GCMP: why in the hell are you treating this stuff as if it all needs unique detail? Its very very wasteful to work like this, and not only that it is just a waste of time, doing way more work than you should be. Most of all of your detail can be done with tiling textures, with a few unique props for the windows and such cut into them. Absolutly no reason to throw an entire house into zbrush and texture it all uniquely, thats just really bad practice.
Got to admit I'm quite new to zbrush, seen a few vids on 3ds max workflow but never for anything like this. I just wanted to give every piece of the puzzle it's own style and then blend it together with textures and lighting at the end but man it IS taking ages! What would be a better workflow?
Zombie I'm working on, just a test transpose
I used the super average man as a base mesh. I'm currently retopologizing it (I'm not done with the actual sculpt yet, though)
well, lets not make absolute statements here. if you use half your usual poly budget and have a fixed camera, then it's fine
i meant expensive in terms of morphing it depending on the cameradistance, lod might be an option but could pop, maybe tricky dither blending could help there smooth alpha blending mitght be too expensive too. if you have a fix cameraposition with no real depth like something like an rts (not with so much depth as a 3rd person game, where lines that get thinner with distanmce start flickering) it would definitely work. also the outline can have less polygons then the original model, as long as the joints (in terms of animated characters) are working you can get nice results with less detailed modelled outlines.
Got to admit I'm quite new to zbrush, seen a few vids on 3ds max workflow but never for anything like this. I just wanted to give every piece of the puzzle it's own style and then blend it together with textures and lighting at the end but man it IS taking ages! What would be a better workflow?
First off you want to take a look at the big picture and identify which elements are similar, you have a lot of the same trims repeted accross your asset using unique textures, these could all be one tiling trim texture, you have the entire base material that should be one large tiling texture, i know you'll want to have more unique detail here, but thats the sort of thing you can add later with decals and such. You've got a bunch of windows that you could probabblu use a tiling trim texture or two to create, that way you can do different sized windows without having to uniquely texture them all. All of the baked in ambocc/painted in lighting what have you can be done on a 2nd uv channel once everything is all finished, so you dont need to worry about keeping everything unique for that sake.
i meant expensive in terms of morphing it depending on the cameradistance, lod might be an option but could pop, maybe tricky dither blending could help there smooth alpha blending mitght be too expensive too. if you have a fix cameraposition with no real depth like something like an rts (not with so much depth as a 3rd person game, where lines that get thinner with distanmce start flickering) it would definitely work. also the outline can have less polygons then the original model, as long as the joints (in terms of animated characters) are working you can get nice results with less detailed modelled outlines.
couldnt it be done rather easily on the gpu with a vertex shader?
i can only talk about my experiences with airborn as a mod on unreal engine and no real coding possibilities besides what you can script and stuff, sorry
thatDon - thanks, yeah I really am being lazy, I'll come back to the pose once the contract is done.
Everytime i try and use TransposeMaster it freezes my computer for 40 minutes then crashes, so its a real pain to pose all the seperate subtools individually
Although I ended up doing a few project alls onto my main basemesh to cut down the amount of subtools transpose master was having to deal with, the main culprits there the ones made completely in zbrush that had no basemesh so they were stuck at perma highpoly
fatcap:
Great work overall sam, im a big fan of your work
LOVE THAT CHUN LI spinks
Also! ben, that model doesnt seem too different than your previous one. Are you planning on making a whole squadron of pilots? seems too much of a bother to me?
apart from the boots its a completely different model. I have a contract for a bunch of pilots, tanks drivers, soldiers etc so I dont have any say on the designs
showed a intern some z-brush stuff , I havent z-brushed in some time, I really started to understand proportions and details thanks to all the 2d drawings ive been doing
Yea I know still flaws and eyes are messed up but 40 minutes sketch while explaining to the intern and all
My entry for the Modular Facade Challenge over in contests n challenges....you can see more in my thread and see my process/hi poly sculpts for this sucker
Hey Davision, are the blades of the sword line up or are they on different levels? Just trying to figure out how it would close without hitting the blades on the opposite side. Otherwise, cool design.
EricV, that's looking nice. Some of the shapes in the texture become hard to read in your last pic (that UE3?) when they start mipping out, but besides that, looking sweet. Great use of graffiti.
Replies
and it doesn't scale with distance, you could do this but it would be waaaaay to expensive
well, lets not make absolute statements here. if you use half your usual poly budget and have a fixed camera, then it's fine
The only stuff I did was the textures for this rifle, along with said getting crap ingame
and an early attempt that didn't go well
they're 500-600 tris and are all on a 512x256 map each, plan's to replace every weapon/character with 'high def' stuff
Saved to my inspiration folder
I used the super average man as a base mesh. I'm currently retopologizing it (I'm not done with the actual sculpt yet, though)
Vitor, I see resemblance
XD
i meant expensive in terms of morphing it depending on the cameradistance, lod might be an option but could pop, maybe tricky dither blending could help there smooth alpha blending mitght be too expensive too. if you have a fix cameraposition with no real depth like something like an rts (not with so much depth as a 3rd person game, where lines that get thinner with distanmce start flickering) it would definitely work. also the outline can have less polygons then the original model, as long as the joints (in terms of animated characters) are working you can get nice results with less detailed modelled outlines.
First off you want to take a look at the big picture and identify which elements are similar, you have a lot of the same trims repeted accross your asset using unique textures, these could all be one tiling trim texture, you have the entire base material that should be one large tiling texture, i know you'll want to have more unique detail here, but thats the sort of thing you can add later with decals and such. You've got a bunch of windows that you could probabblu use a tiling trim texture or two to create, that way you can do different sized windows without having to uniquely texture them all. All of the baked in ambocc/painted in lighting what have you can be done on a 2nd uv channel once everything is all finished, so you dont need to worry about keeping everything unique for that sake.
I tried to write up a bit here on how i go about identify peices and planing, so take a look. http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=54178
couldnt it be done rather easily on the gpu with a vertex shader?
i can only talk about my experiences with airborn as a mod on unreal engine and no real coding possibilities besides what you can script and stuff, sorry
Everytime i try and use TransposeMaster it freezes my computer for 40 minutes then crashes, so its a real pain to pose all the seperate subtools individually
Although I ended up doing a few project alls onto my main basemesh to cut down the amount of subtools transpose master was having to deal with, the main culprits there the ones made completely in zbrush that had no basemesh so they were stuck at perma highpoly
Haha well.. ya see... he used all his stat points on his upper body
oh em gee, yes!
Onto the next Ghoul School character now...
well airborn is first of all a universe, the story we are telling with Pi
Great work overall sam, im a big fan of your work
LOVE THAT CHUN LI spinks
Also! ben, that model doesnt seem too different than your previous one. Are you planning on making a whole squadron of pilots? seems too much of a bother to me?
The last is a scissor for beheading enemys, can be also used for opening bottles.
Yea I know still flaws and eyes are messed up but 40 minutes sketch while explaining to the intern and all
Nice looking model EricV
Abe Lincoln was your teacher?