zbrush pile of gold

NAIMA

Hello , I have a question ... how would you do to create a realistic Pile of gold coins in zbrush ? to create a realistic hill of gold coins with massive size that looks realistic in 3d for each coinand not just picking several coins and layering on a normal map ...

aleks

Suppose, you have to make a single coin mesh and then insert it multitimes.
But, if the pile is rather far away you can simply make via texture (spotlight)

Eric Chadwick

Why does it need to be Zbrush? I would use a physics sim in another 3d tool, dropping a ton of various gold meshes and bake from that. Maybe you could use a IMM brush, but it would be slow.

cryrid

And do you really need to have each coin to have its own geometry? I would think that for the majority of shots you'd be able to get by with a simple repeating pattern (the same way you'd do any other repeating pattern in zbrush), a displacement map, and the occasional insert object for things like goblets and crowns to break up the pile.

NAIMA

but with a texture layered over a hill mesh , it would look flat or like if the coins are glewed on it rather than vertically placed .

Eric Chadwick

If for a movie, you could use a displacement map for the general pile, mixed with unique items.

For a game, same thing except you could get away with a good normal map, and hide the hard edges with detail meshes. You could add a parallax map, but that would be overkill because the coins are so small.

What are you using this for? And how close does the camera get?

St.Sabath

I wouldnt go as far as model each seperate coin,unless you want them to be dynamic,for instance in an animation or game,where the whole thing is influenced by the player/character through physics.
Now depending on what 3d application you are using(Maya for me),i would set up a nParticle system in a shaped container,then spawn the desired amount of particles and have the particle instances replaced by a mesh of your choice,in this case a cold coin.Setup gravity/drag etc,to try and mimic real world behavior,and then convert them to meshes,then retopo and bake(or if you really insist keep the high res,depending on what you are using it for tbh)

k@rt

NAIMA wrote: »

but with a texture layered over a hill mesh , it would look flat or like if the coins are glewed on it rather than vertically placed .

This is the eternal problem - either you go the sculpted/baked/normalmap/displacement route - in which case there is always a danger that it will look a little flat and unnatural from certain angles and when examined closely. Or you go the mesh/geometry route in which case you will end up with something very high poly and expensive to render.

What decides this really is the context in which it is being used, whcih we don't know. What else is going on around the coins in your scene? How closely will the user interact with the coins? What angles will they be viewed from and for how long?. Say this were for a game (for example) if your coins were part of a unplayable cutscene, needed to be shown close up in a scene that could be well optimized in other aspects then maybe going the high-poly route is worth it... However if they appear as part of a large complex landscape in open gameplay where the player is fighting off dragons and orcs, then its probably not worth bothering with high poly - it would be disproportionally expensive to render for something that the player may never really stop to look at once.

NAIMA

Oh was just brainstorming of making a whole huge floor of coins and stuff in a dragons den in skyrim game .
The player woudl get quite close to the coins and possibly wade among them , or climb hills of gold coins ... Its just an idea I was toying with but wanted to first explore the best approach to take , usually I see that most people make just a flat surface of coins normal map and apply on the 3d floor with hills but since it woudl look flat and unrealistic for high hills seen from sides I tought the best woudl be make some modular hills baked out of a real 3d coins hill .
but wondering how to do it with zbrush , or eventually 3dsmax , but there anytime I have something high poly my 3dsmax freezes , while zbrush doesn't .

of course I would have then to bake it .

Shadownami92

I think for a character moving through it, couldn't you do something similar to how some games do stuff like snow or fire? You could have the main coins just be a repeating texture, if the coins are small enough even a normal map could probably work well enough (rather than a displacement map). Then you could use a particle system to temporarily spawn coins moving to the sides. Not sure how it will look overall, but it might work.

I know something similar was used in Zelda Wind Waker for the water the boat interacted with compared to the geometry of the ocean as a whole. Well, I think the water geometry that pretty much stayed with the boat was a little higher resolution as well allowing it to be animated a little better, but I think you get the overall concept....

xXm0RpH3usXx

i dont know much about the skyrim engine, but maybe you could add some particles around your character, emitting goldcoins (which would dissappear after some time)
maybe, if you do it right, you could simulate your "wading" effect

NAIMA

Unfortunately Skyrim creation engine is not that advanced and those features are not built in the game or enabled , the only particles work in the "Flat" water surfaces .
I only wanted to know how to model a hill of gold that looks realistic from all sides and not just a normal map flat texture , the modding I do for skyrim I do mostly to face those design problemsand find a way to portray them to make more experience as well as having fun ...

So since I want to make a 3d pile of coins to bake them after , 2hats the best solution to generate that amound of gold stuff ?

cryrid

Skyrim isn't going to handle a large pile of coins on its own either. The trick will be to use the bump maps wisely, build a good base, and break it up with additional pieces, and maybe sprinkle a few (not many) skyrim coins on top

Mark Dygert

I agree I don't think you'll be able to pull off a pile of coins with physics, there will need to be some trickery going on for that to work. Also... people can't swim or wade through coins like Scrooge McDuck, it isn't water or even snow or sand and people will walk on top, they might slip a bit and create some minor deformation (but I'm not sure skyrim is set up to handle that).

If you are trying to recreate a realistic scene and what you are trying to do isn't realistic, I think you need to adjust your expectations, not only of what the engine can do but what is realistically acceptable in a scenario like the one you are proposing.

For modeling I personally would do what others have suggested use Max to scatter some fairly large coins on the surface. I'd use a few techniques.

1) Use Particle FX to spawn coins on the surface of a mesh, its a crazy simple particle set up, people use it all the time for leaves on trees.
2) Use object paint to paint/scatter coins over the surface of a mesh.
3) Use physics to drop coin meshes onto a surface, this is a very standard practice for creating piles of rubble. Then retopo the pile (probably with paint quads turned on) to help preserve the features that normally go flat, optimize the retopo so it fits in the budget and place them in the scene.
4) Create some specific meshes that are piles of coins (maybe stacked coins as 'hero meshes' or just hilly piles with well defined silhouettes to cover areas that might look flat. Maybe create some other props like golden statues, chests, candelabras that kind of stuff and place them where things are flat.

NAIMA

Thats the idea ... I dont intend to create a wade into sea of coins system as the engine is not able to but just bake a 3 -4 different hills of hp gold hills but how to create the hp versions to bake then? Do u know any tut of pile of items? Ofc I would retopo it all after ... As a simple flat surface seems kibd of a too simple approach.

Mark Dygert

MassFX rubble pile tutorial (using massFX in max2012+)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4whEGL7eC0
MassFX was added to max2012 and higher, it replaces Reactor.

Neil Blevins rubble pile tutorial (using reactor in max2011 and lower)
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/piles_of_rubble/piles_of_rubble.htm
Neil is a Technical Director at Pixar and they used similar techniques for the piles of rubble in Walle

Particle Effects
http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?f=291&t=76317
To place a group of meshes over the surface of another mesh. You can use vertex paint or any kind of map to define where things go and how dense things are. White = high density, gray = medium density, black = no density.

Object paint
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwHJgfdOFDw
Autodesk's intro to object paint, it was included in max 2011+.
Neil Blevins has a really good object painter script available on his site for older version of max, it works in newer versions also and in quite a few ways trumps the one that is included in max.

cryrid

NAIMA wrote: »

a simple flat surface seems kibd of a too simple approach.

Its not flat after the displacement. I can't see there being any difference in the result other than the extra effort that would be wasted