wow, thank you for such an in depth explanation of your process perna, it has been very insightful. and i agree with you that i need to start working smarter. i initially didnt want to delete the model i'd already shaped out (even though it was made with too much geo) which is very lazy of me, so i've deleted it and started over. my second go will yield far better results.
again, thank you so much you really went above and beyond to help me out!
Lunch break doodle. Playing with the Meshsmooth/SG workflow. I'm not sure how long it took, but it felt pretty fast. I can definitely see the power in working this way, especially for work subject to revision. It's going to take some time to get a firm grasp on it though.
I made some topological mistakes early on that gave me some shitty geo to work with later on, but live and learn
One note when using SG workflow is that you must make sure that there is a balanced edge density near corners so that you can get a good amount of contour instead of a mix of super tight edges in one section and blobby edges in another.
Of course there are also other ways to work around that but that's my two cents.
supaclueless: Yeah, I noticed that the very early iterations of the meshmoothing where critical to establish good flow. I had a few points I should have looped around differently. Definitely important to pay attention where your geo is going and what kind of foundation you're making.
Per: Its funny, me and the guys I work with were talking about that right after I showed them the mesh. I was attempting to explain the difference but I'm pretty sure I failed haha.
the workflow, is basically build a basemesh of the final shape on the HP using smoothing groups , it clean , fast and straightforward.
Because right now i see lots of people finalizing the HP , adding the control loops to the edges, submit and client "yeah this shape is wrong, alter it" so they have to : remove the edges , rework the shape on its basemesh stage wich if was smoothed or altered and collapsed will be a pain to re-edit cleanly , and add edges again" , with this method, you just tweak a few verts , use FDD or whatever etc.
Its late and i dont know if im making sense hehe...
Somehow along the way, i think some of us, and i'm super guilty of this, just forget the principles of modeling and just get so excited to get a highpoly "piece" to show rather than a "basemesh" such as in your first shot. I just finished building a new computer this weekend and I was so excited to do some high poly modeling, but this has inspired me to instead create a few base meshes over the next few weeks for some props i've always wanted to do.
It's some great incite and was a really clear way of showing what you meant, and i'm excited to see where it will take me this weekend
I love this concept, multiple times throughout schooling and work, i've gotten a good slap across the head about something i'm overthinking, not doing well, or can do much better, and this is one of those moments, so thanks Per!
Great series of posts Perna. After doing this for awhile the approval process seems like the most important thing that I have been pushing onto the guys that work with me. Even in a studio other departments (animation / scripting / etc) all need to work with your stuff and you wind up having to treat it with the same respect that you do client work. When people go straight to sculpting and detailed modeling it seems like jumping out of a plane without checking your parachute.
Thanks for the examples of the stepped smoothing group modeling, that fills in a lot more 'big to small' steps.
Setting up a good basemesh is always key since it basically allows you to iterate on proportions or any modifications where necessary. Speaking from my own experience, a good basemesh will make you life less hellish when you actually have to make the highpoly.
basically, if you properly setup your basemesh well, your highpoly stage will have less headaches...basically what perna has been trying to say in my viewpoint and i'm parroting it because of it's importance.
These last couple posts have been very eye opening. Love this thread!
I ran into a small problem tho trying out this workflow. In the later stage when i begin adding support loops and using a turbosmooth modifier the model shows some ugly artifacts. This happend with every mesh that i tried it.
I have tried everything that i can think of, reset xform, normals, smooth groups, edge weights, uv's. The only thing that fixes it is to export and reimport as obj.
Wonder if i do something wrong when i collapse the initial stack from meshsmooth that corrupts the models.
Depends on whether I need them Sorry if that's a useless answer, but I don't know what else to say
Just a thing that i was wondering about if it can cause any unwanted problems to have random smooth groups on a hipoly that doesn't really need them. Turbosmooth shouldn't really care either way as long as smooth groups isn't selected in the modifier right?
My habbit is to clear all smooth groups that i dont see use for but maybe thats ocd?
great post as usual Per I'm fighting procrastination right now, and your post give me some motivation. I know somebody say this before but I wish there's a subscribe button for all your post
btw, is there any specific piece of software that only accept quad ? I remember seeing somewhere that a offline rendering software can only import model made by quad.
The wires are shown in the screenshots, should be easy to see the construction of the mesh.
Meshsmooth is constantly enabled when blocking. There's no point in which I work without it.
So you are making life difficult for yourself, on purpose. Like trying to play the guitar with your feet and complaining that you're not progressing as fast as people using their hands.
Be smart about these things. I modeled everything out at 90-degree angles, then used FFD to create the taper. That way, all verts are moved to the right place in one single operation at the end, rather than having to deal with lots of weird angles while modeling. Build these things in stages.
Below are some screens of backup scenes.
Notes:
The tilt of the handle is rotation in object space. This means that the center line of the handle is perfectly aligned with the local axis, making it easier to work with
Once I have the base shape, the FFD is applied. Note that is makes the shape look right from both angles.
Perna you continue to be a wealth of knowledge. I'm dead serious about that. You explain SubD very well. One question. Are SG's smoothing groups and how does that benefit the model? If this is already shown let me know and I'll try to find it on this thread.
Hi 3ds max newbie here. Sorry if this is an obvious question but I'm stuck. I'm trying to carve a design into a wall by using shapes derived from splines I've traced out:
Is booleaning the way to go? I have 2 questions with that:
1. How do I preserve the contour of the splines when I use "normalize spline"? I'd use "edit poly" but it produces too many verts.
2. How would I quadrangulate my topology afterward? The tutorials online all just leave them as Ngons. All I found was a max script you can purchase but do I have to go through and cut/adjust all the verts by hand afterward?
Hi 3ds max newbie here. Sorry if this is an obvious question but I'm stuck. I'm trying to carve a design into a wall by using shapes derived from splines I've traced out:
Is booleaning the way to go? I have 2 questions with that:
1. How do I preserve the contour of the splines when I use "normalize spline"? I'd use "edit poly" but it produces too many verts.
2. How would I quadrangulate my topology afterward? The tutorials online all just leave them as Ngons. All I found was a max script you can purchase but do I have to go through and cut/adjust all the verts by hand afterward?
Ok, you have one thing playing on your side here - it's flat.
Extrude -> Booleon -> Cleanup | since the surface is flat you can cut in some obscure edges to support the shapes, just make sure you try to maintain even poly distribution. It's a different story if you want to curve the surface however, in this instance you'll need to increase the subdivisions of the base mesh before cutting in the shapes. Then repeat as before, booleon the details, clean the mesh then throw on a turbosmooth/subdiv modifier and add a bend/curve modifier below to change the shape. This way the mesh can warp evenly because of the extra desnity of the mesh.
Does it have to be cut in though? You could always normal map the surface and then reduce the specular detail of the holes to make it appear like a crevice.
I would be happy with just seeing some timelapses of you modeling stuff.
That way, if anyone sees something they don't understand in your process they can just ask you.
If you do this, you will also get a sense of what kind of stuff needs the most attention in a proper tutorial if you do one later.
You could even use Autodesk's own screencast tool. (After it gets updated to support 3ds max metadata, of course) The metadata part is what is interesting about their program, since it essentially records the tool/modifier being used and the settings for the tool as well as marking it in the timeline of the video so people can easily click to skip to it and link to it with comments.
Timelapses are a bit easier than any other kind of video too, since editing out anything extra or unwanted is simple and it doesn't require detailed commentary.
So, after answering that question I now have my own - and I won't lie, I haven't tried modelling it yet, and I'm neither asking for someone to show me how to, but I'd like some headway on what's the best way to approach modelling this asset.
Ok, so I can see it's going to be a poly-sphere, however should I poly-push the shape, block model it or what?
Those are some pretty complex curves that have me trembling at the knees...
Whoops, sorry, I meant I was carving it all the way through the wall to make holes.
I followed the steps (minus the clean up):
However, if I wanted to get a lower poly design, I'd have to lower the # of verts of the splines, yes? Converting my beziers to corners via "normalize spline" rounds off my sharp corners at the bottom (the bottom verts are "corner" but still get smoothed out):
So far, I have to break the segment circled in red apart, apply "normalize spline", weld, then apply extrude which seems too tedious.
In Max, meshSmooth with SGs enabled is a godsend for the base mesh stage.
Are SG's smoothing groups and how does that benefit the model high poly wise? If this is already shown let me know and I'll try to find it on this thread.
How do you make inset shapes look more puffy without making it look blocky? I'm talking about squares and other shapes like that you see on sofas, seats and so on.
dzibarik: You're talking about design, not modeling technique. You need to find photo refs of a real sofa. I've never seen seat cushions like the ones you refer to as "alright" Once you have photo refs, well you just model what's in the refs. We don't model this kind of stuff from pure imagination.
Well, I already did it with refs.
It looks.... not good somehow. It's too CG and it's meant for arch viz ATM and I'm going for photorealistic results.
dzibarik: For photoreal results you need to improve the material definition (lower gloss, mainly) and use environment lights. If you start a thread, I'm sure someone will help you. This thread is only for sub-d modeling.
thanks, I've already had this thought that model is alright (it's just a bunch of boxes, how can you mess it really?) but if I want it to work than I have to place it in the scene and work on materials more. Perhaps lowering glossiness will be enough.
I greatly suffer from that syndrome when I have to work on something to be perfect and make it look worse in the process when all I have to do is to wrap it up and move on the next thing. It have been discussed a few pages ago.
Hi, sorry, I skipped the question the first time around as everything had already been answered. Just check out the last few posts and let me know if you need more info
I checked back and could not find what SG meant or any examples on how this worked with creating a base mesh. Does SG mean Smoothing groups? Could you elaborate a bit more? Thanks!
I checked back and could not find what SG meant or any examples on how this worked with creating a base mesh. Does SG mean Smoothing groups? Could you elaborate a bit more? Thanks!
SG means smoothing groups. It refers to the "Parameters > Surface Parameters > Separate Smoothing Groups" options on the Meshsmooth modifier.
Create a box. Select two side by side faces. Clear the existing SG and set them to the same number (IE: 30). Apply meshsmooth with Separate Smoothing Groups checked. Observe result. Collapse. Meshsmooth with the same Smoothing Groups settings (your prior SG will be retained and applied again).
You should have a very smooth curve across the two faces that you set to the same SG and the rest should be purely box. Very abstract example, but that is the mechanics.
hey guys, would you mind guiding me to if the Edge flow is good or should i redo it somewhere before jumping into the HP version of that part? (which ofcourse will be split up like the Ref.
Decided to do a different helmet, I've created a cage from various reference images, accounting for lens distortion and I'm confused as to how I should go about capping the top of the helmet. I'd ordinarily cap it by crossing the loops over at one point, however it seems to give me pinching.
Also, does this base look close to the reference, is it ok?
I would start with spherified cube. There is no reason to create it by hand. Also you already have lots of vertices. I would say too much for nailing down the main shape.
Nothing in your base mesh matches the concept. Shape is not something to "fix later". The point of a base mesh is to establish all the shapes so you can worry about more or less purely technical matters once you hit the high poly stage.
Add a sub-d modifier. Currently you have blocky 90-degree angles that I don't see at all in the ref.
Also block out the entire mesh, not just parts.
You're going to have to match the shapes anyway, so you're better off doing it at the blockout stage. Otherwise, you will end up spending ungodly amounts of time on this, and most likely end up with a bad end result.
Thanks once again, i'll redo it, should not take that long, but i'll work with a sub-d modifer and use as few control points as i can!
Here is my approach on something like this. Start with a cylinder, scale with soft selection on, Align your subtraction objects edges to correspond with your base, BOOLEAN FTW, Weld a couple verts, Do a few insets and cut in some support loops, viola.
Somehow I deleted the smoothed image with no wires, sorry about that.
Thanks for the reply, and sorry for not replying back for a while. I forgot about posting this here as I moved on to doing other modelling objects. I never seem to think about using booleans. Thanks for this, I'll keep it in mind when I do this again.
cR45h - Can you repost your image? It's not showing up for me for some odd reason. Sorry for the delay in my reply >.> - I would like to know how to fix this without redoing it. Not that I don't mind I suppose but it's good to see other methods to fix stuff.
Very odd, It works for me now. But the day or so before I kept refreshing the page and it wasn't appearing. Thanks for the image btw, but when you say extrude the border I'm a bit unsure what you mean. Isn't it the whole end piece that needs to be popped up? Not just the circled part? Sorry for the bothersome questions.
Very odd, It works for me now. But the day or so before I kept refreshing the page and it wasn't appearing. Thanks for the image btw, but when you say extrude the border I'm a bit unsure what you mean. Isn't it the whole end piece that needs to be popped up? Not just the circled part? Sorry for the bothersome questions.
Replies
again, thank you so much you really went above and beyond to help me out!
I made some topological mistakes early on that gave me some shitty geo to work with later on, but live and learn
Word up, Per.
Of course there are also other ways to work around that but that's my two cents.
Per: Its funny, me and the guys I work with were talking about that right after I showed them the mesh. I was attempting to explain the difference but I'm pretty sure I failed haha.
Tutorial:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=117488
Because right now i see lots of people finalizing the HP , adding the control loops to the edges, submit and client "yeah this shape is wrong, alter it" so they have to : remove the edges , rework the shape on its basemesh stage wich if was smoothed or altered and collapsed will be a pain to re-edit cleanly , and add edges again" , with this method, you just tweak a few verts , use FDD or whatever etc.
Its late and i dont know if im making sense hehe...
It's some great incite and was a really clear way of showing what you meant, and i'm excited to see where it will take me this weekend
I love this concept, multiple times throughout schooling and work, i've gotten a good slap across the head about something i'm overthinking, not doing well, or can do much better, and this is one of those moments, so thanks Per!
Thanks for the examples of the stepped smoothing group modeling, that fills in a lot more 'big to small' steps.
basically, if you properly setup your basemesh well, your highpoly stage will have less headaches...basically what perna has been trying to say in my viewpoint and i'm parroting it because of it's importance.
I ran into a small problem tho trying out this workflow. In the later stage when i begin adding support loops and using a turbosmooth modifier the model shows some ugly artifacts. This happend with every mesh that i tried it.
I have tried everything that i can think of, reset xform, normals, smooth groups, edge weights, uv's. The only thing that fixes it is to export and reimport as obj.
Wonder if i do something wrong when i collapse the initial stack from meshsmooth that corrupts the models.
Works for me usually.
When you collapse the stack do you keep the smooth groups or do you clear them?
Just a thing that i was wondering about if it can cause any unwanted problems to have random smooth groups on a hipoly that doesn't really need them. Turbosmooth shouldn't really care either way as long as smooth groups isn't selected in the modifier right?
My habbit is to clear all smooth groups that i dont see use for but maybe thats ocd?
btw, is there any specific piece of software that only accept quad ? I remember seeing somewhere that a offline rendering software can only import model made by quad.
Perna you continue to be a wealth of knowledge. I'm dead serious about that. You explain SubD very well. One question. Are SG's smoothing groups and how does that benefit the model? If this is already shown let me know and I'll try to find it on this thread.
Good question!
I'm stuck at the bottom of the yellow part. Trying to get as close to the concept as possible.
Is booleaning the way to go? I have 2 questions with that:
1. How do I preserve the contour of the splines when I use "normalize spline"? I'd use "edit poly" but it produces too many verts.
2. How would I quadrangulate my topology afterward? The tutorials online all just leave them as Ngons. All I found was a max script you can purchase but do I have to go through and cut/adjust all the verts by hand afterward?
Ok, you have one thing playing on your side here - it's flat.
Extrude -> Booleon -> Cleanup | since the surface is flat you can cut in some obscure edges to support the shapes, just make sure you try to maintain even poly distribution. It's a different story if you want to curve the surface however, in this instance you'll need to increase the subdivisions of the base mesh before cutting in the shapes. Then repeat as before, booleon the details, clean the mesh then throw on a turbosmooth/subdiv modifier and add a bend/curve modifier below to change the shape. This way the mesh can warp evenly because of the extra desnity of the mesh.
Does it have to be cut in though? You could always normal map the surface and then reduce the specular detail of the holes to make it appear like a crevice.
That way, if anyone sees something they don't understand in your process they can just ask you.
If you do this, you will also get a sense of what kind of stuff needs the most attention in a proper tutorial if you do one later.
You could even use Autodesk's own screencast tool. (After it gets updated to support 3ds max metadata, of course) The metadata part is what is interesting about their program, since it essentially records the tool/modifier being used and the settings for the tool as well as marking it in the timeline of the video so people can easily click to skip to it and link to it with comments.
Timelapses are a bit easier than any other kind of video too, since editing out anything extra or unwanted is simple and it doesn't require detailed commentary.
Ok, so I can see it's going to be a poly-sphere, however should I poly-push the shape, block model it or what?
Those are some pretty complex curves that have me trembling at the knees...
Whoops, sorry, I meant I was carving it all the way through the wall to make holes.
I followed the steps (minus the clean up):
However, if I wanted to get a lower poly design, I'd have to lower the # of verts of the splines, yes? Converting my beziers to corners via "normalize spline" rounds off my sharp corners at the bottom (the bottom verts are "corner" but still get smoothed out):
So far, I have to break the segment circled in red apart, apply "normalize spline", weld, then apply extrude which seems too tedious.
Are SG's smoothing groups and how does that benefit the model high poly wise? If this is already shown let me know and I'll try to find it on this thread.
ah thanks, sorry I'm still learning the various modifiers.
Didn't need turbosmooth as it's going to be a low-poly asset but I got a fairly nice result.
You're not going to bake it down?
Examples:
and another example
Well, I already did it with refs.
It looks.... not good somehow. It's too CG and it's meant for arch viz ATM and I'm going for photorealistic results.
thanks, I've already had this thought that model is alright (it's just a bunch of boxes, how can you mess it really?) but if I want it to work than I have to place it in the scene and work on materials more. Perhaps lowering glossiness will be enough.
I greatly suffer from that syndrome when I have to work on something to be perfect and make it look worse in the process when all I have to do is to wrap it up and move on the next thing. It have been discussed a few pages ago.
I checked back and could not find what SG meant or any examples on how this worked with creating a base mesh. Does SG mean Smoothing groups? Could you elaborate a bit more? Thanks!
SG means smoothing groups. It refers to the "Parameters > Surface Parameters > Separate Smoothing Groups" options on the Meshsmooth modifier.
Create a box. Select two side by side faces. Clear the existing SG and set them to the same number (IE: 30). Apply meshsmooth with Separate Smoothing Groups checked. Observe result. Collapse. Meshsmooth with the same Smoothing Groups settings (your prior SG will be retained and applied again).
You should have a very smooth curve across the two faces that you set to the same SG and the rest should be purely box. Very abstract example, but that is the mechanics.
This will only work in max.
EDIT: i'm getting odd pinching on the corners where the smoothing groups are at after I mesh smooth. Any way to avoid that?.
Reference
topolgy wise for the Blockout
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7741113/Helmet_Cage.rar
Decided to do a different helmet, I've created a cage from various reference images, accounting for lens distortion and I'm confused as to how I should go about capping the top of the helmet. I'd ordinarily cap it by crossing the loops over at one point, however it seems to give me pinching.
Also, does this base look close to the reference, is it ok?
Thanks once again, i'll redo it, should not take that long, but i'll work with a sub-d modifer and use as few control points as i can!
Thanks Perna, that worked really well!!
Thanks for the reply, and sorry for not replying back for a while. I forgot about posting this here as I moved on to doing other modelling objects. I never seem to think about using booleans. Thanks for this, I'll keep it in mind when I do this again.
cR45h - Can you repost your image? It's not showing up for me for some odd reason. Sorry for the delay in my reply >.> - I would like to know how to fix this without redoing it. Not that I don't mind I suppose but it's good to see other methods to fix stuff.
http://private.crash-3d.com/knifetipz.jpg
http://puu.sh/a7phC/0e4fdfa106.jpg
One of these should work.