Maya Crease Tool Vs Holding Edges

dpaynter26

So Ive just recently discovered mayas crease tool, and ive noticed it can have a lot of advantages over using holding edges for smoothing, do any of you guys actually do this or do you just place holding edges and smooth the object? or place holding edges before going into zbrush?

fatihG_

I like to crease edges myself. It will give a cleaner base mesh to work with in mudbox or zbrush.

Mudbox now supports edge creasing as well. I have used it before any of the new stuff. So in order to use it in zbrush or mudbox older versions, simply subdivide the mesh a few times (I usually smooth the mesh with 3 divisions) before export to your sculpting app.

I think Zbrush and both Mudbox now have a rebuild subdivision option. So you can generate your subD levels from the already subdivided mesh.

Apart from that.. using edge creases give you a nice base to make your low poly from as well, if you wish to use it vs retopoing everything from scratch.

Entity

I use it all the time, it keeps the mesh cleaner and uving a lot easier. I usually subdivide the mesh once or twice if i want to put it in zbrush, that way you retain the creases.

Bal

Yeah I use it alot for for Zbrush stuff myself, great to keep the right shapes when subdividing without having to add lots of support loops.
You don't need to subdivide before sending it to Zbrush, at least with GoZ ZB will recognise the creases, and you can configure how far in the subdivision levels you want him to take them into account with the CreaseLvl slider.

dpaynter26

wow awesome guys, glad i found this tool lol, im definitely going to make good use of it

passerby

it does have one disadvtange, when you use support edges your not only controlling the edge to tighten or loosen it but your also adding more geometry to that area too, which gives more res for a smoother detail.

Bal

passerby, yeah that's a disadvantage when you're doing sub-d modeling, in which case it's still nice to preview the mesh smoothed without having to add support loops everywhere that make doing large chages trickier.
But in the case of sculpting it's not a problem at all, quite the contrary, as you're not adding lots of useless geometry on those areas, you can keep your mesh as quads only, while keeping creased loops.

fatihG_

What Bal said.

If I don't plan on sculpting my model I use creasing for the sake of preview. When I'm cool with the looks of my model I finalize it by adding the support edges.

Crispy4004

Well this is interesting, unless Autodesk has since added the feature, Max lacks the same creasing tool. Up till now I just assumed there was something wrong with the crease tool in general and that's why Max users avoided it. Very happy to learn that's not the case and I was avoiding the tool for no reason.

dpaynter26

yeah lol well atleast you knew about it, i feel like a dummy, now im going to have to sit and play with it :P

cptSwing

On a somewhat related topic, what are your guys workflows for a sculpting pass on a model built with regular old SubD methods (support loops / edge chamfers on corners and the like)?

I've only tried it on a few models to date, but since the distribution of polygons is so uneven, you need to subdivide lots of times in order to get good poly density on large, planar areas.. making the sculpted mesh very heavy, and also leading to funky effects on the very dense edges.

Maybe randomly slicing polies into a collapsed copy of the SubD model? Though i would expect the resulting geometry to act up when sculpting.

Seems to me there's no really easy way to bridge the gap between standard SubD modeling and sculpting..?

An example would be a tank modeled in SubD, with shell hits and bulletholes and the like sculpted into the "clean" model (though i suppose some stuff could be sculpted onto a plane, then floated when baking).

cptSwing

hehe.. a good way to stop a thread cold..

dpaynter26

lol

claydough

In a perfect world your smoothing algorithm should not melt the creases out of your mesh in the first place:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56310

cly_gestureSmoothing download link

Braddish

cptSwing wrote: »

On a somewhat related topic, what are your guys workflows for a sculpting pass on a model built with regular old SubD methods (support loops / edge chamfers on corners and the like)?

I've only tried it on a few models to date, but since the distribution of polygons is so uneven, you need to subdivide lots of times in order to get good poly density on large, planar areas.. making the sculpted mesh very heavy, and also leading to funky effects on the very dense edges.

Maybe randomly slicing polies into a collapsed copy of the SubD model? Though i would expect the resulting geometry to act up when sculpting.

Seems to me there's no really easy way to bridge the gap between standard SubD modeling and sculpting..?

An example would be a tank modeled in SubD, with shell hits and bulletholes and the like sculpted into the "clean" model (though i suppose some stuff could be sculpted onto a plane, then floated when baking).

Bal mentioned it earlier in this post.

1. GoZ your object from maya to Zbrush with creased edges in place

2. Set the "CreaseLvl" slider to 5 or so. CreaseLvl slider is in the geometry rollout about half way down beside the "UnCrease" button.

3. Subdivide your object more than 5 times. Once you get past the 5th subdivision level it will automatically ignore the creases and give you smoothed beveled edges.


This technique is a ton easier and cleaner than adding lots of extra edges in maya or max to get your object to retain its form when SubDing it.
You will end up with an evenly subdivided mesh that you can then sculpt into.

pinkbox

omGOSH i thought this was only for subD models. maybe it used to be?

but now i realise you can crease your normal "poly" (not subD) models and set the creasing amount and view it in the smooth mesh preview (3)

Pretty awesome. esp now mudbox supports it.

thanks for this post or i would of never had another look to see how they worked

jeremiah_bigley

Crispy4004 wrote: »

Well this is interesting, unless Autodesk has since added the feature, Max lacks the same creasing tool. Up till now I just assumed there was something wrong with the crease tool in general and that's why Max users avoided it. Very happy to learn that's not the case and I was avoiding the tool for no reason.

This is why I have always avoided Max's crease tools... is that it would put that harsh edge in there like a smoothing group.

I am not seeing this Catmul Clark option...

EDIT: So... "Classic" smoothing method is Doo-Sabin
and "Quads" smoothing option is Catmull-Clark?

Crispy4004

claydough wrote: »

In a perfect world your smoothing algorithm should not melt the creases out of your mesh in the first place:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56310

cly_gestureSmoothing download link

Very true, but lets be fair to the Catmull-Clark SubD here. There are some huge advantages including rendering tessellation and its unique, powerful crease tool this thread is all about. For hard surface models, the crease tool actually does a great job of holding the form. If you wanted to get the results in polygons, convert -> "Smooth Mesh Preview to Polygons" will do so while preserving the creases. As previously mentioned Mudbox and Zbrush will keep the creases when they divide as well.


For organic stuff, if you wanted to render in say Mental Ray with the advantages of Catmull-Clark but need to compensate for the smoothing, there is always oaSmoothCompensate that can help combat the problem.