What is the best way to put about 1mln rivets on a HP plane model?

kurt_hectic

Hello,




ehhh, yes, I must to do it- place about 1 mln rivets on my hp plane model :poly142:

I'm a 3ds max user and I wonder if you know any tips, scripts that might help me at this task? I know only one: spacing tool.

I don't want to waste about week on this, save me somehow, please xD
:poly127:

Mark Dygert

Object Paint? http://youtube/ZwHJgfdOFDw

Paint them into a normal map using nDo2?

Pathdeform(WSM) the rivets over splines extracted from the main mesh (create shape from edge selection).

WarrenM

Yeah, probably something like nDo2. Why hurt yourself?

kurt_hectic

Why modelling? because that guarantee good results and I want to bake lots of maps from HP.
I'll try to bake AO from rivets and use that AO to make some small depressions on normal map. Painting is always a bit risky. UV's could have some distortion ect.

Good Job Mark!

I just found the same answer on this video:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SUDBi4gk5g"]Monday Movie #27: Placing Rivets - YouTube[/ame]

Spacing tool\path deform used on paths extracted from edge loops. That will help.
Video shows some other tips, very useful.

WarrenM

If the rivets are shallow, you won't see much difference from baking them with actual geometry as opposed to using nDo2. But, if you want to, hey, have fun.

Racer445

looks prettier on model renders and always impresses clients. also ignores uv streching problems and gives you one less tedious task to do in photoshop. with object painter it doesn't take long either.

if you're on 2009 you can use neil blevins' object painter script in this pack: http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm

Gestalt

Do you literally mean 1 million rivets? Because if that's the case (and you can get away with mostly even spacing) I'd say tile a small rivet texture over the whole thing and mask out where you don't want them with either a mask texture or vert painting.

Another thing would be to break the mesh up into reusable sections, so going by that reference you have maybe five distinct pieces that you can reuse, tile, mirror, and layer.

EarthQuake

Racer445 wrote: »

looks prettier on model renders and always impresses clients. also ignores uv streching problems and gives you one less tedious task to do in photoshop. with object painter it doesn't take long either.

if you're on 2009 you can use neil blevins' object painter script in this pack: http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm

Yeah the uv distortion issue can be huge. If you have a simple object with no distortion its not an issue, but generally with complex meshes you'll have some stretching somewhere, or some areas that aren't scaled exactly 1:1 (which will result in squashed details when viewed in 3d).

Placing these sort of details in 3d is generally very quick with some scripts etc, and you can use instances to quickly tweak all of the rivets at once, something that would be a major pain if you did it all in photosop.

You also get proper normals/ao/cavity/curvature maps without any extra hassle.

kurt_hectic

Object Paint http://youtube/ZwHJgfdOFDw has spacing tool inside , also option to pick an edge from a model to place objects. Has randomisation. So for basic use it's very good. I cannot use it because it's impossible to create precise strokes by hand, paths from edges are better in that case. (I has to modify this paths)

Pathdeform(WSM) - nope. Rivets has to be merged into 1 mesh + it's stretch them on corners.

neil blevins' object painter script- nope

IMO best option:
"The rivets over splines extracted from the main mesh (create shape from edge selection)" + spacing tool. I must to keep spacing. I'll use geosphere cut in a half (It's primitive object and it has that option "inside"). After all probably I'll scale them by local or sth.

Also check SurfaceSnapperUI script, very useful for tweaking.
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm

Thanks you all!

passerby

ndo2 for a few reasons, 1 it;s dead simple, and 2 you get to see thigns in releations to your texture size, instead of baking down a bunch of thigns that are prolly too small to transleate well in the normal map anyways.

[HP]

+1 ndo.

No reason to keep doing it old school with ndo making it so simple and effective. I got other things I like to do with my time than spending hours with rivets on a high poly, like... going to the beach, or just sit in the sofa playing a game.

Kbrom12

ndo2, call it a day

Racer445

EarthQuake wrote: »

Yeah the uv distortion issue can be huge. If you have a simple object with no distortion its not an issue, but generally with complex meshes you'll have some stretching somewhere, or some areas that aren't scaled exactly 1:1 (which will result in squashed details when viewed in 3d).

Placing these sort of details in 3d is generally very quick with some scripts etc, and you can use instances to quickly tweak all of the rivets at once, something that would be a major pain if you did it all in photosop.

You also get proper normals/ao/cavity/curvature maps without any extra hassle.

echoing this. honestly doing them in PS and doing them in a competent modeling program takes a similar amount of time. personally i just find using instances in the modeling program more controllable and gives you very pretty bakes without worry of UV distortion.

Ace-Angel

If you could supply more information on what exactly the piece is, maybe people could help you better?

From the looks of it, you want to make a Ship with rivets all over it? In which case, I think we first need to tackle your UV maps and detail tiling before hand, since neither ndo2 or HP baking will save your life on something like this.

Also, it would be a waste of time to put all those rivets manually on something which won't even bake out properly, unless you plan on having rivets the size of a car.

James Ordner

If this is for baking down to a LP model, your normal map resolution is gonna have to be HUGE to actually show that many rivets!

King Mango

Does max have the equivalent of animating along a curve and using that to space geometry?
Maya has a procedure that I used once where I snapped curves to the geometry and snapped a rivet at the start of the curve.
There is a setting that allows you to drop a copy of that geo at different frame intervals. That was on a curved surface.

For somethign flat like that though I would be inclined to place a group and use duplicate with transform. Could be done in very little time. Less than an hour for sure.

sprunghunt

King Mango wrote: »

Does max have the equivalent of animating along a curve and using that to space geometry?

the 3dsmax spacing tool.

http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/files/GUID-D82476F1-FE3F-4B51-BC73-868B0A28281B.htm

King Mango

Very nice.

EarthQuake

[HP] wrote: »

No reason to keep doing it old school with ndo making it so simple and effective.

No reason, other than the valid reasons already mentioned you mean?

I got other things I like to do with my time than spending hours with rivets on a high poly, like... going to the beach, or just sit in the sofa playing a game.

If doing this in 2d is significantly faster for you than using a paint script to plop down instances, you're doing something wrong.

If you need to make batch changes after you have them all placed, adjusting instances is going to be infinitely faster.

passerby wrote: »

you get to see thigns in releations to your texture size, instead of baking down a bunch of thigns that are prolly too small to transleate well in the normal map anyways.

A. Scale in relation to your actual model is much more important than scale vs uvs
B. Creating detail that will read and will bake down to your specified texture resolution is a super important skill to have in general (not just for rivets)
C. Again instances, makes it super easy to tweak scale if you've made the rivet floaters too small or large

kurt_hectic

Guys, probably image that I pasted suggest you that we area talking about flat surface, plane. We aren't
"Flat" normal maps and baked ones are two, completely different stories.

In my opinion it's almost impossible to put rivets on UV from projected, complex model, and with right spacing, without distortion? No...

Ace-Angel

At the same time, I wouldn't even put all those rivets manually on a piece like that, because each rivet would have to be the size of my fist to be seen properly with it looking like a square, at least from that image, if you're working a generic non-hero piece in game res quality without needing a million texture calls.

I would instead paint/bake one long strip, and tile it vertically.

Or, you could totally forget about the rivets being round and instead put in square rivets and they will alias much better in smaller sizes.

Mark Dygert

Oh, ha I thought the OP was talking about a flat plane also not an airplane. That doesn't change my answer that much but the distortion concerns do raise some eyebrows. Baking in the distortion can really help get it too look right.

It is important to note what kind of rivets on what era of plane, most rivets on planes after the jet age are as flat as possible to reduce drag (at least on the outer skin) so there won't be a whole lot to bake unless you exaggerate them quite a bit.

sprunghunt

you could use zbrush or mudbox to do this - you could do all the detail on the skin of the airplane in zbrush.

onionhead_o

+1 for modeling. like EQ been saying instances makes things easier to adjust and tweak.unless theres a way to instance stuff in PS. this is a good example of modeling your texture( if that makes sense)