Ormulu Belle Epoque Mirror

[L'Ancien Regime]

This has been a hellish ordeal going on over a week and a half now, but I must say it taught me a bunch of stuff about retopo I never knew; all sorts of little details that make me appreciate the scope of the work that's been done this aspect of 3d coat. For one thing it's made me very adept at getting in all sorts of nooks and crannies to lay down polygons that I'd never thought possible before.

[digman]

I must say you are one to stick at it... Looking good...

Got a question is your model asymmetrical as I noticed the sphinix is only done on one side without the help of 3DCoat's ability to place the polygons on the opposite symmetrical plane for you.

[L'Ancien Regime]

I must say you are one to stick at it... Looking good...

Got a question is your model asymmetrical as I noticed the sphinix is only done on one side without the help of 3DCoat's ability to place the polygons on the opposite symmetrical plane for you.

I started out in Maya setting up my mesh in perfect symmetry. I brought the mesh into 3d Coat and it was pretty symmetric for the most part though there were some very fine details where the mirrored side was a bit messed up. I turned off symmetry to go in and fix those spots.

Then I started doing the retopo and found that the symmetry was getting more and more askew on me to the point where it was no longer tolerable so I surrendered to my fate and just did the entire thing without symmetry. Obviously that doubled my labors...*sigh*

[michalis]

It looks good.

You're trying to make it a single mesh, it's a little crazy you know.

Another way to avoid symmetry related issues to had these elements separated and just reconstruct in maya.

[L'Ancien Regime]

It looks good.

You're trying to make it a single mesh, it's a little crazy you know.

Another way to avoid symmetry related issues to had these elements separated and just reconstruct in maya.

I could still do that if this approach doesn't pan out. My worry now is that after I've UV mapped it and am ready to bake out the displacement and normal maps etc that it'll all be too much (at the highest settings, that is 16384 x 16384 pixels) and it'll crash the system or something. It's going to be an interesting experiment. Autopo didn't like all the ins and outs and loops of the frame. I'm hoping the map baking process will handle it all better than autopo...

[michalis]

16384 x 16384 pixels UV map.

one single mesh

you aren't a little crazy after all.

[digman]

Baking should be better, Wow 16384, you must have lots of system ram and video ram...

Andrew said selecting (snap to closest along normal) gives the best results when baking.

I sent you a pm that should help speed up the retopoing process if the symmetry gets askewed on your next project.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Baking should be better, Wow 16384, you must have lots of system ram and video ram...

Andrew said selecting (snap to closest along normal) gives the best results when baking.

I sent you a pm that should help speed up the retopoing process if the symmetry gets askewed on your next project.

Thanks a lot digman. I really appreciate that. I wasn't posting all this stuff out of egoism...I was posting it in the hope that someone like you would step in and give me some help in this journey into the unknown.. You delivered. Good stuff.

[LJB]

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..

Ha Yes, Im liking your mirror, and holding my breath with you for these problem areas. Nice to see somebody taking the app further and Pushing on through the negatives and experimentation

[shape shifter]

Pretty nice plodding I must say!

Great work I could see this as a prop in alive action movie, the Chimera is very cool

[L'Ancien Regime]

As you get near the end of a retopo job, the escape routes for triangle polygons gets harder and harder to find without screwing up the rest of your mesh when you use the Split Ring.

It can get vexatious and you might be inclined to start cursing the whole thing until you sit back and marvel at what a cool thing all this 3d graphics stuff is. Really it's better than any drug, better than LSD...

Split ring starts shooting through your work like a spark of electricity...

[L'Ancien Regime]

Thank God 3D coat has the best UV mapping tools in the business. After the long toil of manual retopo this is a piece of cake by comparison.

[L'Ancien Regime]

OK, finished UV mapping and I've been able to export the UV mapped .obj to Maya...now I need to bake out Displacement and Normal Maps. I've set everything up in the Texture Baking Tool but I don't know how to get it to bake out the maps. Anyone? I can't seem to find any tutorials on this...the ones that are up are pre autopo .

[L'Ancien Regime]

When I hit OK no displacement or normal map gets produced.

How do I do this?

[L'Ancien Regime]

Well I got that worked out...now to get down to some serious texturing and redo it in a higher res version with all holes closed. There's some kind of decay going on in the skin if you look closely...

[L'Ancien Regime]

I'm having a lot of trouble making the displacement and normal maps work properly. Either they work and the surface seems to crumble and decay from their excesses (the black and white picture) or they don't work and I'm left with a fairly harsh polygonal mesh finish...(the color shot)

I'm wondering if the mathematical complexity of the full object isn't working against me here. maybe I should just go back and work on retopologizing the individual elements then parenting them together for the render...

These are full 8096 x 8096 texture files..

[L'Ancien Regime]

So all the problems with decay of the surface were the result of a stupid little mistake as usual. I'd checked the normals before exporting the frame from Maya to Maxwell but when I brought the frame into the Maxwell scene it was huge. Maxwell has a clumsy interface and when I scaled the frame down I accidentally went too far and flipped it upside down and inside out. I rectified that and then after some experimentation I ditched the baked out Displacement Map from 3d Coat and just went with the baked out Normal Map. The Displacement Map was distorting the hard edge frame too much and it was bringing in some artifacts on the sculpted details like the face at the top of the frame..the Normal Map is more than enough to smooth things out and recreate the detailed shape of the original Voxel sculpture.

This is just as well since Maxwell only allows one displacement map per shader. I'll use that displacement map to hand paint the repetitive geometrical ornaments of the frame shafts in Photoshop in greyscale instead.

The gold is the IOR gold at 90% roughness.

[digman]

Edit: I combined two post...

First, glad ya almost done and it's really looking good...

Question, are you baking from the retopo room?

No need to bake again if you are in paint room after you merge for normal map or displacement map. Export the maps from the texture menu in the Paint Room.

Also I found at least 1 carcass subdivision level when merging seems to produce the best Normal and Displacement maps. Experiment to see what works best for you.

Is it possible that Maya is pushing the displacement map to far creating the problems? I know that Maya should have some adjustments there.

What is your padding setting for exporting, I use about 4 pixels sometimes more but never the 64 that is the default.

What is your mesh resolution in millions set at when merging. It should be least 8 million since you are producing higher resolution maps.

See the picture to read the tool tip in yellow.

Forget got to mention make sure "always make padding" is selected in the preferences section.

I use one carcass subdivision when merging for Normal maps most of the time. Displacement maps can be varied.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Edit: I combined two post...

First, glad ya almost done and it's really looking good...

Question, are you baking from the retopo room?

No need to bake again if you are in paint room after you merge for normal map or displacement map. Export the maps from the texture menu in the Paint Room.

Also I found at least 1 carcass subdivision level when merging seems to produce the best Normal and Displacement maps. Experiment to see what works best for you.

Is it possible that Maya is pushing the displacement map to far creating the problems? I know that Maya should have some adjustments there.

What is your padding setting for exporting, I use about 4 pixels sometimes more but never the 64 that is the default.

What is your mesh resolution in millions set at when merging. It should be least 8 million since you are producing higher resolution maps.

See the picture to read the tool tip in yellow.

Forget got to mention make sure "always make padding" is selected in the preferences section.

I use one carcass subdivision when merging for Normal maps most of the time. Displacement maps can be varied.

Thanks for the advice. I need it right now. I'm baking my textures directly from the Retopo Room. When I turn on the Paint Room it's empty. I'm not sure how to set up to bake from the retopo room since if I just bring the saved .obj poly mesh in there I won't have the underlying voxel sculpture to bake out. Sorry but this is arcane knowledge to me and the video tutorials I've gone through are leaving me in the dark on this. When I try using the menu you're using to bake out the normal map and displacement map I can't even figure out any way to select the mesh I'm working on; All it allows me to choose are two irrelevant old meshes.

I've been baking out from this Texture Baking Tool only...so how do I extract all this to the Paint Room so I can do it your way? There's still artifacts around the side of his nose and on the lower platform on the right hand side to the left of the sphynx...a weird black slash in the surface that doesn't appear to have any cause in the mesh when I examine it in Maya or in 3d Coat

I've selected padding but there's no box for choosing the padding setting. The voxel mesh is at 39 million triangles.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Thanks for the advice. I need it right now. I'm baking my textures directly from the Retopo Room. When I turn on the Paint Room it's empty. I'm not sure how to set up to bake from the retopo room since if I just bring the saved .obj poly mesh in there I won't have the underlying voxel sculpture to bake out. Sorry but this is arcane knowledge to me and the video tutorials I've gone through are leaving me in the dark on this. When I try using the menu you're using to bake out the normal map and displacement map I can't even figure out any way to select the mesh I'm working on; All it allows me to choose are two irrelevant old meshes.

I've been baking out from this Texture Baking Tool only...so how do I extract all this to the Paint Room so I can do it your way? There's still artifacts around the side of his nose and on the lower platform on the right hand side to the left of the sphynx...a weird black slash in the surface that doesn't appear to have any cause in the mesh when I examine it in Maya or in 3d Coat

I've selected padding but there's no box for choosing the padding setting. The voxel mesh is at 39 million triangles.

Correction; "I'm not sure how to set up to bake from the PAINT room..."

[digman]

Under the Retopo menu in the Retopo room is where you setup up for merging (baking) your uv mapped retopo mesh into the "Paint Room"

See the picture to understand. This is different from using the "baking tool"

For what you are doing choose:

merge into scene (microverts) It will bake the displacement map. The picture above in my other post shows the merging dialog box call "loading object"

merge with NM (per-pixel) This will bake your normal map.

Once the merging is complete you will be in the paint room with either the normal map or displacement map projected on your model.

You will then be able to paint plus export the maps the way I mentioned in the above post.

If you see any errors in your displacement mesh in the paint room. go back to the retopo room check the error areas and see what the problem might be.

Sometimes I found that sharp angles in the uv cuts for the separate uv islands can cause problems. That's happens with auto uv mapping on more complex objects. Sometimes Auto uv will create kinda weird cuts. I'm not sure if you are using auto uv though.

Many black looking spots on the displacement map problems can be fixed by changing the uv map slightly.

To set your padding go to the edit menu, preferences, set it there and select padding width and padding always on.

Turn tools tips on, They do help on explaining some stuff...

[digman]

I hate this 10 minute rule editing rule...

In the retopo room you should have your voxel model ( high res) and your retopo mesh (Low res) together already. You now will just have to merge into the paint room.

It would be better if 3DCoat would say merge into the paint room instead of merge into scene or the other ways it says it for baking a normal map, ptex etc.

They all mean merging (baking) into the paint room.

Also if it was not clear the first picture in my post was from the paint room on exporting of course I saved the low polygon model aready. There is another way to export the maps out of the paint room once the merging is done.

It is under the file menu in the paint room, "export model.

There you can export the low polygon model, save it and then the options will come for you to export all your maps.

Keep at you will get there...

[L'Ancien Regime]

I hate this 10 minute rule editing rule...

In the retopo room you should have your voxel model ( high res) and your retopo mesh (Low res) together already. You now will just have to merge into the paint room.

It would be better if 3DCoat would say merge into the paint room instead of merge into scene or the other ways it says it for baking a normal map, ptex etc.

They all mean merging (baking) into the paint room.

Also if it was not clear the first picture in my post was from the paint room on exporting of course I saved the low polygon model aready. There is another way to export the maps out of the paint room once the merging is done.

It is under the file menu in the paint room, "export model.

There you can export the low polygon model, save it and then the options will come for you to export all your maps.

Keep at you will get there...

Thank you so much digman. You're a fantastic teacher. And yeah the 10 edit rule sucks..

[L'Ancien Regime]

OK I got a slightly different Loading Object menu than yours with "merge into scene (microverts)", but here's how I set it up

[L'Ancien Regime]

Wow, I LOWERED the resolution and it worked much better. This is great Digman.

[digman]

Alright, getting closer...

Here is a picture with text to help explain a few things on merging into the paint room.

I also have a correction to make on the million of polyons setting in the loading object dialog box.

I got my math wrong in my above postings, simple math but somehow my brain most have taken a hike..

Correction is in the text with the picture.

Also keep clusters most of the time means you have mirrored overlapping uv islands though a few times I seen

3DCoat say I have clusters when infact I do not, so I just select keep uv instead. It is explained in the picture.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Digman, I started reading your instructions on Thursday afternoon and I have to admit it was some heavy reading. (Where do you get all this stuff? I sure couldn't find it in the manual or the videos). But I kept on plowing away and after many false steps and mistakes and having to go back over and over again like an idiot I finally got it (at 4:00AM here! Time for bed)

It's totally different this way. All the distortions that were tearing the hard edged frame apart are gone now and the physical forms are much smoother. And the face of the man at the top of the frame isn't such an evil psychophath anymore. Tomorrow I'm going to try the Displacement Map option...

Thank you so much.

[L'Ancien Regime]

I was worried I'd have trouble making a realistic mirror with a piece of glass with silver on the back but it turned out to be a piece of cake. I did a little experiment last night and after some futtering around I was able to

1. assign glass shader to a bevelled polygonal slab

2. separate the back face from the beveled slab and extract it

3. assign a 1% roughness silver colored shader to the extracted face..

4. just for good measure I flipped the normal for the extracted silver face so it was facing into the glass slab. That might have been superfluous though since it's still two sided for now..I'm going to try making it one sided to save render time on all those back side reflections taking place..

[L'Ancien Regime]

Just the ornamental displacement texturing is left though I've been expermenting with creating bloom effects to create a layer on top of the mirror silver (under the glass) to emulate the leakage of air and moisture between the glass and the silver leaf to create a tarnish bloom effect....It's an antique mirror so it might be cool to age the mirror somewhat. A bump layer for tiny scratches and wood grain might help to age the frame too..

[L'Ancien Regime]

Almost there. Tomorrow will be Photoshop texture painting day..