Hard surface sculpting

[designamyte]

Hello,

i thought i share with you some hard surface sculpting techniques.

Some results you can see in my sketchbook under WIP. The way i done

this hard surfaces, was with the "flatten" & "chisel" brush in surface-

mode. I use also "draw with lines" function. But in this tut. i want

to show you, how i done parts with retopo polygons, so that you have

unique primitives / parts.

[designamyte]

1) This is the first goal:

2) and this is the second goal:

My first goal, describes an clean surface, that can´t be done with brushes

or that is hard to finish with brushes. Because of its uniform surface structure.

This case can also be used for car-freeforms and other product-design stuff. In my

opinion.

My second goal is, to get surfaces like the preset-primitives, but more user-defined.

More shaped and individual, without to load primitives or generate them in other

apps. All can be done in the retopo-room. Very quickly. This case can be used for

very solid, hard surfaces.

[designamyte]

a) I start with my older sculpted character.

I make the back a bit smoothed. It is not necesary, but it helps me to imagine how it could be.

c) Now i went into the retopo-room and i define the area with polys, which should get very smooth, unified surface later.

d) I move the polygons a bit, to get a bulge.

e) Now i went back to vox-mode and click on "merge". Than i click on "pick from retopo".

f) After that, i click more times on "subdivide", to get a smooth surface. There is a similar function in the retopo-room, called "relax". I´m not sure if it is exactly the same. But the "subdivide" function is the same like in other 3d-apps you know as subdivision-surfaces.

g) Time to convert it to voxels. I set a hook on "merge as skin". "Skin thickness" is set to "0". "outer thickness" is set to "10", in this case. I hold my "ctrl" key and press enter. Now i substract the volume outer of my characters surface. Second task is, to add my new surface-volume to the character. For that i change the value "outer thickness"=10 to -10. I click on "apply" and i get this result: ......................................( in this case it is important to "fill voids". Can be found under vox-tree, rightclick )

h) For the rest of the task, i smoothed out the edges, which were produced by the cuts of the "merge as skin" function. Done this with the "smooth"-brush in vox- and surface mode. Now i have a clean, homogeneous surface as a base, for later works.

[designamyte]

Finished my first part. I hope you like it and i hope it is usefull for your projects & workflows. Feel free,

to comment things or to add better techniques. This is only one way, of maybe other ways . In this

tutorial, this workflow could also help you to redefine, to make a perfect uniformed surface of your existing

one, that was made with brushes, for example. It is hard to reach a superb, clean, homogeneoues surface

structure only with "brush" techniques, in my opinion. Oh, i forget...if you have questions, you can ask me

of course. Don´t know if i have the right answers

[designamyte]

a) So, now i start my second part of my tutorial. For that i went back to the retopo-room. There i generate that flat polygons.

I move some polygons out of the flatness, to get a solid volume i want to have.

c) Before i subdivide the polys in the retopo-room, i have to turn off the "auto snap" function. Because if the auto-snap were on, my whole construction would get changed. So i turned it off. Why i subdivided the polys? Because if i merge the the "undivided" construction into the voxel-room, i get these triangle artefacts / fragments on the surface. That can be avoid with this subdividing.

d) Back in the voxel-mode, i go to "merge" and click on "pick from retopo". I activate the "merge as skin" function. "Skin thickness" is set to "0". First, "outer thickness" is set to "10". I hold the "ctrl" key and press "enter". Now the surface from my character which is out of the surface from the retopo room, will be cuted away. Second time, "outer thickness" is set to "-10". Now i click on "apply".

e) Voila, the retopo-solid is added to the character. Again, i have to call the "fill voids" function. It can be found under vox-tree, rightclick. As we can see, there are little problems on the cuting edges. But we can fix this.

f) To fix the cutting-edge problem, i went back to the retopo-room. There i create a polygon, that contacts the uncutted surface.

g) Now i slice the polygon with the "split rings" function. It´s pretty quick, easy task. The reason why, is because you can see, that more edges the polygon has, the more it fits on the uncutted edge of the characters body.

h) After that, i have to turn off "auto snap" mode, because i subdivide the polygons in the retopo-room. If this function were on, my polygons would follow the edges, that are not fixed. That wouldn´t be good. So i turned it off.

i) Back in voxel-mode, i do the process, i described in section d)

j) I repeat the proceses with the other unfixed edges.

k) Finaly i get these finished results:

The retopo-technique is also comfortable to remove any pimples from your surface, if you have some.

[Polygoon]

Very interesting, nice tutorial, thanks I have been experimenting myself with trying to get smooth surface and harder abrupt edges cominations with some mixed results. I will definitly be giving this method a go.

[designamyte]

So my second part is finished. As i said, i hope it can increase your workflow, help you

to get better results in the hard-sculpting area and so on. It is really cool, that i can create clean,

homogenioues surfaces, with that retopo-combination. Remeber that you have different "subdivide"-

functions. One in voxel-mode (merge) and the other in retopo-room (if "auto snap" is deactivated).

And you can also experiment with "relax" function in retopo, when auto-snap is also turned off.

By the way, my model has about 7 mil. polygons. I don´t have CUDA and i only have 2gig

of RAM. But 3d-coat is amazingly performance friendly. Top software !

Feel free, to add new techs, to comment or to ask something.

cheers

designamyte

[designamyte]

Hi @Polygoon,

i´m glad that you like it. I hope you get also nice results with

your hard-sculpted object. Would makes me happy

cheers

[Pix Jigsaw]

Interesting technique designamyte. I'm inspired to use the retopo to voxel workpath more creatively.  Thanks for taking the time to post it.  I really liked the smooth surface you were able to get in the first part of the tutorial.