Hey John. I'm surprised you didn't get any hits yet. People tend to not comment on your P&P posts if it's your first post... kinda pretentious around here like that sometimes - cliquey if you will.
I think this will help you a lot with your joints.
I'm no expert on characters whatsoever, but I think you could probably optimize some of the geometry on this guy and do a lot of it with normal mapping.
Also, I would recommend you don't take this only in to zbrush. There's a lot of things that would probably be better off left to hard surface modeling (face mask, belt buckles weapons).
eh i've zbrushed shitloads of triangles. Ngons are the problem with zbrush.
Zbrush will divide a quad into 4 quads and a triangle into 3 quads, but the 3 quads wont smooth... no big deal because the next subdivision level will divide that into 12 quads.
Only problem you will have is with smoothing, which can quite effortlessly be painted out in photoshop...
Hm, I'd err on the side of what Fritz said, generally triangles in ZBrush can be a pain - I have heard several people mention bugs where their mesh just goes crazy and throws vertices off into infinity, this only seems to happen in meshes with triangles.
Generally it's fairly easy to get rid of triangles for the most part, and I'd say you've probably got too many polys in your base mesh initially anyway, optimising it down and quadrangulating it is only going to help in your ZBrushing.
Also it seems strange that you've made the whole mesh and now are going to take it into ZBrush ... does that mean you're going to ZBrush the armour, helmet, knee pads too? If so, those triangles are definitely going to hurt you, since you'll be wanting smooth, controlled surfaces, and triangles will make that very hard. Painting them out in Photoshop afterwards (what Pope Adam is saying) is something I'd always try to avoid except in the worst case - it'll probably waste more time doing that and you'll end up with a result that doesn't look as good.
Generally those things are better off modelled in highpoly in max/maya/whatever you're using, you'll get more control and will end up with a nicer contrast between the organic zbrushed work and the hard, clean sub-d modelled work.
Generally trying to zbrush everything is going to either end up looking blobby, or take bloody ages and waste time - there's a reason that pretty much everyone working on normalmapped games does hard surface stuff in sub-d and sculpts the organic stuff. There's no need to use ZBrush for everything, and in fact it's often counterproductive to try and do so.
Then again I might have read your intentions wrong and this is already what you're planning!
Either way, the model looks like a good start and while the concept is a bit generic, if it's executed well it could be a great portfolio piece.
....I'd say you've probably got too many polys in your base mesh initially anyway, optimising it down and quadrangulating it is only going to help in your ZBrushing.
Why is this the case? I'm a total noob to sculpting and was wondering.
Does this have to do with the exponential increase of polygons due to subdivision in the sculpting app?
If your model has 6,000 polys and you subdivide twice you have 100,000 polys. What's the difference between a model that is subdivded up to 100,000 polygons and a model imported at 100,000 polygons? Logically, isn't this akin to skipping a few subdivision levels?
Also, John Bingham, it would be nice if you could fix your image so it doesn't break the forum. It sucks to have to scroll sideways to read peoples' replies.
Don't quote me on this one but I think you get better performance out of the program if you keep as many "sub-divisions" within the program (ie import small and subd upwards). I can't really comment much on the model because it's not in my expertise! But the concept looks cool. I like the hockey-knee-pads and the gas mask.
wow I posted this a week ago and its finally up. anyway, yeah I agree this model is a bit generic but I wanted to start off with something on the easier side to get a feel for the work flow. to clarify I have broken him him up into pieces, hands, feet, head, torso, etc... rather than importing the whole thing into Z brush. and I haven't had a single issue with triangles yet. (think that was a problem with older versions) I'm mostly using Z brush to establish all the folds and wrinkles in the clothing and getting a lot of the bigger details worked out before I paint the textures. I will be posting my z brush work by the end of the week.
Triangles is not "an issue with older versions of ZBrush", it's an issue with subdivision in general, so will affect any sculpting program (ZBrush, Mudbox, Silo, blender, whatever). Basically it's just not a uniform way of subdividing the mesh, so you will end up with "poles" which cause pinching of the mesh and will be harder to smooth out than regular quads. This is a fact.
If you haven't hit any problems with them, then good for you... but I can guarantee one day you'll be sculpting on a really important area and you'll find a triangle in your base mesh is really screwing up how well you are able to sculpt on that part
Hmm great work! I'd love to recreate some of this work and modify it alot... i have supreme trouble creating humans.... i always get something out of proportion.
I agree with pope about the cliquey thing(never had to spell that before), but in all honesty I think the bleeding heart soul of polycount only comes out when there is obvious areas to improve upon that get beat on like a dead horse. or the work is so absurdly awesome everyone had to usher an asspat. Thats why I like poly count though, -you can get a pretty good idea of how good/bad your work is, with just a small amount of people looking over it.
pretty much mop nailed it with the tris thing. Its a good habit to try and keep quads as much as possible, not only for sculpting but for animation deformation. Granted a tri isn't the end of the world, but too many tris is.
so why not circumvent the whole issue by keeping your tri count down (also you`l find modeling much easier when you go to add loops and whatnot if your whole model is quads)
dude welcome. crits kk your proportion looks good which is great since thats where most people go wrong to begin with. ok crits now, i see right now its almost all one mesh. this isnt ideal if your going to bring it into zbrush because the more submeshs you have in zbrush the higher poly you can get your details. Also remember that your base mesh you apply your n map to has to have the same uvs as the basemesh, but you can add edgeloops say around the top of the boots and knees as long as you dont change the silhouette or extrude its ok, also this will make the smoothing in zbrush much less diviant from the model which you are going to apply it to, saves some retopoing.
as for the topology in general avoid tris unless you meant to have them there in flex areas. however for the most part your model has nice even squares which should give you a great surface for sculpting. gl will be following this one
Also remember that your base mesh you apply your n map to has to have the same uvs as the basemesh, but you can add edgeloops say around the top of the boots and knees as long as you dont change the silhouette or extrude its ok
This is wrong. You can render a normal-map (even out of ZBrush, although I'd recommend using either Max/Maya/XNormal) to any arbitrary mesh with any UV layout. The base mesh doesn't need UVs at all if you don't want them.
Replies
Anywho, it looks pretty good so far, the base mesh is really solid. Did you look at this thread yet?
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=54527
I think this will help you a lot with your joints.
I'm no expert on characters whatsoever, but I think you could probably optimize some of the geometry on this guy and do a lot of it with normal mapping.
Also, I would recommend you don't take this only in to zbrush. There's a lot of things that would probably be better off left to hard surface modeling (face mask, belt buckles weapons).
Good luck, post some updates!
Zbrush will divide a quad into 4 quads and a triangle into 3 quads, but the 3 quads wont smooth... no big deal because the next subdivision level will divide that into 12 quads.
Only problem you will have is with smoothing, which can quite effortlessly be painted out in photoshop...
so..
no big dealz.
Generally it's fairly easy to get rid of triangles for the most part, and I'd say you've probably got too many polys in your base mesh initially anyway, optimising it down and quadrangulating it is only going to help in your ZBrushing.
Also it seems strange that you've made the whole mesh and now are going to take it into ZBrush ... does that mean you're going to ZBrush the armour, helmet, knee pads too? If so, those triangles are definitely going to hurt you, since you'll be wanting smooth, controlled surfaces, and triangles will make that very hard. Painting them out in Photoshop afterwards (what Pope Adam is saying) is something I'd always try to avoid except in the worst case - it'll probably waste more time doing that and you'll end up with a result that doesn't look as good.
Generally those things are better off modelled in highpoly in max/maya/whatever you're using, you'll get more control and will end up with a nicer contrast between the organic zbrushed work and the hard, clean sub-d modelled work.
Generally trying to zbrush everything is going to either end up looking blobby, or take bloody ages and waste time - there's a reason that pretty much everyone working on normalmapped games does hard surface stuff in sub-d and sculpts the organic stuff. There's no need to use ZBrush for everything, and in fact it's often counterproductive to try and do so.
Then again I might have read your intentions wrong and this is already what you're planning!
Either way, the model looks like a good start and while the concept is a bit generic, if it's executed well it could be a great portfolio piece.
Why is this the case? I'm a total noob to sculpting and was wondering.
Does this have to do with the exponential increase of polygons due to subdivision in the sculpting app?
If your model has 6,000 polys and you subdivide twice you have 100,000 polys. What's the difference between a model that is subdivded up to 100,000 polygons and a model imported at 100,000 polygons? Logically, isn't this akin to skipping a few subdivision levels?
Also, John Bingham, it would be nice if you could fix your image so it doesn't break the forum. It sucks to have to scroll sideways to read peoples' replies.
If you haven't hit any problems with them, then good for you... but I can guarantee one day you'll be sculpting on a really important area and you'll find a triangle in your base mesh is really screwing up how well you are able to sculpt on that part
I agree with pope about the cliquey thing(never had to spell that before), but in all honesty I think the bleeding heart soul of polycount only comes out when there is obvious areas to improve upon that get beat on like a dead horse. or the work is so absurdly awesome everyone had to usher an asspat. Thats why I like poly count though, -you can get a pretty good idea of how good/bad your work is, with just a small amount of people looking over it.
pretty much mop nailed it with the tris thing. Its a good habit to try and keep quads as much as possible, not only for sculpting but for animation deformation. Granted a tri isn't the end of the world, but too many tris is.
so why not circumvent the whole issue by keeping your tri count down (also you`l find modeling much easier when you go to add loops and whatnot if your whole model is quads)
as for the topology in general avoid tris unless you meant to have them there in flex areas. however for the most part your model has nice even squares which should give you a great surface for sculpting. gl will be following this one
-Woog
This is wrong. You can render a normal-map (even out of ZBrush, although I'd recommend using either Max/Maya/XNormal) to any arbitrary mesh with any UV layout. The base mesh doesn't need UVs at all if you don't want them.