Need sculpting tips - Plants / Environmental

Bombshell

Okay me and my design / development partner have decided, to test the limits of the engine I am creating and at some point to show it off, our first game will be a first person experience game. It will be based more around how the environment interacts with you than visa versa.
To get this right, we need to be able to make the landscape / jungles / environments in general look beautiful. But I've been experimenting a bit with a plant (designed by myself) I made a doughy rough base mesh and sculpted it in zBrush. Took the high and low poly back into blender and made a normal map.
Its not quite what I was going for but I can't say it went absolutely horrible.

TL;DR? I want to make beautiful environments, could you tip and crit me on this plant?

Here is the design:


Here is my new base mesh to put through zBrush:


once I have messed with them in zBrush to get the look I want I will take the low poly (incase of shape changes) and high poly (for normal mapping) into blender to decimate the low poly and make a normal map out of the high poly.

Old Pics:
Here is the render (low poly normal mapped to the left, high poly to the right): 1,664 low poly ; 106,496 high poly
http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/8493/plannatree.png
http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/7707/plannatreemesh.png

Thank you in advanced,
Bombshell

NAIMA

hello , why don't you do the revers or start from a low polyversion ? meshing out the main parts of the plant and only after add the zbrush detailing , but is that really needed?
I mean when I did my plants I did in 3dsmax mainly and used tiling textures couse I wanted and needed to use loads of different plants in the same environment at the same time on a huge scale .... if your environment is an UDK like limited one then it's ok I guess but may be if u want ot use on large scale like a Cryengine like environment then may be is better go lower poly ....

about this plant in particular it looks pretty simple to do in box modeling in 3dsmax or similar 3d engine , then you can add the detail after in zbrush ....

to me your low poly looks still high poly , I mean a very more low poly shape , with much more extruding frond parts as in the concept ..

Bombshell

I did kind of stray away from the original design int he sculpt, and to comment on the poly count I managed to get it down to 664 tri's with the same shape and look. The normal map is 512x so I'm fairly sure its okay now for real-time use.
I will try and get the shape right in a base mesh next time (I'll be doing that at some point today) my initial try I failed horrible and so I ended up doing some roots and a marshmallow looking thing coming out of the top. I then went into zbrush to mess around with it.

As for the engine / environment it will be used in, I'll be using it in my own, which will be made for both closed and open-environment games, but in this case it will be for an open environment game.

Thanks for the reply,
I'll post a base mesh later and the detailed version shortly after.

NAIMA

600 polys for the low poly isn't bad but , is this plant a small or a big thing? will it be very present or not? plus you still need to add foliage as it seems to understand and I guess you want it to be bendeable?
I like the original concept tough is more unique than the one you come out later with wich looks more complex and more like the trunk of a cutted palm root ...
may be this kind of concept plant doesn't need roots like trees but more like a palm or a tree fern ...

Bombshell

Here is my new base mesh to put through zBrush:


once I have messed with them in zBrush to get the look I want I will take the low poly (incase of shape changes) and high poly (for normal mapping) into blender to decimate the low poly and make a normal map out of the high poly.

Bombshell

okay I seriously need help on this, I tried experimenting with brushes, (but I kept getting edges too smooth or too deformed)
I tried modelling rather than sculpting (but clean unwrapping is near impossible, so I would still need a high poly for the detail)
I've tried looking for tutorials or quick sculpts or something I could observe in the making but I can't find a single thing.

So right now I have a base mesh. No idea how to sculpt it. No idea how to texture it. No idea on what to do otherwise... -.-

NAIMA

If you do not want smoothed edges you can do two ways , one is to uncheck the smt key near divide button , the other you can increase the subdivision near the edge in the 3d application you used to make the low poly model .... ofc I am a newbie so there may be other solutions but those are the ones I know .....

as for unwrapping why you need to unwrap it now ? make the low poly export it make it a high poly thing in zbrush then make a retopology after you finished the high poly version and you make the uvmaps on this retopologized model ....

but for plants are you really needing to make them in zbrush? with a tiled texture of a bark and crazybump you can have wonderfull results ....

Bombshell

okay so I'm aiming for kind of an aloe vera look on the extruding parts you can already see on the model and banana leaves for the giant leaves (in the concept the thinner leaves are just rolled up giant ones.
So I at least know where I can get references, but if I'm going to texture it rather than make a sculpt I'd want to make all the textures myself. So I'll give it a try with xNormals.

NAIMA

I personally think that , unless this is a very unique or special plant , is better to go with tiled texture and normal modeling in the 3d application instead than sculpt and stuff...

Anuxinamoon

Bombshell wrote: »

okay so I'm aiming for kind of an aloe vera look on the extruding parts you can already see on the model and banana leaves for the giant leaves (in the concept the thinner leaves are just rolled up giant ones.
So I at least know where I can get references, but if I'm going to texture it rather than make a sculpt I'd want to make all the textures myself. So I'll give it a try with xNormals.

I hope you are using your references when you models/sculpt and not just base it on the sketch or from your head. If you have trouble with something in 3D, try doing more involved sketching of how it works. plan out the seams for your UV's on the paper instead of looking at the model and figuring it out, especially when you are still learning 3D.