Creating a basemesh for rocks (read: not single stones).

adam

I'm interested in how you would create a basemesh for a rock cluster that is heavier on shapes & form than it is on surface details.

Would you go 1 solid basemesh or would you use a few meshes that are then mashed together to create the smaller shapes, that then ultimately end up as 1 in-game asset?


So something like this:



Not something like this (or Sasha Henricks stone tutorial, I think I spelled his name wrong):

teaandcigarettes

Here you go, Adam:

http://www.jmchristopher.com/portfolio/rockTutorial/rockTutorial.html

adam

In this video he crafted his base mesh from separate elements that he then booleaned in to 1 solid mesh, before sculpting.

Is that step necessary? Could you not bring in the mesh when its created from different, separate elements and sculpt those while ignore the inner areas where the intersections happen?

Surfa

What I would do is create a smattering of quick rock sculpts just the basic forms. I would then bring these together in the shape I want, scaling rotating and positing them into position and then add another sculpt pass. Then retopo the whole mesh, uv map and texture.

Eric Chadwick

Yep, you could.

I would just sculpt however you like, and simply retopo when you're done.

(hahah, slow on the edit)

Will Faucher

I would usually go with starting of from one blob, and then sculpting in the shape. I'm not familiar with Zbrush, but in mudbox, the knife tool does this nicely. It helps with getting your rock shapes, then you can start using the wax and scrape tool. Also, it's Sascha Henrichs. :P

adam

So, something like this:



So, is this what you guys are saying then:

The main mound and its supporting pieces are laied out separately and sculpted as such.

Then the supporting pieces are rearranged to intersect with the main mount to make your rock piece (either in Mudbox/zbrush or Max/Maya)

That final shape is retopo'd for the lowpoly/ingame mesh.

Cookies are eaten.

Eric Chadwick

Nope I would just make one basemesh (or start from a quadsphere), sculpt it how I want, then retopo it. If it stretches too much, do a quickie midway retopo.

Brice Vandemoortele

FYI The one in the top row is sculpted from a plane. The boulder below is sculpted from a sphere and the bottom row one use a very low res basemesh.
Flatten tool with no update ftw but nowadays i would really look into 3dcoat for basemeshes, and then do detailing in mudbox.

adam

Surfa is my pic more inline with what you're saying?

adam

ah! ok interesting.

How the hell did yous sculpt from a plane without massive stretching of quads?

Eric Chadwick

Some sculpting tuts:
http://wiki.polycount.com/DigitalSculpting#Environment_Sculpting

Some retopo tuts:
http://wiki.polycount.com/DigitalSculpting#Optimization_.26_Re-Topology

rumblesushi

Excuse my ignorance, but what is retopology?

Eric Chadwick

Retopo explained here.
http://wiki.polycount.com/DigitalSculpting#Re-Topology_Apps

rumblesushi

Thanks Eric, you read my mind

Eric Chadwick

Yeah you were pretty inscrutable.

commander_keen

Sculptris is really good for something like this. No base mesh needed.

Surfa

adam wrote: »

Surfa is my pic more inline with what you're saying?

Yes that is how I handle rocks normally. Over time you collect a library of mid res pieces that I can squash and move about to get all sorts of shapes. I normally keeps these pieces lowish detail so when placed together I can sculpt on them a bit more and add a full mesh noise pass. After that I would retopo the final sculpt into one mesh for use in-game.

spetch

Your pic is exactly how I do it. If I know that I'm going to make something completely custom then I'll take all the rock base meshes into zbrush as subtools. This gives you more control cause you can transpose and tweak individual parts where/if necessary. Once the retopo is done it can still be rotated and placed in other areas of the set.

Joshua Stubbles

Adam - 3DCoat can be used with just a plane as well, since it uses voxels (not poly dependent).

But I'll lean with Eric here, in that it'd probably sculpt it out high then retopo it, instead of doing the base mesh first.

Lamont

For me it really depends on the intended use of the rock.

my plan for my current distraction/project is to take some of the meshes I've made, put them together in ZB and repaint, then bring out as one and retopo. Model some smaller bits of rock/plants/whatever to add to the surface as needed while in UDK to hide the repetitive use.

roosterMAP

ill be giving this a shot very soon!

r_fletch_r

Talking of 3D coat you could make some rock shapes and voxel merge them into the shape you want then Quad the mesh.
edit: cant find a decent video of this being done. they're all long winded and crap.

Peris

adam wrote: »

Is that step necessary? Could you not bring in the mesh when its created from different, separate elements and sculpt those while ignore the inner areas where the intersections happen?

Thats what I do usually, create like 2 or 3 rock pieces and then copy paste mash them together. The seams you can mask nicely by just adding dirt or moss in there when you are finalising. No need to voxel merge or whatever, you'll only end up creating more work for yourself imo .

Ark

The round_corners shader in mental ray can mask the intersections between the rocks so you don't necessarily have to join multiple rocks together on the base mesh.

Also, Crazyeyes post a great way of doing rocks in his image thread:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1052749&postcount=45
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=68634&highlight=crazyeyes

Grey

This is a great thread, thanks to ^ Ark ^ for throwing out that Crazyeyes thread..some awesome stuff there!