Teach me

Makkon

Okay, guys. I trust your advice and skill more than anyone I know on this subject. I'm rusty, 2 years of oxidization. I'm very behind, as you all know. I need you guys to help me out, to point me in the right direction. Links to tutorials, explanations, anything you can do to help me out.

Couple of questions:

-I've seen some simply superb high poly models posted on this site, and the authors seem to post it as though it was made effortlessly (I might have misunderstood). What is the new method for highpoly modeling? It looks like entire characters are being modeling in a very seamless and streamlined way, I want to know what that is and how to do it.

-there seems to be some resources I missed, the ffXII model viewer to be one of them. I'd love to have any resources like this.

-Seems to be a few new facets to textures that I'm n
-anything else I might need to know? Talk to me like a noob. :P

If I have any more questions, I'll ask here. Thank you guys so much!

new questions:
-what is the method for making highpoly cloths? I've seen some of this done in zbrush, How do you do that?

Bokaja

Well that's quite a mouthful...but to sum it up here's some examples and tips of current and nextgen workflow:
Marcus Dublin - http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=5000
Ben Mathis - http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/workflow.htm

Makkon

Wow, thank you Bokaja! I just read through it and that does a great deal of good for me! Thank you! This answered a bulk of questions I had.

Another question that came up (and I'll add it to the top)

-what is the method for making highpoly cloths? I've seen some of this done in zbrush, How do you do that?

Nizza_waaarg

dunno if i'm the best person to answer but figured i'd throw my 2c in :P

as far as clothes modelling (or pretty much all organic modelling), you can just take a 3d primitive into zbrush or mudbox and sculpt from there... or make as detailed a base mesh as you'd like (can be fun to work from somthing very simple tho). I'll add more vids if/when i find some (used to have more ^^)

MM's new cloth sculptin vids are pretty cool... also the gnomon vid is pretty good but costs money unfrotunatley (it is a really good general workflow tho)
-http://boards.polycount.net/showpost.php?p=1054991&postcount=60
-http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/523/


also you might've missed the marmo release, very cool if you haven't checked it out yet :P
-http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=61346


can't imagine you've missed that much else really, sculpting is still sculpting afaik :P

Makkon

Nizza_waaarg: You nailed what I needed to know. Wow, zbrush is certainly not user friendly. I always thought somehow zbrush had a clothing mode, where you could construct a sheath over another mesh. I guess it's really not changed hardly at all. MY challenge will be to relearn zbrush, which will probably be harder than anything else I have to do. Thanks again!

And Marmo looks cool, I'll have to check that out.

conte

yea Makkon, lookin forward for something great from you.
will you model those awesome rawbots from your sketches?

metalliandy

There are some awesome tutorials over at Eat3d...i really suggest you check em out.
http://eat3d.com/training_videos/dvds

And some great free ones...
http://eat3d.com/free

Hope that helps a little

CheeseOnToast

Nizza_waaarg: You nailed what I needed to know. Wow, zbrush is certainly not user friendly. I always thought somehow zbrush had a clothing mode, where you could construct a sheath over another mesh.

It sort of does. Look into "mesh extract" in the subtool palette for this kind of thing.

MoP

Yeah, Extract is awesome for clothing bases. Then just quickly sculpt folds on top. As long as your knowledge of how cloth folds is good (and/or you have good reference photos) then you can sculpt good cloth in no time.

Makkon

conte: That's certainly the plan, though I don't know how much free time I'll have soon.

metalliandy: Wow, thanks! I'll have to wait some time for the dvds (Still need a car and a new computer). These will certainly come in handy. I opened up zbrush again yesterday and had a brain fart. Totally don't remember how to use it.

CheeseOnToast and MoP: Ah, there is an option for that! That's great! I'm thrilled, actually! Thanks!

Are there any tutorials on hair and fur? Doesn't necessarily need to be zbrush related.

Steve Schulze

When creating clothes in Z, you'll get a much cleaner mesh to work off if you use the retopo tool with "thickness" turned on than you do by extracting directly from the surface of a mesh.

I'll agree with Metalliandy on the Eat3d ZBrush DVDs. They're invaluable, even if you've already got a decent understanding of the program.

Slum

Oh hey, welcome back. I remember when you said you'd be gone for 2 years. Time flies

Makkon

Jackablade: I'll need to try that. My issue is that I hate with a fiery passion zbrushes's counter-intuitive interface. It's just plain confusing. I don't know if anyone posted a thread for zbrush basics (I'll look through is all again) but that's what I really need right now.
As for the dvds, that'll have to wait.

Slum: Hey! Thanks, glad to be back. It's seriously feels like it was a dream, almost like it didn't happen. It went by WAY too fast, and now it's gone. But it's very good to be back!

Question: What happened to the ff12 model veiwer? I was looking forward to that.

Gav

I made this about a year ago, not sure if it helps much more than what has already been posted:

http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorials/bishop/