Help with my first brush ...

NAIMA

Hello , in my task to make a Barbarian kind of Stitches to simulate pelts linked together by leather laces I wanted to create a Brush ..

The best woudl have been a combo of MMIbrush and Alpha Brush for me I guess , but I don't know if is possible or how to do ... so I have approached this brush creation by making a plane and laces in 3dsmax , then export the base Obj , import in Zbrush , subdivide and rework with move , standard, pinch , folds, inflate brushes etc ... the result is this :




And here is how I am using it with Drag drop



but that is far from my desired effect , that allows me to directly draw a line of stitches that are looking like a barbaric , primitive stitch in continuous draw ...

What do you think I am doing wrong?
How does the one I did look ?
and how can I do to achieve what I wanted to achieve?


thanks for any answer ...

pior

video #4 on that page
http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/lesson/insert-mesh/

NAIMA

but that is an IMM and doesnt deform surfaces, I need to make a tent made of stitched pelts, how that can be of any use?

pior

Well, I thought you needed the stitches to follow a curved path, in which case IMM works great (and can be merged in later with dynamesh).

For an alpha based brush to be nice and continuous without borders, you need to play with the "mid value" setting.
at 5:20 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTSLpEWOSHw

More on stitching :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsdmJcczby4

NAIMA

So what I did is the best it could be done?

NAIMA

This is the Tent I am making and I want to make the cover of the tent to look like a large cover made of stitched pelts , just like the native american tepees ...

then I would like ot add cords aroundthe base like the mongol yurt ...

If I use a IMM I can only put eventually stitches , but I can't deform the surface under to make look like a subdivision of the pelts neithe rI can make holes for each stitch isn't it ? so in order to make the better possible what is the best approach?

cryrid

Alphas require some adjustment, as noted. In addition to playing around with the alpha modifiers, you could try to add a bigger extrusion towards one of the flatter corners that counteracts the depth caused by the seam and forces the edges of your plane to be the center of the mesh. This corner can then be erased in photoshop (likewise, you can probably just take the alpha you have their and give it an adjustment in PS to make the gray 50%).

The second problem you'll most likely find is that you have an alpha that has multiple stitches included in it, followed by a big area of straight-lines on either end. So even if you get a good mid-value going, you're still going to have a segmented look. Generally when you want a pattern to roll along with a curve (either for an alpha or as part of an IMM), you'll want to keep the repeating part as small as you can. When you look at the included stitch brushes (or various ones people have created), generally the alpha only has 1-2 stitches in it.

Lastly, there is another possible disadvantage with using alphas. That's a big tent with a lot of surface area, and if you expect the stitching to hold up any real level of detail then you're going to need a really dense mesh (especially if you want them large and visible). You may even need to retopologize the base so that its polygon density increases the closer it gets to areas that would this stitching. Since the stitching crosses what would have been individual pieces of fabric, you wont be able to make use of the natural seams to take full advantage of subtools the way you could with IMM either. It seems quicker to lay down stitches and their effect on the fabric at the same time and for smaller details it would probably work better, otherwise I don't think it would take too long to use IMM + some manual sculpting on individual subtools and the result would probably look .

NAIMA

Ok thanks , so to be productive , how you sugest me to do?

I need to segmentize that skin tarpaulin into several stitched pelts , like perhaps 20 or more , each with a seamwork on borders , that would take a huge lot of time if I first paint the shapes then extrude inside the borders , then add a IMM lacing then make all oles for eac lacing and manually sculpt on them the skin deformations , also I am not sureI will have also in that case enough detail to be able to sculptfreely .

So how can or could I do that ?

cryrid

I'd start by painting in polygroups to match the large individual pieces of fabric. Extract them into subtools. With the original dome still visible and it's polygroups shown, you could either use that as a guide for the IMM, or use the topology brush to lay down a tempory strip of planes along the seams (which is what I'd probably do). Once you have the stitches down you can begin adjusting them, and do a quick pass along the edges of the subtools to work in some folds. It wouldn't take long to do, and I wouldn't worry about detail as it would be far, far easier to achieve more detail (and a more realistic/accurate detail) than if you were to try and laydown hundreds of stitches onto a single mesh.

NAIMA

Can you explain more in detail what you mean with :

cryrid wrote: »

....... or use the topology brush to lay down a tempory strip of planes along the seams (which is what I'd probably do). Once you have the stitches down you can begin adjusting them, and do a quick pass along the edges of the subtools to work in some folds.....

I have not understood what you meant actually .

Btw I can send u the model if you have the time and will to explain me visually on it how to?

cryrid

NAIMA

Ok but I don't know what's the use of them ? What after I lay down the polygons on the seams?

cryrid

Extract it as a separate subtool so that you have something to insert the stitches along

NAIMA

ok so you basically say that I create those patch overlayers of polygons along the seams ot create sticthes over them , but then how I transfer that on the under mesh?
Sorry I am not able to figurize what you have in mind to get to the final objective .

cryrid

You may not have to adjust it if the subtools have any thickness, otherwise use the move brush.

NAIMA

Sorry I am just not undersanding how that polygons will turn into stitch seams .

cryrid

IMM...

NAIMA

Sorry I still don't get what's the connection between IMM and the patch polygons? shoudl I aplace the IMM brush on the patches? I don't get the point sorry ....

cryrid

Because you can't use an insert brush on thin air. My whole suggestion is to create individual subtools for the different pieces of fabric, and I gave two options for using an IMM brush between them.

NAIMA

ah ok So I can remove after the planes ...

But still Considering that I could place phisical IMM stitches ... Les say like 30 stitches per side of a pelt , how then I would make to do all the 60 holes of the pelts where the stiches shoudl get in? and the folds around? IF I simulate the cration of let's say 30 pelt patches over the whole tent , with 4 sides each 30 x 4 x 60 = 7200 /2 (considering some pelts have a common side ) ....

Should I manually work 3600 holes and relative folds??

cryrid

Yeah. It's really not that difficult or time consuming.

Basic point-and-click hole creator:
Standard brush, zsub, dragdot, alpha 13/51/whatever, dynamic draw size, high z intensity.

It also wouldn't take too long to do a quick pass that puts a few micro folds around the edges either. The entire thing could probably be finished within a few hours, instead of falling into the usual rut of spending days just looking for a shortcut.

arcitecht

You can also use the topology created with the Topo brush and use "Frame Mesh" in the Stroke>curve pallette and it will put a curve all along the border of your planes. Then you can get rid of the bits of curve you don't need, tap on the curve and your IMM stitches will be aligned nicely to the edge of the polygons.