micro details in your sculpt (yes, no, why, how)

rollin

Heyho!

So I'm now at the point where I have to decide if I want to sculpt very high frequent / micro details on my model. Stuff like material structure for example.

I haven't really done that consequently till now.

What I would like to know: What is the real use and in which case is it better then doing it later on the texture? Or is it just a way to 'bling-bling' the sculpt

And how do you do this in zbrush (and mudbox) in the fastest way. I know mudbox has a quite nice way of projecting a mask onto the model, but I'm not using mudbox.

If you don't know what exactly I'm talking about look at the fantastic models Hanno did for UC3

cheers

arshlevon

http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Surface_and_Noisemaker

Bigjohn

rollin wrote: »

If you don't know what exactly I'm talking about look at the fantastic models Hanno did for UC3

I do believe the micro detail in those shots was done later in the bump texture. I don't think it was done in the sculpt. There was some interview a while ago where he talked about it, but I forget exactly.

At any case, I don't know of any practical way to do micro-detail like the cloth detail that's not extremely time consuming. You could just go around projecting alphas, or use the drag-rect brush. But I don't believe you'll get such a seamless result. Projection master is another way, but then you have to constantly orbit around your model, and again, you have problems with seams. You'll get tons of seams near each projection.

I think 2D is probably the "best" way to do that at the moment. Since you'll be baking that detail to a normal/bump map anyway, you'd get a similar result (and I do believe that's how the uncharted stuff was done).

Then there's also the question of time. It would take quite a bit longer to do these details on the mesh compared to doing it in 2D later on. And in a production, it's doubtful that time is useful considering screen resolution and the likelihood of that detail being actually seen by the viewer. Not to mention the map-size required to support it.

Please, anyone correct me if I'm wrong

e-freak

i think it's easier to assign a detail normal map (secondary normal map with high-frequency detail and higher tiling values) to each submaterial. sculpt scars and skin folds, but don't paint the individual pores into the skin. you could also create an alpha mask around scars and similar features to control the detail normal map and not have pores over those parts of the material.

Bal

Yeah most of the time those micro-details won't come up in your normal map at all because the resolution isn't high enough (or the texture compression kills it if it's real production work). Working with tiling detail normal maps (and diffuse as well) for each material types and skin really makes the characters pop a lot more, and makes the textures feel much finer than the initial textures actually are.

gsokol

If you want a cool sculpt, sure.

I usually add minor textural details with a photo. I've never had a good reason to spend the extra time it would take to get all those intricate details from a sculpt.

This is coming from an environment artist perspective, but I usually stick the the lowest subdivision necessary to get low/medium res details then do the rest in photo.

Of course..if you want to do it for bling bling, go nuts.

thomasp

i actually find doing this a hindrance for a production asset - not only does your sculpt balloon in geometry density with all the disadvantages of working with a heavy mesh attached - you'll also restrict yourself when it comes to texturing since fine detail is already defined in your normal or displacement map and harder to tweak than if you worked with purely image detail.

only useful for presenting an untextured sculpt imo.

MoP

From a production standpoint, I entirely agree with ThomasP

However if you're just doing it for fun/practise/presentation or if it's absolutely required for some other reason, there are a multitude of ways to do it - one of the ways I've seen used (and used myself) is to have UV'ed your base mesh in a certain way, then use a tiling texture as a mask and simply push/pull the masked areas to raise/lower fine details.

In ZB there's also Noisemaker like arsh pointed out, which seems pretty powerful.

CheeseOnToast

+1 for noisemaker with a carefully planned UV set. It's amazingly good for medium/high-frequency detail such as chainmail, basket weave etc. I wouldn't usually bother with it for detail finer than that though. If you want to mess around with it, here's a tiling alpha I made that I know works well:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1889770/BasketWeave.psd

rollin

thx! I'll look into noisemaker. But in general what you all say is more or less what I thought too. Doing stuff later on the texture(s) is way more flexible. cheers!