mudbox mac, cd4, normals maps

hawken

I've never connected the three, but just landed a decent gig to make 4 highly detailed character models for static rendered output. Anyone have any experience in this?

I was thinking of the following setup:

base mesh in cd4 > disconnect into separate parts > detail parts in mudbox and save back out > texture in mudbox and save back out > load up parts in cd4 and bake normal maps > load base mesh back into cd4, apply textures and normals > make final renders.

Never done it this way before but have been watching you guys for a few years get your heads around this kind of high poly workflow.

As I say, doesn't have to be real time so the normal mapping might not be important, but loading the model in for rendering in is, and I'm not sure how many polygons it can handle before it dies.

Advice on this matter very welcome.

Ben Apuna

Sorry I can't say for sure about the C4D side of things, though it's my understanding that displacement maps are better than normal maps when it comes to offline software rendering. You probably already know this though...

Ark

http://www.cmivfx.com have a free tutorial about C4D and Zbrush workflow. You have to register first though.

Tom Ellis

I have used a C4D > ZBrush > C4D workflow before and the way you're suggesting it would be the best way in my opinion. I must admit I had some issues with mesh scaling and incredible instability when bringing high-poly OBJ's in from ZBrush, this was before GoZ though and also back when I was still a beginner with ZBrush.

I also agree that you'd be better with displacement maps for offline renders, C4D handles them well too.

I'm also not sure if C4D offers High/Low Geometry baking and if it does, how well it works. I know they go on about baking from displacement maps but I've never fully understood if that means you can just bake from a high poly to a low poly.

I'm assuming you probably know all this though!

Regardless, you could always bake your map from your sculpting package which would also save you having to bring the millions of polys into C4D.

Disco Stu

Hey there hawken.
Im a c4d user myself and it has a somewhat weird baking workflow.
It doesnt bake high poly onto a low poly cage mesh it bakes it normal maps only from
the high poly so its pretty useless when you have a high poly without uvs.
So xnormal as part of the workflow should work better for you or baking in mudbox
but im a zbrush user so i dont know about that part.
Normal maps can be a bit weird in cinema so additional displacement maps with sub
polygon displacement could be necesarry to get a nice look.
Best to just try that part out.
Cinema 4d can have scaling issues when importing exporting so you should get yourself the riptide plugin that helps a lot. Theres a demo version for 30 days thats fully functional so you probably wont need to purchase it.
With a decent rig 2-3 million polygons wont make it crash but as i sayd the normal map
baking is useless at most times.
cheers

hawken

looks like displacement maps are the way to go!

thanks for the advice here, I'll be back very soon probably, tearing my hair out.

Rhinokey

i do not envy you having to sort all this new stuff out during a paying gig! whew,, if you are new to baking i agree xnormal may be the best thing to bake with. when you say seperate into different parts are you meaning like seperate body from accesorys, or split the body up like head torso arms legs all seperate meshes? the former i do, but the later i usualy dont do that, back in the olden days i would seperate thigs to help keep poly counts low but now days thats not much of an issue.