Little man and his lynx

Tomtegubbe

I have been working on this for a few days and I've only got the lynx and the hands left. But lynxes are so furry that it's hard to find any good references for how it looks underneath all the fur. Now I am going to cover him in small hair planes so the underlying geometry won't really show. But it's difficult to finish, anyone who is good at lynx/cat anatomy that might give me some hints of how to proceed with this. You think it would be possible to just more or less leave it as it is and cover the guy in hair and have the cat look somewhat authentic. Any criticism much appreciated since I'm kind of stuck.

Vozz

While I can't really help with the hair/fur as that's one of my own weaknesses also; I can critique what you got otherwise. The pants on the man could use a little gravity to them. They are very baggy so in theory they should bulk up a little and have stronger creases and folds where they go into his boots. Overall don't be afraid to add more fabric details in, especially at folding areas like the armpits, and on his hat where it folds over you could add in a lot more creases to really bring the LOD up whilst not compromising the stylized look you have going. Overall a big fan of it all, nice work; will be looking forward to see the finished result!

Tomtegubbe

I smoothed out the folds at the upper part of the pants, improved upon the hands and added nails also added some more folds to the jacket. His hat is made of wool so it wouldn't be very wrinkly. He's not actually wearing boots, shoes and long socks, it's hard to tell. I tried to export it for a test render outside of zbrush but the files are so large that it's not practical to render the models.

I haven't actually rendered models with million of faces before, how is it usually done. Do you export a low poly and a high poly version of the model into the program then subdivide the model and reproject back the detail, or do people use displacement maps or perhaps you have to export normal maps for all the folds and the finer details in the model.

I have mostly worked on game models up til now so not sure how to do this correctly, anyone who knows how to do it? By the way I'm rendering the model in blender and I plan to texture paint him in 3dcoat. Where do I go from here, thanks. Oh and he'll get a proper beard using hair planes, I think that will look good in the render.

Vozz

For rendering this you have a lot of options. You can render it as is in Zbrush, heres a pretty good tutorial I use: http://henningsanden.com/2013/05/11/zbrush-turntable/. You don't have to worry about the turntable part but you can go that far if you would like. You can just render a single shot that you want. Rendering a full turntable with the tutorials settings will take over 10 minutes (my PC took 30 minutes for my last model). This would be great for showing you sculpt in the best detail in an easy way.

You should be able to export your model out of zbrush as a OBJ or FBX file easily if you are under 30 million total points (depending on your computer) beyond that my PC starts feeling the pain. Not many software can handle models that size however. Marmoset Toolbag (what I personally use) can handle large models like this though, you can get a free 30 day trial at https://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/. It's also a pretty easy to learn software and you can find a few useful videos around without much effort to learn it. This is good for rendering your progress to see how it looks in a nice light as well as final presentation renders when you are done.

You can also decimate your model in Zbrush to an acceptable poly count then export that. http://pixologic.com/zbrush/features/decimation/
Documentation can be found here: http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/zbrush-plugins/decimation-master/
This is mostly for if you want to render your sculpt in a software like Blender but the polycount is too high and you want to drop it down a bit without losing detail. I don't usually render in software like Blender/3DS Max/Maya so I can't help you with that, theres plenty of tutorials around though so do some digging!

Hope this Helps!
How do you plan to retop this guy when the sculpt is done?

Tomtegubbe

Thanks I'm familiar with marmoset and decimation. Programs like blender, maya, 3dsmax are best at rendering, zbrush don't compare so I'm definitely going to take him into blender which is the only one of the three I know how to use properly. I guess decimation might be an option since he won't be animated having everything be quads or with proper topology won't matter.

How abou this workflow, do you think it will work?

1. Decimate every subtool, I guess around 100 000 faces or so for the face should be enough and you'll lose little detail and appropiate numbers for the other subtools.
2. Unwrap them in zbrush.
3. Export them and import them into 3d coat for texturing and for normal map creation. More details for the fabric in the clothes, socks etc.
4. When the maps are completed import everything into blender for rendering.
5. Use hair planes for his beard/hair and then he should be done.

You think this might work, I want to try to succesfully get the little man into blender before I mess around with the lynx. If there is a better workflow it would be nice if someone could tell me because this is gonna take hours to do because my laptop is so slow. Only decimating one model will take 15 min so that's mainly why I'm asking so I don't waste time on something that won't work well in the end.

My main concern is to not lose what detail there is in his face and the other models. 

ysalex

I wouldn't decimate, you'll have to unwrap a 100k poly object with random triangles, so you're gonna get weird seams and stuff, making it harder to texture.


If you're rendering in cycles, there's not much point in using a normal map. Normal maps are used to fake lighting in realtime, cycles is an offline renderer that uses ray tracing, so no need to fake your lighting - that's the whole point of a traditional renderer/ray tracer.

Instead, bake out displacement maps to retain the details, which will play with cycles better and is a more appropriate workflow. Bake them out from mid-poly meshes, since there's no point in going too low poly. 

Tomtegubbe

I remember trying to export displacement maps once, when you use it in blender you've got a slider which determines how much the surface is going to be displaced and it's impossible to know how to perfectly displace the surface so it matches the original. I've used normal maps often in cycles, fake lightning is very important and it's done often even in renderers. I tried decimate the models and made a test render, this is about 150 000 faces, some diffuse and normal maps on that and I think it'll look ok?

Tomtegubbe

The one on the right is a decimated mesh the one on the left is displaced with a map. Hard to tell the difference? I don't even know if the values in the sliders are accurate or if the map is displacing the face accurately. Anyone familiar with displacement maps and know how to get an accurate result?

Also I wonder if I'm going to paint directly on the model in 3d coat, I would want to paint on the high res mesh from inside blender right with it's subdivided uvs or do I have to paint on the low poly version of the model? It definitely seems more clean than the decimated mesh but what would be accurate values for a displacement map from zbrush and what to paint the textures on. If none knows I'll ask at another forum, thanks for the displacement suggestion btw.

Still 15 min to generate a displacement map, 20 subtools, 5 hours. -_- 

ysalex

A displacement map shouldn't be too difficult to dial in. That said, if you're absolutely worried about accuracy, use a 32 bit displacement map - vector displacement is scale dependent, but there is nothing to dial in, what you bake is exactly what you will get.

as for the bit about fake lighting being "very important" to renderers, no, faking the lighting defeats the purpose of the renderer. Might not be a huge deal, but I personally prefer to stay away from it.

you can texture however you want, doesn't really matter. Zbrush, blender, 3dcoat, photoshop all have their pros and cons, but this part isn't much different from texturing a game model. 

Tomtegubbe

Wait so if I bake a vector displacement map and use it instead I'll not have to worry about the slides in the picture above? That would be really nice and the texturing. What I meant was, if I get this model to displace correctly, and now I want to paint on it in 3d coat. Would I export the subdivided model from blender or would I have to paint on the low res model and reapply the displacement map inside of blender? Maybe I could do both I don't know. Thanks for helping out btw, much appreciated. 

ysalex

I wouldn't paint on a super low subdiv if there is a huge difference between it and the highpoly, but if the difference is negligible, then you probably won't see any difference. 

And yeah, that's what a 32 but displacement is for, accuracy. That said I prefer 16 bit for rendering, there are trade offs both ways. 

Tomtegubbe

Thanks I'm gonna see what happens if you pull on those slides with a vector displacement map, plus for this post.

Tomtegubbe

I can't get the displacements from zbrush to work, I followed a thread that explains how to use displacements from zbrush. I followed everything perfectly until I got to this part.

You might have to rotate the mesh you apply the map to and then do a Ctrl-A > Rotation in order to compensate for the varying displacement vectors between zBrush and Blender.

Oh really rotate it, how many degrees and in what direction, I tried 180 degrees in the z direction. But right now the displaced mesh looks no different from the subdivided mesh so the displacement seems to have no noticable effect on the model.  Here is what the map looks like, maybe there's something wrong with it?

I really hoped for a map that would displace the model correctly but it won't work, at least everything is unwrapped now, what to do, what to do.

ysalex

Your picture is just black, so it's hard to make a diagnosis from it.

i think what they mean by rotation is that zbrush outputs the maps upside down. I wouldn't suggest trying to rotate the uvs to match though, just hit the flip vertical button in zbrush to flip the map vertically before you export it.

I will also add that I don't know anything about blender or what features it supports for normal maps. 

Tomtegubbe

I think I'll just decimate the entire model, I'm not going to pose it in blender so the topology isn't important, the displacement maps seem to be more effort than it's worth. Thanks Ysalex for your advice, your art is incredible.

Tomtegubbe

Started on the textuing, which amounts to some diffuse textures.

Tomtegubbe

Another update.

Vozz

Why are his eyes censored? 

Tomtegubbe

He looked creepy without eyes, here a beard test. Have yet to comb/cut it properly and I suppose the material could be better but it's getting there.

Tomtegubbe

An update, time for his pet...

Tomtegubbe

Ok I decided to put him next to a squirrel instead, once again not a lot of muscular references when it comes to squirrels but I noticed while doing the beard that you can hide a lot with the particle hairs. Maybe this is enough geometry for the squirrel, the detail will come when the hairs are added. He looks quite fat though which maybe is a bit distracting next to the little man. Any criticism or suggestions appreciated.

Tomtegubbe

Ok here's a quick test, still work to do on the fur, anyone know any good fur/hair shaders for cycles renderer? EDIT: Nevermind gonna replace the squirrel with a fox.

Tomtegubbe

Gave him something to stand on and remade his shoes.

Elithenia

aw... I'm missing the Lynx! because lynxes...lynx... in plural at least!

Shoes look much better now. 
Having just made a squirrel myself, I would say you need to look at how you have modelled the paws and the head looks a bit too big. I assume you are going for the red European squirrel?

Edit: just saw that you are going to replace the squirrel with a fox.  What scale are you making the man to? 
With a squirrel he could be a small gnome/tomtenisse/tomtegubbe ( ) but with a lynx or a fox that he's petting I would assume him to be much larger, since they are bigger creatures. 

Tomtegubbe

Yes he'll have his arm around a red fox so he'll be about as tall as a toddler.

Tomtegubbe

I'm going to give up on this, working with fur on animals is painful, here's the last you'll ever see of the little man and his fox, moving on to less furry projects.

Felixenfeu

I don't think you should give up. Every time you are going to push projects further, you are going to learn a lot. And I think there is a lot to learn here,

Tomtegubbe

That's a nice diss, yes there is stuff to improve on, but it's mostly technical stuff that I could see myself easily deal with but which at this point would force me to redo much of what has already been done. Just knowing of these errors means I've learned to prepare for them.
•Foxes have eyelids despite them being hardly noticable due to all the fur.
•Bake pores and wrinkles from the high res sculpt don't try to do that by painting normals.
•Avoid decimating the mesh, reproject detail into the mesh in the program in which you intend to render the figure.
•If possible try to avoid wasting time on shaders and focus on the maps.

This isn't even really my style, the slightly cartoony theme of the picture. It was a nice learning experience for working with particle hair and shaders but it don't need to be finished.

Felixenfeu

Understandable. Definitely a good learning experience nonetheless