Approching a Drystone Wall?

kinesis

I am trying to model a nice highpoly version of a drystone wall similar to the one in the picture above. I just can't seem a decent start to it, without it looking kind of crappy and fake. I have tried making a few different blocks in zBrush then bringing them back into max, but the polycount just seems to shoot up and crash max.

Has anyone got any tips on where to begin with this? At the moment it just seems to be driving me nuts.

Joshua Stubbles

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

MoP

It's like Bram was born to answer your question!

Rhinokey

use instances on your high poly meshes in max, that helps a lot, also.. as mentioned in the tute, no need to go crazy high witht the polygons because you cant capture mor than one poly a pixel on the texture bake space, so for example a 512x512 texture map will not be able to capture any more info of off a high poly plane after it hits a bit above the 262k poly mark i see ppl all the time that will take an make a brick at 3 mill polys and then bake it down to a small space on a small map,

carlo_c

Soon as I saw the question I thought of that tutorial lol

kinesis

How the heck could I forget about using instances. I feel stupid for that. Anyway thanks for the replies, there should be no reason why I can't build my wall now.

Rhinokey

the instance thing was something i never thought about till i saw it in a tute and i was like "ohhhh shiiiiiii" like a light flicking on.

JohnnyRaptor

dont forget Decimation Master!

Rhinokey

dont forget decimation master if you are using an old version of zbrush. man i really wish they would update the plugins

Peris

hah! I hope that tutorial is useful for you .
Here's another similar one about keeping things cheap in max: http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/optimisation_workflow_tutorial/optimisation_workflow_tutorial.html

so just use meshlab if your don't have zbrush/decimation master!

Building high poly stuff like this becomes really fast and fun this way i think, just mashing stones and other stuff together like lego!

peace

Rhinokey

that link is being broken for me brammy baby

SpeCter

Rhinokey wrote: »

dont forget decimation master if you are using an old version of zbrush. man i really wish they would update the plugins

Your wish has been granted today
Take a look at the R3 of Zbrush 3.5 it´s now included with many more Plugins(i personally missed )

Rhinokey

peris i have not tried this, but in your tute you said you were lookin for better ways to make the low, maybe making a high poly plane, an having it conform to your mesh, then polycrunch it or something, would not be as neat or clean but may speed up workflow. just a thought.

Rhinokey

SpeCter wrote: »

Your wish has been granted today
Take a look at the R3 of Zbrush 3.5 it´s now included with many more Plugins(i personally missed )

HOLY SHITS!!!

Peris

Rhinokey wrote: »

peris i have not tried this, but in your tute you said you were lookin for better ways to make the low, maybe making a high poly plane, an having it conform to your mesh, then polycrunch it or something, would not be as neat or clean but may speed up workflow. just a thought.

does that work for meshes that arn't connected? Wouldn't it just create a bunch of lowpoly stones instead of one nice solid lowpoly model. I havn't seen a tool yet that can do it automatically in a nice way.

Rhinokey wrote: »

that link is being broken for me brammy baby

works for me!!!!

[HP]

/me pets peris

sprunghunt

Peris wrote: »

does that work for meshes that arn't connected? Wouldn't it just create a bunch of lowpoly stones instead of one nice solid lowpoly model. I havn't seen a tool yet that can do it automatically in a nice way.

You could make your wall in zbrush as one single surface and use the lowest subdivision as a start for your base mesh.
It is harder to get it to tile properly as you can't copy a row of stone blocks from one side to the other like you would in max. I have used this technique for walls that have cement in between the blocks. It also makes it harder to render a guide image for the diffuse with the blocks separated by random colours.