Noob question: what is your opinion about start working in sculpting programs?

kaitoren

Hi everyone. I was recently listening a 3d artist about the differents workflows in art gaming and he told me he has a negative opinion about people who start working in Zbrush or Mudbox and then retopologizing the mesh of an object. He considers it a very dirty workflow. Like put the cart before the horse. 

As a newbie I would like to know the opinions of people in Polycount. If you agree and it is better start to work from 3ds Max, Maya or Modo, or on the contrary you don't agree. 

Thanks for your patience.

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kanga

I started out box modelling characters (and everything else) and first used ZBrush for details. The software has developed alot since that time and I have also done some tests in hard surface modelling in ZBrush that surprised me.

The freedom the application affords an artist/designer is the luxury of  creating forms or designs that are surprising. For visualizing existing concepts ZBrush affords a flexible production workflow with very unique tools. The general idea is that beginners that miss the : box step miss an appreciation of topology. I think that is true at the very start, but soon remedied. I am fairly sure there are engineers that find poly modelling a very dirty workflow, because polys are an approximation of a surface, and only CAD/spline modelling can reproduce a formed line to an accuracy of 0.000001 mm, or something like that.

Larry

that "artist" you say has a very one-sided view of things. High to low usually tends to happen in character sculpting. Would you like to make a base mesh for every character who's proportions are different? I mean, its okay to have a good animation friendly mesh for a base human figure of medium weight but what hapens when you create demons and dragons and creatures? Even if they are humanoids they have a total different topology. What if you created a base mesh for every one of them and then change your mind about some things? You would have to go back and make those changes to your low poly as well. So they let their inspiration take them in any direction with no limits, then they "shoot" the topology on top of it. I am not a character artist but that is very effective from my perspective. Heck even in some columns or gates or sculpted meshes, you just make it and then decimate it.

Triangulation is only bad for creating uv's. Other than that, it is very, VERY flexible form of creating pieces of geometry
EDIT: Triangles are bad for animation as well :P

Neox

Larry said: Triangulation is only bad for creating uv's. 

How so?

Larry

Neox said:

Larry said: Triangulation is only bad for creating uv's. 

How so?

Why, isn't it? By triangulation i mean something like a decimated mesh, not a quad mesh being triangulated (all of these become triangulated in the engine). Do you tell me that if you dynamesh-->sculp--> decimate a mesh, that would be a good choice to unwrap it?

ActionDawg

Firstly, those two statements are not equivocal. You also haven't said why that affects UVs.

That said, the Halo 2 Anniversary GDC talk was about exactly that... They found it to be incredibly useful, and from my understanding even shipped a few models essentially unchanged. I have been using Simplygon to create preliminary decimated models for my work, that I then further process. It's been a great success for me as well.

Neox

What you meant and what you wrote are two different things. you just made a pretty bold and pretty stupid statement without much of a context. So i wondered if you could elaborate, how triangulation would effect unwrapping negatively.

decimation can have its uses, it's very case dependent.

as is the use of basemeshes, in my experience if its not in a concept or idiationphase, productions are heavily basemesh oriented. if the concept is done and approved not super rough i tend to work with basemeshes as well. Of course this comes down to the style, but usually basemeshes tend to deliver cleaner results. if it's a very gritty style, sure go ahead, wing it in zbrush.

Larry

Neox said:

What you meant and what you wrote are two different things. you just made a pretty bold and pretty stupid statement without much of a context. So i wondered if you could elaborate, how triangulation would effect unwrapping negatively.

decimation can have its uses, it's very case dependent.

as is the use of basemeshes, in my experience if its not in a concept or idiationphase, productions are heavily basemesh oriented. if the concept is done and approved not super rough i tend to work with basemeshes as well. Of course this comes down to the style, but usually basemeshes tend to deliver cleaner results. if it's a very gritty style, sure go ahead, wing it in zbrush.

It was bold and stupid for you. Try explaining what's going on to a discussion on someone who says they are new and try to understand a basic thing. Everyone here replies as in depth as they can,and ALWAYS with "it depends" and instead of helping, they confuse people.So tell me honestly, do you believe your answer is more helpful to the OP?

ActionDawg

Mate, frankly you have given bad advice on multiple occasions.

Usually when people say "it depends", they then expound on why and give practical examples. There are also typically links to the plethora of resources this site has accumulated over the years.

Neox

it depends is the correct answer, so yes i do think in the long run it is more helpful than saying "don't do this, it is bad". why is it bad? if you can not back up your claims or if you do not give context it's just pointless remarks.

the question is just not as easily answered as "yes starting with zbrush is a bad idea", leading people into dogmas is bad, no matter if the bold claim is "don't start in zbrush" or "triangles are bad for unwrapping".

there are times when starting in zbrush is perfectly fine and there are times when good preparation and clean basemeshes are key to the final outcome. to answer this matter more deeply it will always need context. I don't know which tutorial the Op is referring to, maybe in the context of it the statement makes more sense.
Just like yours made more sense when you gave a little more despription i don't neccesarily agree to it entirely, but in general, yeah a clean mesh unwraps better than a messy decimated one. But both have their uses and in no case does the triangulation influence the unwrap, because as you said, after all everything is triangulated.

thomasp

kaitoren said:

As a newbie I would like to know the opinions of people in Polycount. If you agree and it is better start to work from 3ds Max, Maya

in my opinion for a newbie the best way to learn and practice is to simply have fun while doing it. can't imagine that putting pulling vertices and other technical tasks before sculpting qualifies as such.

for a piece of production art i would indeed consider a solid preparation outside zbrush with a focus on reusability, animation-friendliness and so on essential and would agree with that artist in saying that starting with a sculpt has the potential to end you up with a dirty result that you can't change or reuse without losing or corrupting work and that such an asset can drive others mad if they have to work with it.

the ways in which these tools can fail you is something you learn from experience, not by following some hard rule though.