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Ormulu Belle Epoque Mirror


L'Ancien Regime
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Rapid test sketch to see how everything will fit together. 2d paint brush is awesome for this.

And this makes me think that in huge scenes when you need to have a lot of props in your scene, it would be a very effective way to work to have the most distant objects in the scene to be nothing more than quick sketches like this that would give a mere impression without requiring a lot of toilsome detailing....

post-3590-0-03928200-1315384396_thumb.jp

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What I was suggesting was to put all that voxel work on a flat surface (since it is always displayed on a flat surface) and use exported displacement and normal maps to achieve a very low poly but gorgeous mirror for use in a scene with many other assets.

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What I was suggesting was to put all that voxel work on a flat surface (since it is always displayed on a flat surface) and use exported displacement and normal maps to achieve a very low poly but gorgeous mirror for use in a scene with many other assets.

That's at the end when I'm texturing it. By sketch I mean just roughing things out to see how the proportions will work and how I'll lay out the masses of the object.

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Well done, though I may not agree with the entire workflow.

I mean, having maya to do all the splines work, why do you need to drop it to voxels and retopo it?

This model is mostly a displacement friendly mesh.

Chimera looks great. BTW not a chimera, a sphinx probably. And you may fall in love with her. Never with a chimera because she-it doesn't have a human face.

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The workflow is strange but then I'm not content with any of the workflows I've seen out there and there seems to me to be two contradictory elements to this work pulling it in two directions. The hard edged frame will need to be elaborately textured, and like my fauteuil on the finished works gallery I'd sort of like to have it firmly pinned down in its rectilinear topology so I can place the repetitive geometric patterns carved into in in Photoshop. But contradictory to this there are the organic elements; the scrollwork, the garlands of acanthus leaves and the sphynx. I'm tempted just to go back and forth with them between maya and 3d coat working and reworking them. I'm sort of toying with finishing them in Zbrush if I can't get the detail I want in 3d Coat though for now I'm trying my best to keep this a 3d Coat job. Frankly the Zbrush workflow leaves me a bit cold and I like Voxels a lot. Perhaps I'll have to just bite the bullet and go out and buy 8 more gigs of RAM to double up on it to handle the full load of the work. Note the Sphynx is over 4 million triangles...

If you can suggest various resolutions to this puzzle they'd be welcome. I'll definitely consider them carefully.

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See the thing is I utterly despise the retopo in Zbrush while I think the 3d Coat's retopo tools are THE BEST in the business. Unwrella, HeadusUV Layout whatever, they're all junk to me. 3d Coat is it. I actually enjoy laying out UV maps in 3d Coat and that's insane because UV mapping fills me with nausea.

So on one hand I need to be in 3d Coat but on the other hand I'm apprehensive about it's ability to handle a large complex structure like this.

So what I'm doing is basically tippy toeign around a lot of problems hoping that they'll all resolve themselves somehow by the time I'm finished sculpting and ready to lay on textures...textures that must be fairly precise, repetitive and tightly symmetric or regular...

I'm not sure doing that in 3d coat's 3d environment will work..

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I can give a few suggestions. With the limited about of information in a forum post I might missed the mark but hopefully some will help.

I think you might be merging the low polygon sphinx model with too high of a voxel resolution. Bring in your model only high enough to capture the details you need. The 4 million voxel model I see in your picture for that amount of detail your voxel object could easily be 500,000 voxels.

Build the larger forms at a lower voxel resolution at first. Don't forget the resampling feature, left side toolbar near the bottom. It will resampled down or up your voxel model while trying to keep as much as detail as possible.

Once you are happy with the larger forms increase voxel count for the fine details.

Don't forget the regular surface mode tools. Liveclay tools are still on the raw side at this stage of development but once they are done they will be a great addition.

High voxel resolution is important for extra fine details but not bulk form building.

I have included a picture to show you.

The model is one I got off Blend Swap. It is about 4000 polygons, I would have modeled it a diffeerent way for 3Dcoat as there are a few problems with the model but it shows the point I am trying to make.

The model on the left is 1 million voxel polycount enough to capture the details. The model on the right is resampled down to 500,000 thousand.

Both of these have as much detail as the sphinx model which is at 4 million voxel polycount and it appears you are still on the medium bulk form building

I have lots of voxel resolution left to work on the axtex model for adding form or details...

post-518-0-43924800-1315607731_thumb.jpe

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Forget got to mention, good looking work, looking foward to seeing more and keep up the good work...

Here is one more picture of a model with a voxel polycount at about 700,000 including the eyes as seen in the lower left hand part of the picture. The voxel count is kept low as I build form and some detail

Again hope this is helpful...

post-518-0-54353000-1315611234_thumb.jpe

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Forget got to mention, good looking work, looking foward to seeing more and keep up the good work...

Here is one more picture of a model with a voxel polycount at about 700,000 including the eyes as seen in the lower left hand part of the picture. The voxel count is kept low as I build form and some detail

Again hope this is helpful...

Thanks a lot Digman...something to mull over here..

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Incidental ornament. You can reach a point where you feel overwhelmed by all the work that needs to be done to finish an elaborate project and the work slows down to a crawl. That's when you have to force yourself to just plod forward to your goal..

Definitely know the feeling. But one good thing about this is that you can use a good bit of the work...again, down the road...by building your own little Kit-bashing stash/collection. You can drag a voxel layer directly into the models pallet...and have a saved model to use at some future point, and a thumbnail to go with it. Or you can right click a layer > save as .3b file.

You can even save your curves/splines to re-use. Good work...keep it up. By the way, are you using Auto-Retopo to create the mesh or are you doing it manually. These are oftentimes very good occasions to use the AutoRetopo feature. I wouldn't elect to use it for Animated characters, but for many other models/purposes it can work well.

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Definitely know the feeling. But one good thing about this is that you can use a good bit of the work...again, down the road...by building your own little Kit-bashing stash/collection. You can drag a voxel layer directly into the models pallet...and have a saved model to use at some future point, and a thumbnail to go with it. Or you can right click a layer > save as .3b file.

You can even save your curves/splines to re-use. Good work...keep it up. By the way, are you using Auto-Retopo to create the mesh or are you doing it manually. These are oftentimes very good occasions to use the AutoRetopo feature. I wouldn't elect to use it for Animated characters, but for many other models/purposes it can work well.

\

So far it's auto retopo and this is a very impressive tool

But in the end I'm going to do what you just said; drag all my elements in as voxel layers and position them together then I'll hand retopo them and UV map them. The hand retopo will be necessary if I'm going to put all the symmetrical pattern details on the mirror frame in Photoshop. I'll want the mesh to be laid out as carefully as possible for that. But I don't mind because hand retopo tools and UV mapping in 3d coat are actually kind of fun. I'm planning a huge UV map..as big as Maxwell will handle...8192, maybe 16384...

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I had a lot of forebodings last night and this morning but I woke up with some ideas on how to solve the problems of dealing with the scrollwork on the upper frame corners. The morning was drudgery without hope but the evening was fun as things just coalesced to where I wanted them.

post-3590-0-25935300-1316147789_thumb.jp

post-3590-0-12942200-1316147795_thumb.jp

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Finished the sculpture, so Right Click on the parent layer of all the sublayers and hit Merge Subtree to collapse all the sublayers into just the parent then open up the Retopo window and start the laborious task of retoplogizing the entire unified voxel 3b file object...I need to do it by hand to have the rectilinear frame of the mirror laid out for the patterns that will be applied as normal and/or displacement maps in Photoshop.

post-3590-0-08279100-1316243466_thumb.jp

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Yes, sometimes there is no other way than doing hand retopo.

I think it worth it though.

And, what a good feeling when you are done after a while fighting with polys.

Great work here. I like the thema you choose. You've got your own world here.

Those handcrafts, they are disappearing little by little.

It is a good thing to reproduce them in 3d.

Keep on the good work.

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Word of warning to those of you that want to assemble rather elaborate structures. Before you jump into a lengthy retopo make sure you've filled in any unnecessary cavities, holes, crannies etc that will terrorize you when it comes time to laying over your polygons...

Ugh..

post-3590-0-06901100-1317099614_thumb.jp

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