Need some help on an asset

Simon_____

so i've been working on a project and i have come to a part that im struggling to create 
so basically im trying to have a sphere with these inverted domes in it similar to the ball from harry potter, i cant find a way to keep a good sphere shape and have the domes, if i boolean it it just flat out doesnt work, i've also tried bridging everything then conforming it to a sphere, i was wondering if anyone had any ideas of a good way of creating this shape? 

jakemoyo

https://youtu.be/_fm0v0KMKZw 
I would recommend watching this video series. The model he makes has a lot of the same issues you face with this one. Just follow his basic work flow but with the parts of the sphere scaled -1 essentially. 

hansolocambo

ZBrush's Live Boolean + ZModeler. You should have the result you're looking for in a minute literally. Then you retopologize that and bake normal maps if that's your workflow. As you didn't precise which software you're using it's kind of hard to help. Booleans, as far as my experience goes, work amazingly well in ZBrush, but also perfectly fine in Max, Maya, Blender. 

So if you're having issues with a boolean with any of nowadays 3D Softs that's probably because of a wireframe issue that prevents your 3D soft from computing it. In your case : your "inverted domes" aren't closed.

You cannot compute a boolean with open shapes. As it is, your "inverted domes" are thin like a cigarette paper and are inside the original sphere. You need to cap them and extrude the flat capped portion OUT of the main sphere.

Check that, might help :

https://youtu.be/29ElMuOXaRw

hansolocambo

I did one in ZBrush just to test :

Step 1 :

- A triangle as in the video above to get an idea of where the cuts should go.

- A PolySphere for the ball

- A Duplicate of this PolySphere that I cut with Slice Curve along the triangle sides, and slightly modify to use as a boolean substraction (LiveBoolean)

Step 2:

- I ZRemesh the LiveBoolean result, define Polygroups, Clean the topology with Sculptris Pro Mode and Polish by Features.

- Add some stitches with DamStandard and the default ZBrush StitchBasic brush.

- Add some noise with Deformation / Inflate

- Simple color fill and projection of a "logo".png with the Spotlight.

You'll find :

+ ZBrush Project file

+ Low Poly quickly auto retopologized with ZRemesher and Baked using Knald

+ Normals / Curvature / VertexColor / Occlusion maps

at this address :

http://hansolocambo.com/wp-content/uploads/ZBrush/Hansolocambo Quidditch Quaffle Ball.7z

Using ZBrush's Live Boolean and the outstanding Knald Baker (waaaay better than Substance or Marmoset baking options in my opinion), it's a 20 minutes work.

Hope this'll help you to model your own.

Cheers.

P.S : As a freelance I'm always looking for jobs as a props / assets modeler so if you have any needs or knows someone who does, please don't hesitate to contact me

Simon_____

thanks for the help guys, i've managed to get it mostly done, i also like to check the mesh by turbosmoothing it, just got to figure out how to fix the few issues then i should be done

hansolocambo

Damn I could never work on wireframes this way anymore. 20 years of 3DS Max and Maya. Then I used Zbrush Zmodeler brush for a few days and never used any other soft anymore. It's so much better even for low poly modeling than anything else. Anyway. Good luck.

Simon_____

hansolocambo said:

Damn I could never work on wireframes this way anymore. 20 years of 3DS Max and Maya. Then I used Zbrush Zmodeler brush for a few days and never used any other soft anymore. It's so much better even for low poly modeling than anything else. Anyway. Good luck.

haha yeah im too used to using 3ds max at this point, im also pretty bad at zbrush, i can use it well for sculpting damage and some other small things but i find it really confusing for the other stuff, like i see people starting off a with a sphere and making a car from it, it blows my mind, i guess everyone has a program that they love/can use well 

hansolocambo

3DS Max is, of all of the poly modelers, the one I know the most. But nowadays, literally every 3D software has a pivot point that can be freely moved/rotated/snapped at any moment. No matter if you're working on the object level or the sub-object level (edges, vertices, quads, etc). And this makes a tremendous difference.

I mostly use ZBrush to poly model like I'd do it with Max. But being able to align and place the pivot at any moment and really fast, makes you save countless of hours when working on a project.

Image thereafter is what I'm currently working on. Out of the thousands of ZBrush tools, I use only one to do it : ZModeler brush. Without a proper pivot, doing such objects in 3DS Max would be a nightmare.

poopipe

Can you measure things in Zbrush yet? 

Udjani

@hansolocambo, what's your workflow for hardsurface? low poly then and dynamesh to smooth it? im trying to get into zbrush, but so far looks so much easier for me to make the basic shapes on a regular polymodeling program.