3dsmax Modeling Stones - Tutorial
polycounter lvl 12
hi,
here is a new tutorial again about highpoly stones, but now we only use 3dsmax and no sculpting software.
you will learn how to setup a fancy modeling rig only with modifiers and procedural maps.
no plugins or stuff needed.
once you setup this stuff you can produce endless variations of stones, only by changing the mappingoffset in the first displacement map.
mapping and texturing (non destructive for the highpoly, which is interesting for cg renderings) will come later as also the standard workflow to make this a game-ready asset.
also posted it over at g.-artist and cgtalk but perhaps its also of use in here!
i hope you like it
See the video here
here is a new tutorial again about highpoly stones, but now we only use 3dsmax and no sculpting software.
you will learn how to setup a fancy modeling rig only with modifiers and procedural maps.
no plugins or stuff needed.
once you setup this stuff you can produce endless variations of stones, only by changing the mappingoffset in the first displacement map.
mapping and texturing (non destructive for the highpoly, which is interesting for cg renderings) will come later as also the standard workflow to make this a game-ready asset.
also posted it over at g.-artist and cgtalk but perhaps its also of use in here!
i hope you like it
See the video here
Replies
Another great tutorial from you.
Thanks for taking the time to put it together and share it with us
thank you sooo much. Gothic 1 is one of my fav games.
*i learned something new (the quad sphere)
*i will be using this from now on!
Im lookin forward to seeing more amazingly useful tuts from you!
your (piranha-bytes) environemnts always look fucking ace!
great stuff!
...perhaps just switch to max and be fine
no just kidding. anyone else here got a suggestion?
I bet the principles could be adapted.
Think this is gonna save me some time for my upcoming enviro so I'm deffo gonna give it a try.
Haha. Its cool. Had to rush to class but will look over the video and see if I can transfer the tutorial over.
nice tutorial!
mixing up procedural maps and making interesting grounds and rocks used to be one of my favorite pass-times until mudbox came to my life
Anyway, Very nice tutorial!
great tutorial, i used to scult all my rocks, this is so much better, going to try it
Check out the Blend: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/398143/Files/procrock.blend (1.8MB... I'm dumb and collapsed the first 6 subd levels)
though i think, that the fractals shouldnt be the problem? since the values to set almost seem to be identical.
i thinks its more of a tweaking job?
Thanks a lot for the effort, i'll definitely have a go at this
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?p=810733
All of the links to it seem to be broken and I can't figure out who wrote it.
Here's the version of the script I have if anyone wants it:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1306131/QuadSphere.ms
Place the script into your "3dsmax/Scripts/Startup" folder
Restart max and it shows up under, Create panel > Drop Down box, change Standard Primitives to Custom Primitives.
Indeed Sascha, the problem was my not spending enough time tweaking...
Nevertheless, even with these issues this method is extremely good for making multiple basemeshes for rocks at once. Duplicating the basemesh and moving it away to it's own space is enough to create an entirely new shape. Awesome stuff!
perhaps its something with its first and second deivision color. that are the values, that define the highest peaks or in other words, that divides each cell to another
[edit]
dont know, if you also have a threshold in blender's cellular shader, but perhaps the mid threshold is also worth a look, when it comes to overlapping.
the threshold defines the relative size of each component of the cellular map:
low is cell size mid is first divisioncolor or gradient and high, is the size of the actual border to another cell.
If you're using it for a basemesh it's no big deal, as you can apply the modifiers and smooth the problem areas with the sculpting smooth brush (or normal smooth operators, but selecting the problem areas is going to be a pain). If however you're going for a flawless procedural with 0 applied modifiers, you're going to run into problems.
With some tinkering you can minimize the problems, but I never got them to a point that I found them Negligible.
Then again, my results never looked nearly as good as the ones both of you showed.
Followed your tut, and did this. nice technique dude.
Might use this technique to make some indian arrow heads and some primitive chiseled rock axes. Like the ones based on Ea Mithic concepts.
When are we going to see the next parts?
A nice alternate way of doing this is using a composite texture in the displacement map slot. set the modifiers strength to something like 50 or 100 () now add maps to the composite stack you can use their opacity to control their stength and you get the advantage of photoshop blend modes and masking.