Technical Talk

Topic	Replies	Latest Post
uv fundamental Hi, i wanted to know more about the fundamentals of uv unwrapping. What is a good uv, does the uv has to be all straight quads? I tried drawing lines on a character but it came out jagged and dist…	4 Last	Eric Chadwick Jan 2013
splitting smoothing groups for normal maps When separating Smoothing Groups for a normal map bake, I'm wondering if my process would work... I watched Alec Moody's process at 3DMotive.com on how to render a normal map. He used the Text Tool …	46 Last	Eric Chadwick Jan 2013
3dsmax biped animation issue, need help Hi guys, I came across this problem when i tried importing some animations into the mixer mode in 3dsmax. What happens is, the biped gets its position and rotation offset from its origin when i impo…	1 Last	Mark Dygert Jan 2013
Texture Help - Creating Worn leather Hey guys, I was wondering if you could offer me some help, Im trying to create a worn leather effect with this bag [IMG]http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/9278/baghelp.jpg[/IMG] Making it somethi…	8 Last	ichidan Jan 2013
How do I make my art stylized? That may seem like a stupid question, but I'm just wondering if there are techniques out there to do it right. Anyone can through something together and call it stylized but if done right it really …	6 Last	Valandar Jan 2013
Fibermesh - Width is stretched into large poly planes, not remaining as thin hair Hey all, I've got an issue when sculpting fibermesh hair, take a look at this screenshot: [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/JtUtW.png[/IMG] When sculpting the hair, using only GroomBrush1 and GroomHairToss, …	1 Last	Valandar Jan 2013
Biped UI selector for Maya? Hey guys, I'm jumping into Maya to learn how to animate with it and was wondering... Is there a Character UI selector that comes with Maya, or a MEL script somewhere out there? Something like this? …	1 Last	Pola Jan 2013
3ds max 2012 problem with 'Best' Transparency setting Hey Polycount, I have made a set of next gen eyes and in order to make the iris reflect layer work I have to set the global opacity to 0 and transparency to best. When I do this the alpha breaks on …	3 Last	barnesy Jan 2013
maya stretch problem after Uv Mapping like the title says. i made a sword, modeled half of it, mirrored = no problem. then i fixed the UV mapping for the texturing, and after that i tried to combine the parts that i had made ( like bef…	1 Last	r4ptur3 Jan 2013
hide faces/polygons Did a search on this, didn't find any thread titles related to it, so i thought I'd ask. Is there a way to hide faces in Maya besides the isolate selected feature (which also hides everything else i…	11 Last	CyberGolem Jan 2013
Rendering in Marmoset So I installed Marmoset Toolbag 1.04 and have been playing around in it I still can't figure out how to do a render in there but I have set up my lights, materials, background, etc If anyone is mor…	3 Last	Stromberg90 Jan 2013
CGFX alpha masked LitSphere shader Hey there, I'm currently looking into using litsphere shading as a method for texturing. The goal here is to use "decals" which has a normal map applied to it with an opacity mask. Using lit spheres…	9 Last	CheeseOnToast Jan 2013
[Lightmaps] What causes these lighting errors on my meshes? Theres been a pretty serious lighting problem with some of my meshes, which I've been stupidly ignoring for a while now. Now I just want to know what I'm doing to my lightmaps that I shouldn't be. My…	13 Last	Shuriken UK Jan 2013
Turbulence for physx cloth in Maya? I have been playing around with apex cloth in maya 2012 and I love it only problem is the wind parameters for the cloth settings.When I increase the wind velocity,the cloth moves in a direction but j…	0 Last	melviso Jan 2013
Windows - BSOD 124 - When using Shaders Hey to all, I keep on getting a weird BSOD issue (124) whenever I'm doing anything with shaders. This issue also extends as far as using CE3, Unity or UDK when creating shaders. I did a quick googl…	6 Last	repete Jan 2013
A quick question about Dota 2 content. This probably seems really obvious, but I can't for life of me seem to find an answer anywhere. So basically where my major hangup in the whole process for workshop content creation is I can't tell …	2 Last	throttlekitty Jan 2013
3DS max animation rendering problem When I render and save my animation it only a 1 frame .avi (the original have at least 60 frames)	3 Last	Z3R0X Jan 2013
Shader - UV-less Anistropic shader? Hey peeps, As the title says, I was wondering if anyone knew of any paper that discussed the code of a UV-less Aniso shader, which worked more with the pixel/vertex information and Normal maps. Che…	9 Last	Ace-Angel Jan 2013
Drastic difference between renders in Vue and Maya I've created a terrain using Vue. I exported it to Maya and rendered using mental ray. To my surprise, I got really different results from what I was originally getting inside Vue. Then I rendered …	5 Last	Kyle_butler Jan 2013
other max biped figures to load Is it possible to download more biped variations (for humans, not like animals for CAT) just so there is more choice than generic male/female? I just want a crowd in the background and not make them …	2 Last	S-S Jan 2013
Relocating Simmetry in Zbrush? Hello I was working on this helmet ... [IMG]http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/9184/83074420.jpg[/IMG] But I need to work on a simmetry on the snake parts , now those are offsetted from the Z axis …	5 Last	NAIMA Jan 2013
Zbrush - creating normals is giving weird results I have no idea why Zbrush is doing this. I created a sculpt exported the low res out to 3DS Max, unwrapped it, reimported it. The UVW's show to be fine but when I render out Normal or Dissplacement m…	4 Last	Dibbz Jan 2013
polygons flow Hi everyone! I was wondering if someone can suggest me what would be a nice topology for this piece......I'd like to make a clean topology.... here are a couple of screengrab cheers!	11 Last	throttlekitty Jan 2013
Is it always a bad idea to use grayscale to normal map filters? So I know that converting a grayscale image to a normal map is technically incorrect because the converted normal map parts do not actually correctly form to the tangents of your low poly model, but …	4 Last	Macattackk Jan 2013
Xnormal cage Hello. Does anyone know how to export a cage from maya and use it in Xnormals??? I've tried almost everything (that I read on internet) and keep getting the error of different vertex index and the …	5 Last	passerby Jan 2013
Normal map to vertex normals? Is it possible to apply pixels from a normal map as vertex normals of a model? I'm trying to make a cosmetic for Dota2, and don't have access to Valve's high poly mesh. In my case, I need for my mo…	14 Last	wailingmonkey Jan 2013
UDK - Transparency problem Help Hi, I'm currently doing test with materials to improve my knowledge. I've done a simple sand dune and I want to have a fading texture to blend the mesh into the terrain itself. Here is the problem I…	13 Last	Ace-Angel Jan 2013
Photoshop and folders Hello! Is there a plug-in which lets u automatically save into a specific folder when u save under a certain name? For example : I have a folder for normal maps. Is there a way that when I save as ex…	1 Last	McGreed Jan 2013
Mouse: Selection problem. Hey guys, So I have been doing some "cgi" pieces recently and since using v-ray and dense poly scenes I have noticed that my mouse is struggling to select things within max and now outside of max. …	6 Last	l.croxton Jan 2013
Is there a freeware program that can edit vertex normals? I've been using Blender a lot and it works better for me than some of the commercial packages as far as speed goes. However, the fact that it constantly recomputes vertex normals annoys me to no end.…	1 Last	rogueNoodle Jan 2013
UDK - Workflow scale issue Hello, I've began studying UDK and it's going wonderfully so far, although I have encountered a problem. It has to do with scale. I have a scene in 3DSMax, which is a pretty big environmental piece…	7 Last	Elod.H Jan 2013
Offline Rendering question: GPU = faster render? Hi, guys. I'm moving on to the early render tests of my graduation project(which you could see and help throughout my threads). At this stage, I'm considering upgrading my system (even though I'm t…	6 Last	passerby Jan 2013
Zbrush Mirror Issue... Hi guys, currently working on a head and i've accidently turned off symmetry whilst working on the ear. is there anyway to get this across without losing my subdivision levels; i.e. i dont real…	1 Last	Pixeldemon Jan 2013
Texturing - Normal mapping help Hey, I'm still getting used to the normal mapping work flow and I'm unsure how to paint them. Here's what I want to paint: [url]http://www.pasteall.org/pic/show.php?id=43766[/url] It's a cupboard. …	5 Last	throttlekitty Jan 2013
Gears of War 3 Character model question I recently picked up the Ballistic Gears Of War 3 making of book. They show some locust character shots which disply the wires. I noticed that the model is broken into segments Head,Torso,Legs,arms,f…	4 Last	Ace-Angel Jan 2013
Photoshop Brushes (post them here!) Post them here and I'll update the first post with the link. Please provide a contactsheet and the version of Photoshop it was created with. Note that these may not be backwards compatible. Brushes d…	96 Last	Bertrand3D Jan 2013
Exporting a cage from Max into XNormal? I'm a bit confused as how to actually get a cage out of Max and into XNormal. [I](Before I just exported my low poly and then used the 3d viewer in Xnormal, saved my meshes and had them auto assign …	10 Last	trebor777 Jan 2013
(3DS Max 2012) Rendeing animations as .mov I have a project due at the end of the week that requires me to render an animation as a .mov file format. However this file format does not show up on the save as menu in the render panel. Shows up …	3 Last	Z3R0X Jan 2013
Pflow - Conforming Particles Anyone have any idea how to have these particles conform to the surface of the sphere? Like stickers applied to a ball. [IMG]http://i56.tinypic.com/1z4cv46.jpg[/IMG]	8 Last	Z3R0X Jan 2013
Maya 2012 Lag When Painting SkinWeights This is driving me crazy. I started out with a mesh around 250,000 faces and figured that was the reason for my lag. So I used Decimation Master and dropped it down to 40,000 faces. I'm running an Al…	1 Last	Slayvin Jan 2013
Some odd zBrush4r5 Polypaint behavior I've noticed a couple of weird things since updating to r5 with polypainting. Maybe someone knows what's up with those. 1. If I use C to sample a color, it now samples it into the secondary color sl…	0 Last	Bigjohn Jan 2013
3ds max rigging question ...I'm having a great time with this program and especially this release (2009), but I have a newb'ish question on workflow: (...this is obviously my first real attempt at any kind of complex Biped…	6 Last	poopipe Jan 2013
Efficient way to make LODs ? Hello everybody! I am supposed to make LODs for guns and some environment objects. Now my question is if there is an efficient way in doing that other than completly reducing the poly/ vert count and…	8 Last	poopipe Jan 2013
Tris = Polygons? Tris = Polygons? I tried google but there was no clear answer...	22 Last	poopipe Jan 2013
Maya Transfer map problem [diffuse,alpha] Hey polycount! For a while im working on a out door environment. i started to work on the textures for the terrain now i runned into a problem i'm following this tutorial thats founded in the wiki.…	1 Last	m4dcow Jan 2013
Wierd Lines Hi there When i convert my model into the cryengine these wierd lines appears ... [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/lB6js.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/wBsUJ.png[/IMG]	3 Last	CryEngineer Jan 2013
Help Normal Map artifacts? Hey guys, I'm looking for some help with normal map artifacts. I've been learning normal mapping, I thought I had the idea but I'm having issues with this shelf piece I'm working on. Even with a n…	5 Last	Arron Jan 2013
Technical solutions for dealing with in-game roads I wrote about this topic on tech-artists.org (see below) but I didn't quite get the feedback I had hoped for: [url]http://tech-artists.org/forum/showthread.php?3480-Technical-solutions-for-dealing-w…	6 Last	Eric Chadwick Jan 2013
CryEngine, two different types? Whats the difference between the 'FreeSDK CryEngine3 Sandbox' and the other one 'CryEngine3 Sandbox'. Both of these I know have completely different splash pages when you open them up. I am not inte…	8 Last	SlyRipper Jan 2013
Clay Render Tutorials Hey Polycount, Does anyone have any really good tutorials or links to tutorials that give an awesome clay render?	1 Last	BARDLER Jan 2013