Silo 2 top tip.

Rick Stirling

Apologies if everyone knows this already...but this had to be shared.

I'm using Silo 2.

I was creating a low poly mesh from a high poly sculpt. Target model was around 1200 polygons (triangles), source was 300,000 or so.

I cloned the highpoly, and removed levels of sub-d from it to give me a low poly base to work from - I think it was around 3000 quads.

Anyway, after cutting out the details, I was using surface snapping and tweak mode to snap the low poly close to the high poly. Still quite a process.

Then it hit me.

Surface snapping, symmetry enabled smooth brush.

The lowpoly model basically just melted over the high. I brushed and massaged a low poly mesh around a high one.

Utterly stunning.

Joseph Silverman

Cool, great idea. May save me a lot of time getting the lowpoly for my dominance war character ready.

CopperHaze

Did not know that was possible.....that is AWESOME!

mvelasquez

Cool, I havent tried using the smooth brush. I've always used soft selection with snapping with mediocre results. The verts perpendicular/backfacing to my view would always give me problems. I'll try using the brush when i get home.

MoP

Holy shit. Great idea Rick, I will try that out tonight!
Can you describe the exact settings you were using?

mvelasquez

Hmm, I can't seem to get the brushes to respect any snapping what so ever. The closest I can get is softselection. beta 7a btw.

Rick Stirling

It seems to work better on my mac than the PC version.

This is my updated process after showing peopl at work:

1. Use Optimize in max to rip out the unnecessary detail from the high poly - a tip I got for Ror. I saved this as mid poly.obj. (My high poly legs went from 1/2 million polygons to about 60,000)

2. I took a set of well built low poly legs - about 1200 polygons.

3. Loaded both into Silo

4. I set the mid poly to semi transparent, selected the low poly legs and enabled surface snapping.

5. Using multi selection mode, I quickly snap the verts/edges/faces of the low poly to the mid poly, to block out the main shapes.

6. Using the smooth brush, I gently iron out the nasty lumps.

Thermidor

We just had a quick look at this at work. It does work, and with a little tweeking its obviously gonna get good results.

It seems similar to Mayas Live surface stuff, but quicker.

Snowfly

Great tip, thanks for posting! You get an interesting variation using the smudge brush + surface snapping.

LoTekK

Like mvelasquez, I can't seem to get the brushes to respect snapping in 6c and 7a (unlike tweak mode, it doesn't matter if the lowpoly mesh is "above" or "below" the highpoly mesh, it just doesn't snap).

Any other specific settings you may have changed here and there that would affect this?

Snowfly

i couldn't get it to work on pc either teck, only on mac. but we know tweak + surface snap is the man's man's way to retopo.

LoTekK

Ah well, I suppose if I have anything particularly troubling that needs retopoing I could always steal my powerbook back from my sis.

For now, the man's man's way it is!

Michael Knubben

You could try if the new beta fixes the problem, it's out now for mac and pc:
http://silo3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9659

ScoobyDoofus

Those Nevercenter guys are my heroes.
Im just loving Silo, and the updates to the Beta a frequent and numerous. I barely even touch Max these days.

Rick Stirling

I get on everyones tits at work trying to convert them to Silo.

I'm like a street preacher.

But with sexy clothes and a devilish attitude. And I've had sex with a lady.

Seriously, it's a lovely little package. Pretty much all the artwork I've built at home and work in the last 2 years has been in Silo.

rooster

hmm theyre still a little ways off finished

LoTekK

Unfortunately the new beta doesn't fix the problem of displacement brushes not respecting surface snapping. And there still remains the issue of symmetry and soft-selection not playing well together, among other things. That said, I've been loving silo since I tried it out a few months ago.

Michael Knubben

The model corruption still happens for me, as well. I was hoping that one'd be fixed in this one.
Hurray for random spikes coming from your subdivised model

mvelasquez

yay i just got the new beta. I love the new rotation manip. The last one was completely unusable.
<--Silo Preacher as well

Rick Stirling

The UV toosl are superb. The pelt mapping is great on low poly meshes as well as higher poly, but if you don't like it - dont use it. You can turn off the pelting/rubberband and just move faces/edges/verts as much as you like.

There is one MAJOR difference between the UV editor in Silo and Max - Silo has no UV editor mode really. In Silo you lay out your UVs by modelling on a flat plane. It looks like a UV map, but there are no UV tools - just modelling tools. Anythig you can do to a mesh, you can do to uvs. Relax. Smudge. Pinch. Scale. SOFT SELECTION!

MoP

You can soft select UVs in Max ¬_¬
I've always wanted to be able to spin edges or cut new edges in while UV editing, I guess that should be possible in Silo too, although I haven't got around to using the new UV tools at all yet.

ironbearxl

It's definitely worth every penny.

The cut/spin tool don't work in the UV window (haven't tried on Mac yet), but the brushes and flatten tool do

rooster

my main gripe so far is backface culling doesnt seem to affect selection? unless I'm missing something. so the create poly tool for example, when you get round the other side of your high poly you keep accidenally connecting polys with verts on the opposite side of the model, and there seems to be a bug that hitting undo undoes all your work *except that accidental connection across the model

I'll get around to submitting it soon

Michael Knubben

Roo: did you make sure to set your lmb (or whatever you use) to select um... whichever the option is not to select through?
I was your eloquent problem-solver for today, thank you, have a good night.

I can't help you with the bug though (that is, if i even helped you with the first thing, heh), allthough i've had something similar with the spiky geometry popping up. When you undo whatever you did to make it start, it just pops up in a slightly different way, heh.
It's the one thing that still regularly bothers me. The rest of it is steadily becoming more stable. They finally fixed the edge extrusions now, which is nice.

CheeseOnToast

Spiky geo is the result of bad topology, usually. I'm not questioning your skills, but Silo can make it a bit too easy to make non-manifold, lamina or other dodgy bits without noticing, especially if you use tweak along with extruding edges. The new beta versions are a lot better than 1.42 for this stuff, but it can still happen. I use the "select special geometry" tools, mostly "select edges with faces >2" to find most bits of naughty geo.

Michael Knubben

You question my skills!

Seriously though, it's a bug. It tends to happen when merging things (which also tends to crash on me every now and then), or when adding geometry.
There are probably ways to avoid it, and i'm trying to find alternatives all the time, but it's a pain.

LoTekK

i kinda agree, usually the only time i get spiky subd is when my geometry is a little screwy, whether it's reversed normals, duped verts, etc.

Michael Knubben

alright, alright, i suck!
Haha. I'll check later to see if i wasn't just sloppy. One thing i've noticed where odd geometry can cause problems is when you bridge edges from two seperate objects, as the bridged geo gets created twice, but i don't think i did that anywhere on the problematic models.
I'll open up a few abandoned files and see if i find any fuckups on my behalf. If i can't find them, i'll just upload them and see if anyone else notices problems, alright?