Sculpting a Cave in Zbrush with Dynamesh And Mask Outside Shell Cleanly

Cortes

Hey guys. I'm trying to sculpt a cave environment for an animation. I have watched a number of great tutorials out there but I am still stuck on some beginning stages in Zbrush.

I want to create a 'shell'. There seems to be a number of ways to do this but each one has its own problem.

I'm going to do it this way as its the most recent way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZVDR0EE6mc

I want to create an inverted sphere for the cave, backface mask the outside of the sphere (because the camera never sees it obviously) and be able to sculpt without zbrush collapsing everything. So I'd like to mask the outside of the cave without it penetrating.

When I tried to make a shell in an outside app, zbrush still sculpts through on the other side and I know that will give me headaches down the road when I retopo.

Is there a way to both:

1.) Make the 'shell'
2.) have the outside of the shell masked (when I mask, it masks through on the inside, even when thickness is added)
3.) and have it single sided?

If I can't do it with single sided, I'd like to know how to mask the outside of the cave (that the camera doesn't see) only without the mask penetrating the inside where I want to sculpt.

Thanks!

Cortes

This is what I've done before. As you can see the sculpting blows through the whole mesh. I'd like to be able to cleanly mask the outside but the masking penetrates just like the sculpting.

rory

You can setup polygroups in another app by splitting the faces of your model. Then you can mask by polygroups. Hopefully this illustrates it well.

Rather then the way your trying to do it. I would personally build the cave of smaller meshes. Rather then one big connected sculpt.

ActionDawg

Perhaps I'm missing something important about the shell, but why not just sculpt your cave and then add the shell afterwards?

Joopson

Why not just use a tiling texture, and handle the geo for the cave itself in a program better suited for it, like Maya or Max?

Edit: Also, you're looking for the Brush's BackfaceMask setting, in the Brush menu, under Auto Masking. Turning it on will prevent the brush from affecting the opposite sides of a thin mesh.

Mongrelman

You can also try 'polygroup by normal' and adjust the angle if necessary, that shoud split your mesh into 3 polygroups (inside, rim and outside). Or use the lasso select tool to hide edgeloops of the rim on the lowest level, then use autogroup to put the inside and outside in their own polygroups.

Cortes

somedoggy said:

Perhaps I'm missing something important about the shell, but why not just sculpt your cave and then add the shell afterwards?

I guess I don't actually need the shell do I? It was giving me some kind of problem that I now don't remember. Will have to fiddle around some more if it comes back up.


Thanks for the help guys.

Cortes

rory said:

Rather then the way your trying to do it. I would personally build the cave of smaller meshes. Rather then one big connected sculpt.

I am just making the main room itself into one sculpt. I will break up the elements (there's a little doghouse for the hellhound character, stalagmites, rocks etc) into subtools.

Cortes

I'm still having some problems. Zbrush is so friggin annoying. Why can't this be simple to set up? 

I'd like to move around the walls of the cave in Zbrush because I don't have a solid plan for what the room looks like yet. But I can't do that with a shell (the walls intersect) and I can't do it with dynamesh apparently either. I need help

Cortes

somedoggy said:

Perhaps I'm missing something important about the shell, but why not just sculpt your cave and then add the shell afterwards?

What do you mean? The problem I'm having is how to get a good workflow for sculpting the main cave room in the first place. Zbrush is putting up lots of roadblocks on these early stages for me.

Cortes

I think I might try something like this: http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/2263-environments-in-zbrush-snowy-cave-zbrush-by-glen-southern-environment-ice-snow

But I'm not sure how he gets the BackFace Masking to work on his tubes...

Cortes

Basically, I want to brainstorm a good cave room setup in Zbrush but Zbrush is in my way with its fussiness. I didn't realize how complex this would be. I thought it would be pretty simple to set up...

Joopson

Zbrush isn't putting up roadblocks— it just isn't really the right tool for doing something like that.

If you make a tiling rock texture (by sculpting on a plane, in zbrush, with wrap-mode set to 1, ( http://arifcreations.com/blog/2012/01/21/tileable-rock-texture-in-zbrush/ )), you can then apply it to a cave shell made in max or Maya or whatever. Then you can subdivide the shell a little, and use the height-map from your tiling texture to deform the geometry, to give you some of that sculpted feel.

You're going about this very inefficiently if you're expecting to be able to sculpt the inner parts of a cave in zbrush problem-free. Zbrush's fake camera and general workflow is awkward enough at the best of times.

Cortes

Would it be better then to sculpt out the main cave room in a standard modeler then? I think I could swing that... it's just the blocking out parts. 

Yeah, that sounds like it would work. Thanks so much!

Cortes

I just wish I could do this in Zbrush... I tried doing this in Modo and it's just not working out. Gdi.

I don't know what other apps I could use to get the damn room set up in the first place... 

Cortes

Yknow what, I just need to draw it out on paper better and just model the damn thing in Modo, don't even bother with dynamesh.

Thanks Joopson! Your method seems to be a good plan of attack.