Making seams, and other "framed" details.

Ravenok

Hey all,

I'm sculpting an armor in ZBrush right now, and I find that I'm having trouble making things that surround a shape, "framing" it.

For example:
I have a leather patch, that goes on top of the chest piece of the armor.
The patch has an intricate shape, it's not like a square or a circle, it's more unique. And I want to make like a seam around it, as if it's been sewn on top of something beneath it. To do that, I have to use a stitching brush, and trace around the shape carefully, trying to keep the gap between the seam to the edge of the shape.

Problem is, I have no cintiq, and it's very hard to make it "perfect". Usually things like bezier curves and the pen tool solve these problems, but in ZBrush the closest thing is the curve tool in the stroke palette, but that's problematic because it's not very tweakable and u gotta draw it in one stroke, so it's not the best solution for a very long, intricate path.

I tried masking around the shape, and then flipping the mask to limit my action to the are I'm looking to work in... but there's the same problem there. It's just not accurate enough, it doesn't come out nice and clean.

I see people do it all the time though, and I was wondering how?
For example here:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=272771

See how his shoulder pads have this inflated framing around them, and the chest piece has this inflated part framing the top part of it... it looks very accurate, as if there's some technique I'm missing. A brush, a selection method, whatever...

If anyone could help me out here, I'd really appreciate it!

Thanks.

Macattackk

picture aint showin up. do you atleast have a wacom tablet? just use a stitching brush and do part of it, then lift your pen and start at the right interval away from where you left off and continue around.

if anything just make an alpha that is rectangular shaped as one seam part that is above the patch. then use it as an alpha and just use drag rect over and over again around the intricate shape until you have evenly sized seams which follow the shape and then inflate them in the deformation tab

Ravenok

This is the thread where the model is:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?161166-ZBrush-4R2-Beta-Testing-By-Maxence-Fleuret

Thanks for the advice, I'm not sure I figured out what you mean by the drag rect method.

cryrid

Shouldn't need a cintiq for stitching, just draw it in (I don't think it would be perfect in life either?). Use lazymouse if you have to. That's for stitching at least. If you mean seam as in the physical separation between the leather strap and the object underneath it, keeping them as separate meshes/islands is the best bet, followed by a brush like dam_standard or slash3.

As for the inflated framing, just use the mask-pen tool to isolate the border you want (you may need to subdivide to get the polys needed for a smoother shape). From t here either use the inflate deformation (maybe use group loops first). Do you have any pics of what your current attempt looks like?

Macattackk

dragrect is a stroke type. just load an alpha with a rectangle in it, change stroke to drag rect, hold the ctrl button and click and drag on the mesh. a rectangular shaped mask should appear and get large as you drag your mouse out from where you clicked. just click on the edge of the shape your making and space out those rectangular alphas to make stitches. this will give you a lot of control for placement, size, and direction of the stitches which is what you want.

Ace-Angel

I still cannot understand what you're trying to do, mind posting up an image of what is it YOU are doing? So we can understand better.

However, from what I understood, you have essentially a pauldron for your character, which on which you inflated the edges, and now want to use the noise-maker plugin to create padded detail INSIDE the area surrounded by the inflated polies.

If you have ZB4.2, you can use under Brush the Cavity masking tool. Just invert the line of the tool, and it should mask out any inflated detail vs. any recess. Once that is done, I think you should be able to use Noise-maker to put in the detail.

However, remember that noise-maker is currently Beta, meaning the full toolset is still not released, so it could not work with masking since I haven't tried.

In that case, simply separate your pieces, make sure both are all quads. Noise the inner part, and collapse them again into one layer. The problem with this path is you will lose your division levels, so best advice try keep them all quads so that you can reconstruct levels.

Ravenok

I'll post pics the next time I get to my home computer.

But I'll try to describe what I'm trying to do better...
Say you have a mesh, which is shaped like a square. Just a square, flat plane. You subdivide it up to the millions and then, you wanna make it look like a leather patch. So you'd do some surface noise and some leather texturing and some scratches and so on, and then you want to give it the feel like it's been sewn on top of some torn part of a leather armor. So you'd put it on top of the armor and then, you gotta sculpt in the thread that went around it, sewing it onto the torn area.

In real life you have things that help you do this sort of thing, like rulers and patterns, which you can slowly follow. Also when sculpting in real life, things are usually easier since hand-to-eye coordination is much much better than hand-to-intuos-to-zbrush coordination.

What would you do in that case? while in ZBrush, when using a "stitch" brush with your preferred alpha, having to follow around the leather patch you created as if you're sewing it in place? You'd have to be pretty precise to make it uniform and nice around the edge of the square piece of leather.

Now, if it's only a simple square, it's really no problem. The problem starts when you gotta follow around the sleeve of a shirt or pants, when you gotta go around a belt, or sew in an intricate layer of armor in the front of your chest piece. Around a helmet, bracers, gloves, etc.

Yes, in real life it wouldn't be perfect either, unless it's mechanical detail. But somehow it seems like it's not as clean. If I had to sculpt such a thing in real life, I'd have a much easier time, since the hand is much more stable on the material and you can easily clean things up, smooth them out... In ZBrush, if you create it messy, cleaning it up will be a waste of time. It's better to just find a good method to create it clean.

So that's my question.
It's the same for inflating edges of parts and such, btw. How would you go about it?

I actually found that the best way for me, so far, is to mask the edges out with the curve selection method. But I'm still looking for some method that will be really clean and nice looking.

cryrid

In real life you have things that help you do this sort of thing, like rulers and patterns, which you can slowly follow. Also when sculpting in real life, things are usually easier since hand-to-eye coordination is much much better than hand-to-intuos-to-zbrush coordination.

What would you do in that case? while in ZBrush, when using a "stitch" brush with your preferred alpha, having to follow around the leather patch you created as if you're sewing it in place?

Practice more with the intuos to get your coordination up, it shouldn't be that terrible. Go slow and use lazymouse if you have to. Its sounding like you either have a busted tablet that is wonking out on you, or you're being too much of a perfectionist for something that shouldn't be perfect anyway unless it were stitched by robots for a king.

You could try giving the area some temporary UVs, composting a mask of alphas together in photoshop, then mask by texture intensity, but that sounds like a waste of time for stitches on a leather patch.

Ravenok

cryrid wrote: »

Practice more with the intuos to get your coordination up, it shouldn't be that terrible. Go slow and use lazymouse if you have to. Its sounding like you either have a busted tablet that is wonking out on you, or you're being too much of a perfectionist for something that shouldn't be perfect anyway unless it were stitched by robots for a king.

You could try giving the area some temporary UVs, composting a mask of alphas together in photoshop, then mask by texture intensity, but that sounds like a waste of time for stitches on a leather patch.

The leather patch was just an example, I'm trying to do a shoulder armor and some other armor parts. My coordination with the intuos is ok... but you might have a point with me expecting it to be too perfect. I guess I'll just give it a shot and see what turns up... Thanks.