Modelling bandages

bcottage

Soooo i have never modeled something like bandages before so i dont know where to start?

I have a base mesh for the bandage but would i add a shell modifier to it then export it to z brush or leave it as a plane?

Bek

Depends. Do you want it to have thickness? You might be able to get away with a plane + normal mapped details from the zbrush sculpt. Give it a quick test and see what it looks like. If you export them with UV's with strategic seams, you should be able to apply a fabric alpha with Noisemaker to quickly add details to them.

bcottage

@Bek

i guess it would be a good idea if i kept the bandages as planes for polycount sake?

I have hit a wall

I am a little confused with thew whole start up process of sculpting high poly detail into a low poly object from Max. These are the questions i have..

1. Can i export from max WITH any modifiers like shell or turbosmooth?

2. Do i need to subdivide my mesh in Max so it sculpts better (if i do then dont i ruin my base mesh?)

3. After making the high poly sculpt in zbrush do i simply export back into max and bake normals like i would normally with a projection cage?

if that is correct how can max stand stupid high polycounts without crashing?

Bek

1) Nope. I haven't used max in awhile but I'm pretty sure everything will need to be 'applied', so you're just exporting the geometry.

2) Depends how you want to do it. For sculpting you're going to want an even distribution of quads. You could copy the bandage, keep one as is and divide the other, either in max or zbrush, although since it's a plane I imagine it'd be easiest to do this in max?

3) If you want. You could bake the normals in Zbrush, or a better way would be to export the low from max and the high from Zbrush and bake in xNormal. If you wanted to bake in max, you'd either have to use the decimation master plugin to get it to a manageable polycount, or perhaps use displacement maps, but I don't even know if that works and is too much hassle anyway.

If you bake normals in Xnormal which I would recommend, you can also bake the polypaint (texture) information from zbrush at the same time, so you get a textured and normal mapped bandage. See this vid for going from zbrush to xnormal: http://eat3d.com/free/zbrush_xnormal

bcottage

@Bek

Ahh ok so i now have done what you suggested about making a copy and making one of them with evenly distributed quads for the purpose of z brush. A few guys on a different forum suggested that i keep the shell modifer for a bit of thickness.

So the stage i am at is that i am ready to start sculpting in z brush.

The one question i have is about 'Decimation Master'. Is there a version for 'zbrush3' or do i really have to fork out £300

Bek

No idea. I would just avoid the problem by exporting your high poly to xnormal and baking with your low poly in that.

McGreed

You can use Meshlab for polygon reduction, if you just need it to trim down the highpoly to something more manageable for baking/rendering.

cptSwing

bcottage wrote: »

1. Can i export from max WITH any modifiers like shell or turbosmooth?

This is one of the things where you just have to try it out haha. writing that question probably took longer than actually giving it a go

And yes, Shell modifiers and the like usually export fine for me. If not, slap an Edit mesh or Edit poly on top.

Shogun3d

Yes you can export with modifiers such as shell or turbosmooth. But you'll want to make sure you uncheck isoline display in turbosmooth so you export proper subdivided geometry.

With the shell modifier, i've used that to create wraps before, but would extrude plans around my object, then shell it, collapse and remove the inner(bottom) geo that you can't see so I can sculpt directly on to the top of the mesh itself. Then export that out with turbosmooth (iso off) and bring it into zbrush.