be a little more fun 8) )

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Wow. Nice work mate, I would have sold my Grandmother to have that as a toy when growing up. Somehow I'd love too see it animated in stopmotion style with a hint of steampunk sound fx going on.

Do you have have out of memory issues unexpectedly? I've seen things bomb out on quadrangulation when I had a good 2/8 gb ram free.

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Wow. Nice work mate, I would have sold my Grandmother to have that as a toy when growing up. Somehow I'd love too see it animated in stopmotion style with a hint of steampunk sound fx going on.

Do you have have out of memory issues unexpectedly? I've seen things bomb out on quadrangulation when I had a good 2/8 gb ram free.

Thanx! :)

Nope,no problem with quadrangulation here.I always use default settings tough.

I dont have "out of memory" issues but I've setted Windows paging file to 20gb so that might help...I dont think my little 6gb of ram alone could withstand my files.

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Thanks for an insight into one of your workflows,Artman. It's saved as a notepad file. I also like clone and degrade when I am just building basic form. I build form in surface mode,merge back to voxels, then clone and degrade. Rinse and Repeat the process all over again. A great way of keeping the voxel/triangle count down low till ya need the details.

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Yes Artmans workflow tips have been my biggest productivity booster by far. Still need to unlearn bad habits I don't even realise I have, but that's always an ongoing effort with me.

Digiman - Yeah I do the same with clone & degrade. (In my head I've named it after a shampoo bottle "rinse and repeat")

I love video tutorials for learning what brushes and tools can do, and workflow stuff for learning how to DO that stuff efficiently :)

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Thanx Guys!

Ok,a little more work here...

Head,feets,hands and gun are still waiting to get given some love but i couldnt resist starting detailing. :pardon:

The normal map is gonna be 2048x2048 so I cant go all crazy with it.

But still its much fun to do.. :):brush:

viewport screenshot

post-1195-12700511694217_thumb.jpg

+ a little render test

post-1195-12700512155449_thumb.jpg

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Wow, that's pretty detailed.

Out of curiosity, would a feature allowing you to generate a low res proxy for a layer seem useful to you? Instead of hiding many layers to increase performance, just click "generate proxy" next to a layer, select resolution decrease amount (2x,4x,8x, etc) then click ok. Then the current high res layer is saved and unloaded from memory while the generated proxy is loaded. A button would appear on the layer next to the surface/voxel toggle that would switch between high and low res objects in memory. Just wondering as I have not worked on a project with this many layers and complexity yet.

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@ Markus F.

Thank you sir! :thank_you:

@ 3DArtist

Thanx man! :)

Out of curiosity, would a feature allowing you to generate a low res proxy for a layer seem useful to you?

Hmm...it wouldnt help me much because I don't see what I would do with that proxy

-I wouldnt want to render it or sculpt on it either.

"For me" it would only be useful for design and placement visualisation which is cool

...but anyway all those layers were lowres at one point. :)

But Im sure users might benefit from this idea.

What I desperatly need tough is exporting of layers and branches as .3b files so i could split my voxtree to keep it lighter when I work.

Exporting and remerging .obj is a pain :dash2: but merging .3b files with merge tool is much easier.

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What I desperatly need tough is exporting of layers and branches as .3b files so i could split my voxtree to keep it lighter when I work. Exporting and remerging .obj is a pain :dash2: but merging .3b files with merge tool is much easier.

I will vote for that. :good:

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Haven't reply on this thread so far, just watching and waiting for the rest. And learning. And practicing on the model I'm working now.

My problem here is the use of surface mode vs voxel mode. This model (its a challenge) needs some huge strong faces too. Its a matter of composition, this will make all these details look stronger and sharper. Most of these android models suffer from this problem. Transformers (the movie) too. Cars (similar modeling problems) don't have this issue.

3d coat or zbrush or mudbox are not the best choice for this kind of modeling, anyway its a challenge. Impressive so far :clapping:

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  • 2 years later...
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Thanx guys!!

It is nearly finished now. :)

It is very funny I read back this old thread and at some point somebody asks me if something like a proxy mode would help me....and I answer :No,I don't think so...bla,bla bla.

Andrew hadn't implemented such a thing at that time.

And now I see the irony in that proxy mode is exactly what is allowing me to work comfortably on that scene... :rofl:

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