Do you use Maya or ZBrush? When modeling ornaments and pillars for a church.

Naoto

 Do you use Maya or ZBrush? When modeling ornaments and pillars for a church like this photo.

I'm not very good at curvilinear modeling, and I'm planning to model church ornaments and pillar crowns as practice.
When modeling something like the one in this picture, do you model it all in Maya or do you create it in ZBrush and retopology it in Maya at work ?

Also, if I want to become an environmental artist, do I need to have enough technical skills to be able to model such a shape manually using Maya?

sacboi

Preferably, more efficient too just subd model all those disparate architectural elements:

A similar discussion - What's the Best Way to to make Filigree and Ornamental 3D Objects? 

sprunghunt

Naoto said:

Also, if I want to become an environmental artist, do I need to have enough technical skills to be able to model such a shape manually using Maya?

I wouldn't try to be "good enough" - instead try to be the best environment artist you can be. Learning to model complex shapes like this in any program will help you when you need to model other shapes that are as complex.

I'd try both ways personally. It's not "easier" to do it in zbrush or maya. Especially if you try to get the same quality of result. 

CheeseOnToast

A hybrid approach is totally viable as well. Try sculpting the basic shapes in zbrush, then use them as a guide for building clean subD topology on top. That said, the figurative stuff in your first image, I would go zbrush all the way.

Alex_J

i'd do it like cheese on toast suggested too. 

Each program has its strengths and weaknesses. If you are focused on learning just try it both ways so you can find your own most efficeint methods.

Naoto

Thank you all for teaching me this.
I'm going to try each of the Maya, ZBrush and hybrid methods.

I was happy to learn from you because I was worried about studying on my own without going to school.

Naoto

I made a part of it based on the third picture.
I'd like to get some feedback on it.
I can't make a beautiful curve and the shape of the leaf is flat.

poopipe

You've picked a bugger of an asset to learn on there. 

I would model everything flat and deform it afterwards. 

Maya has wire deformers or something equally awkward that you can use for the purpose - not sure, I don't use Maya for complex modelling jobs. 

sacboi

Yep, poopipe hit on it.

Would've been less painful to learn off of a fairly straightforward example than one with additional complexity. So perhaps pause this for the moment and tackle the Blender walkthrough posted on the thread, I'd Iinked above which helpfully should pretty much easily translate across to Maya. 

Edit:

Realistic filigree can be a mind bending exercise to achieve, especially if a given shape / object requires curvature of a sort and in that case another useful method I've used previously, is by enabling a spline / curve to generate those particular sculptural forms.

Alex_J

maya 2022 just came out with "sweep mesh" which would probably come in handy.

Naoto

Sweep mesh, I'll look into that! Thank you.