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In need of Zbrush Advise

polycounter lvl 18
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capone polycounter lvl 18
This is just the initial base sculpt of some stairs. The lip is a set of bricks but as you can see it's all a bit 'clay' like. Maybe when I do alphas and little dents etc it won't be so obvious but I'd like to know if you have any ideas how to improve this at it's current state?

I have been using standard, layer, pinch and flatten but not always getting the desired effect. For example with pinch when I go along the edges with this brush it's pinching both in x and y axis which causes problems when I get near corners.

Any tips/tutorials that could help? Thanks.

wipenvironment_07.jpg

Replies

  • Orgoth02
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    Orgoth02 polycounter lvl 9
    good start. I would suggest some cracks
  • Orgoth02
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    Orgoth02 polycounter lvl 9
    also go get the dam stardard brush it is awesome for hard surface stuff and you will never use the pince brush again
  • Rhinokey
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    Rhinokey polycounter lvl 18
    claytubes is really nice for harder surfaces, also dam standard, i rarely touch standard any more
  • EbolaV
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    EbolaV keyframe
    clay/mallet fast is good. dont use pinch. mhh tips... practice, practice and practice and references :)
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    These zbrush tutorials are really good. You might learn a couple tricks here:
    http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/zbrush/pixozbrush/seb_projection.html

    [edit] plus they are free!
  • Raider
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    Raider polycounter lvl 9
    man brad you're just full of useful links and tips :D
  • SanderDL
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    SanderDL polycounter lvl 7
    I often peek at the zbrush classroom:

    http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/

    Which includes the videos Brad posted. The Pixologic site is full of these usefull goodies. They seem very eager to teach people Zbrush.
  • scourgewarper
    Yer can't wait for their 'coming soon' tutorials, wonder if they'll be done with 3.5
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    So since last time I've had a go with this 'standard dam brush' and achieved much improved flatter/defined bricks. Thanks for suggesting it.

    I'm still not sure about the surfaces though. I wish I could just put a iron over it and flatten it out. I've tried flatten, clay tubes and layer brush but not getting the results I'm after. The brick above the orange dot looks about right to me, not sure how I got that to be so flat.

    wipenvironment_09.jpg
  • Bad Spleen
    Hi Capone,

    I think you have taken the wrong approach entirely I'm afraid.

    Firstly, keep at ZBrush, as someone said, practice practice.

    The issue is that you are making something that can be made far easier using a different approach. The way I would go is :

    - Model a brick in your desired 3D app (heck, make a cube)
    - Take to Zbrush and make it look more like a real brick.
    - Do this all again.
    - Do it again, in other words make 3 or 4 different bricks.
    - Take them back into your 3D app of choice and line them up as you wish, using the different bricks, and alternating the rotations and possibly slight scale changes as you wish.
    - tada, you have what you need.

    The problem with the method you're using, is that you are trying to create something that isn't really organic.

    There's nothing wrong with using ZBrush to make bricks / stone (though I only use it for detailing stonework, not creating the main shapes) however when you are making more than one in the way that you have, I believe the above method will give you better results, as it means you don't have to draw in the bricks, and sharpen them off using pinch, which often results in strange artifacts when you are pinching very hard edges and corners.

    Hope I've helped in a small way.

    -Adam

    ZBrush fanboys insert corrections below :)
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    That thought was running in the back of my mind, thanks for pointing it out. Would be cool if anyone else could confirm what Bad Spleen is saying just to be sure, though, to be honest I'm pretty sure he is spot on.
  • Rhinokey
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    Rhinokey polycounter lvl 18
    you can do the same thing in zbrush you can easily make a box in zbrush, but DO NOT EVER USE THE ZBRUSH PRIMITIVE CUBE, for some reason i can not comprehend a sculpting program that does not like to many tris include primitive meshes that contain tris! i mean there is no reason for any BOX primitive to have tris in it!

    but you can turn the zbrush box into a box you can use,
    1 creat a cube
    2 go to initialize in your menu and set the parameters to make the cube brick shaped
    3 go to unified skin turn resolution and smooth all the way down
    4 click make unified skin
    now clear what you have in your vp with a ctrl N and redraw the new cube that is in your tool pallet prob Skin_cube or somethin
    under geo divide it a couple times with smt turned off (not too many times just enough to keep it blockish

    add them in as subtools into your sene and place them where you want them with the transpose tools
  • Bad Spleen
    Rhinokey is correct, you could do what he says.

    However if you want to make a brick that you can re-use at a later date in other projects, my advice would be to follow my method (or the method I use) as within ZBrush you can't do a UV layouts. Therefore if you wanted to make a collection of fully textured bricks (including diffuse and specular textures) that can be used again later, I'd make the primitive in your 3D app, purely because you have total control over the mesh and UV's.

    - Adam
  • Popeye9
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    Popeye9 polycounter lvl 15
    I would go with bad spleen's method as my first choice. If you need to have a primitive that is in that shape and the bricks are not a focal point you could also take that rectangle and uv it and then texture a black and white brick pattern to it in your modeling app. Bring it into Zbrush use the texture as a mask and inflate to get the bricks then add cracks and fine detail. This method is ok but its not as nice as detailing individual bricks it all depends on how much time you have to work them.
  • ParoXum
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    ParoXum polycounter lvl 9
    Totally agree with Bad Spleen, it's the way to go, for time saving and re-usability.
  • Jet_Pilot
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    Jet_Pilot polycounter lvl 10
    if you make dents, cracks and chips on the edges make sure you smooth that section out first so you don't get that edge still pushing out.
  • tokidokizenzen
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    tokidokizenzen polycounter lvl 17
    Bad Spleen has it right.
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    A few more tutorials for you that should clear up any workflow issues you might have. These are both by Polycount Member Peris. The first one should be exactly what you need.
    http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/generic_wall_tutorial/generic_wall_tutorial.html

    http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/optimisation_workflow_tutorial/optimisation_workflow_tutorial.html

    [edit] Thanks Raider :)
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    Great advise and links, thanks. So I've just done 1 brick, any feedback? I think from a distance it looks quite cool but when you look closely at the details its a bit 'smudgey'? I added an alpha texture and then smoothed most of it away, it's quite subtle, I'd prefer to do most of that in Photoshop.

    wipenvironment_10.jpg
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    Don't worry about the "smudgey" look too much. Like the tutorial above explains, you only need as much detail as your texture maps can hold. Just keep playing around with different brushes and alphas, and try to make it look "right".
    Most importantly, get yourself some good references. Example:
    Handmade-Red-Reclaimed-Bricks_40108_1.jpg

    This is looking, way way, better already. I think you should certainly put some more work into these bricks, but what you have now, if used properly would give you really good results I think. Nice job!
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    Thanks Brad. Went in there and messed around a bit and improved it quite a bit. Now the annoying part ...

    Ran it through mesh lab and optimized it, brought it into max. Baked it into a simple 6 poly brick and am using a shader setup called Lumonix (Is there anything out there that's more simple that will allow me to see normals in viewport on a low tech laptop?)

    It generally seems to be working but there is a clear problem with the edges that appear too black. Tried flipped red and green channels and improved it but it still doesn't seem right. Any ideas?

    wipenvironment_11.jpg
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    Nice job coming this far along capone!

    You should have a look at this:
    http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/article_normalmaps/normalmaps.html

    It describes in detail how to set up your low poly mesh and uvs and smoothing groups all so that the normals bake and display properly real time in your viewport.

    I think your major problem is that you have a 6 sided cube with all one smoothing group, there for there are going to be smoothing errors, and the edges might come off weird because they are sharp corners and the normals can't compensate for this.

    the most simple solution would be to bevel all the corners and rebake.

    Although this greatly increases the poycount, so possibly set up different smoothing groups for the two ends and detach them from the uvs and push them a few pixels away for edge padding.

    If you read the tutorial, you should understand.

    As far as the real-time normal map displaying goes, it should be pretty simple for you to do. If your graphic card supports lumonix shaders then it should work with the simple "Show Hardware Map In Viewport". Lumonix is great, but probably overkill for simply viewing normals real-time.

    To enable this simply plug your normal map into a standard material (go to maps>check "Bump", give it a value of 100, click on "None" next to it>choose "Normal Bump", click on "None" next to "Normal">choose "Bitmap", Select your normal map.)

    Then apply this material to your brick, then go to "Views" at the top, and "Show Material in Viewport As" > "Hardware display with Maps".

    You can also click an hold on the little cube in the material editor to enable "Show Material in Viewport as Hardware display with Maps".

    Oh and here is a tutorial on that incase my explanation is confusing:

    http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/normal_workflow_4.htm
    :)
  • Vrav
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    Vrav polycounter lvl 11
    The brick looks sweet, but I think with tangent space you are going to have to bevel out some edges or cut in the larger chips manually. If you can spare the polygons, I think that would look best. You could probably use a box with an object space normal maps, if you really can't spare the tris. But nobody seems to use object space normal maps professionally, which confuses the fuck out of me, so I don't know.

    edit: oh hey, brad meyers made a better post :)
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    Vrav: People tend to use object space on things like guns and stuff from what I have seen. Mostly hard surface objects that would really benefit from object space maps. A lot of real-time shaders don't support object space though (possibly its harder for game engines to render them?), so I believe that's why tangent space is the usual route. But I have been seeing more and more object space normals around.
    Marmoset supports them anyways.
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    Ah ok, yeah the beveled edges has really helped. Looking really good now, of course it's impossible to make it perfect unless I make little crooks in there. I did try this on one area but a) It left a odd unsmooth line in there and b) It's too costly on the budget since these are small bricks so I'm thinking that I won't bother. The viewport examples here are without the crook. Looks worse in screenshots, when I'm rotating around it in the viewport it looks really good. That 'tutorial' is getting bookmarked! Thanks.

    wipenvironment_13.jpg
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    You really shouldn't need to put the little dent in there. If you are stacking these you definetly should not imo. Look at the Geo in this tutorial again. See no dents? Just major angles with the beveled parts.
    http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/generic_wall_tutorial/generic_wall_tutorial.html
    Keep at it!
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    So I'm not sure if what I have done is good enough, would you say it's roughly the same level as this guys or do I need to experiment more?
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    So you just have a beveled cube with no modeled cracks on the low poly correct?
    I think you should just place them how you want them and see how it looks. Remember to rotate them and flip them of course.
    What is your goal here anyways? Are you making an entire scene, or just a stair asset?
  • capone
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    capone polycounter lvl 18
    Yup, the brick currently has no crooks/dents etc I took out the one I experimented with. Here is the scene I'm working on right now, the bricks would be on the edges of the steps.

    wipenvironment_04.jpg
  • BradMyers82
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    BradMyers82 interpolator
    ahh, looking really cool already man. I can't wait to see the textures!
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