Please advise - Hight poly uv stretching
Hi all, this is my very first model on mudbox.
I got mudbox 2011, started with a very low base mesh in 3ds max 2011. Scaled it down, since it is too big for mudbox, and started sculpting in mudbox. I had during the time found out that my uvs is stretching. Did a couple of paint tests and yes it jumped and stretched very badly. I decided that i should continue, i can alwasy try to wing it in photoshop.
Once done, i went to photoshop, tried soem painting on the uvs..and in some cases just jumping a little bit more over the line ...but it made really bad fixes in mudbox. The uv that is painted will in some cases jump to another uv, even if there is no seam. (the uv map is clean, no overlaps, and all vertices are connected 100%)
So this is how it looked.
I realised..when i export the mesh as fbx, it re meshes the model and if you bring back this model...the mesh is much more even, and makes the worlds change in re sculpting on that. Is this a good workflow, get a basic shape, shape a bit in mubdbox to get tha base feel to it, export as fbx, (RE UV MAP THAT) and bring it back in. Is this the solution of this to get stuff fixed, or is there an easier way to re positions those uvs in mubdbox without losing any work. I want the end product to be a high poly model and ge tthe most detail back into 3ds max. I have to figure this out as soon as possible because i have another same size mountain to do from scratch and just dont want to sit with the same issues as this piece. Please please please advise.
I got mudbox 2011, started with a very low base mesh in 3ds max 2011. Scaled it down, since it is too big for mudbox, and started sculpting in mudbox. I had during the time found out that my uvs is stretching. Did a couple of paint tests and yes it jumped and stretched very badly. I decided that i should continue, i can alwasy try to wing it in photoshop.
Once done, i went to photoshop, tried soem painting on the uvs..and in some cases just jumping a little bit more over the line ...but it made really bad fixes in mudbox. The uv that is painted will in some cases jump to another uv, even if there is no seam. (the uv map is clean, no overlaps, and all vertices are connected 100%)
So this is how it looked.
I realised..when i export the mesh as fbx, it re meshes the model and if you bring back this model...the mesh is much more even, and makes the worlds change in re sculpting on that. Is this a good workflow, get a basic shape, shape a bit in mubdbox to get tha base feel to it, export as fbx, (RE UV MAP THAT) and bring it back in. Is this the solution of this to get stuff fixed, or is there an easier way to re positions those uvs in mubdbox without losing any work. I want the end product to be a high poly model and ge tthe most detail back into 3ds max. I have to figure this out as soon as possible because i have another same size mountain to do from scratch and just dont want to sit with the same issues as this piece. Please please please advise.
Replies
If you are baking down, you can just fix all this in your low poly.
It lokos great from far, but the green zone has about 30 buildings on it, like a litte mountain village. I found that i havent switch on some functions in mudbox to aid me in this, but had to re sculpt. I am doing it now and it is working much better now. I will probably be using some lower poly meshes, maybe bake the far away parts, and leave a lot in the close up as mesh as possible for if i want to edit or fine tweak that. My worries is how i would be doing the close up part in high detail.
For instance,..the path, both diesed of that green has a building row.
So how am i going to do the detail. Do i just use a higher quality map over that area, or do i model areas seperate (that is the pathways, the rock, etc) and then reaplce that in the max. Or , since the pathway would be the closest to the camera most of the time, maybe that should be a 4k 32bit map, and the more you move away form the focal point (the vollage) the maps could be going to a 2k map. It is not for animation, because this would render forever. Any ideas would be great.
I have done a lot of research on what i wanna build, laid the basics out in sketchup, from there on it will e worked up in max. I also could have build all the units and then the mountain, but i feel more at rest if the feel of it is correct.
You are probably using turbosmooth before exporting to mudbox.
Try to use meshsmooth with subdivision method->classic.
Should help with your seams problem.
Meshsmooth is a little slower if you are working with a lot-geometry meshes, but is more controlable than turbosmooth.
Ok i am getting better at this, but still no cigar.
I have made this now, and looks great from this distance, but as you see on image 4, the close up and that is what matters, should be much more realistic in detail.
Pretty much the middle portion of this would be made much higher and the rest could stay as it is. The texture made in mudbox is a 4k map. So far thats the biggest it can go @ 100 dpi. How would i tackle this issue. I am asking the professionals who do this type of thing every day. Included is low res map, but that is just showing how warping the map get with the sculpting of the site, much harder to work up with higher res maps afterwards in photoshop. I also tried bumpmaps but it does not bring that detail. How do game developers do it or even the movie industry. Say i wanted to make this an animation, surely when you stand in the town, the walls would look really nasty, but the backdrop would look really great. Please advise.
Any suggestions?
Almost like the people out of oblivion and fable games.
The Cliffs: Couple things here. First, I've found that obj files handle well in scaling from low to high poly, I'm not sure about fbx models. It may be worth a shot to run some tests and see if the obj handles a little better.
Second, I would think you could handle the cliffs a little differently. Your village doesn't take up much space on the cliffs, and I would hazard to venture that you don't need near as much high poly detail past say, the cave entrance. Making a lower poly model for something that distance and handling the detail through normal maps should look just as good as you want it with a minimum of resources.
On the project I worked on not too long ago, the level designers solved this issue by making high resolution tileable textures for the environment and imported the mesh for the environment into the engine (in this case UDK) and used vertex painting to create variations in the stone and for adding the snow. You could try Megatextures, like what's being used in RAGE, but I've not a clue how they work, black magic I think.
Populating the Map: You had mentioned making the villagers, and I do regret to inform you that there's not really a way to solve it except for making a bunch of models. However, what you can do is make a modular library of pieces that would all fit on a single skeleton/rig. This way, you could make just a few pieces, and adjust colors/etc. though texture. It's about the same process that is used for Assassin's Creed, and is a about the same, but simpler than games like Oblivion, or Dragon Age.
Hope these ideas help, and good luck!
Everytime i try to export it gives an type of error and eventually got it to max.
The thing i realised was that i use bump depth in mubbox 30, which boosted the bumps quite a lot and made mountain detail come out. But in max, i cant boost this to get that even close.
I have to step back and decide what the best route will be from here. Go back to the mountain, fix what you see that does not look right now, after youve seen this, before the main file gets too complicated to work with, or leave it and work with what youve got, (maybe just re paint the areas that deformed from hi to low poly conversion in mudbox) and try shapping areas that does not gel too well, make some alternative maps in photoshop and see if that works. I just need a guide to say ok this is best to sort this out now. I kinda feel spend a little bit more time in mudbox, get it right then youll know its right.
I think you should split the cliffs up into parts so you can repeat the texture across the cliffs. Also, make some rock formation that you can place around town height to give more detail to the cliffs where it will be noticed. Look here for the kind of stuf f i mean:
http://wiki.polycount.com/EnvironmentSculpting?highlight=(\bCategoryEnvironmentModeling\b)#Rock_and_Stone
Think of the cliff as a base to add more detail.
If if want to cut out a lot of displacement maps, i should try useing the mesh i can get out of mudbox, but only in the near regeons. Another thing, this is sculpted blindside, so no box referencng is used during the sculpting. I think this time around, to bring in the basic boxes as reference to give a better indication where stuff is in relation so sculpting can be done easier. Just a thought. But thanks for the advice.. Will be grabbing a couple of more coffees tonight lol.