[Tutorial] Rock modeling techniques

choco

Hey guys, I decided to make a thread regrouping all the videos regarding the rock modeling techniques series.

This is more of a workflow then a tutorial which shows the methods I use for modeling and texturing most of the assets I create.

I hope you enjoy watching the course and that you can find some useful information.

Sorry for the mic popping which occurs once in a while by the way

Introduction :

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIOBnl6WjaM"]Rock modeling techniques [INTRO] - YouTube[/ame]

Part 1/4 :

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCtjt1qudfQ"]Rock modeling techniques [Part 1/4] - YouTube[/ame]

Part 2/4 :

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrDU1toNV6A"]Rock modeling techniques [Part 2/4] - YouTube[/ame]

Part 3/4 :

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeFqsfgIWzg"]Rock modeling techniques [Part 3/4] - YouTube[/ame]

Part 4/4 :

(Coming soon)

marq4porsche

This is awesome! Thank you!

choco

You'r welcome, a quick note regarding the edge-highlight map I was talking about in these videos.

Technically the texture map that I'm using is called a curvature map which can be rendered in Xnormal. You can get much better results in Xnormal compared to what I got in Mudbox or Crazybump.
I'll add the note in the 4th part of the video series where I'll render that texture map and use it for the final diffuse texture.

R00

Great work Choco! Can't wait to see the rest when I get back from my work placement. Video 1 and 2 are awesome so far

[HP]

Very nice! Deffo bookmarked!

Bobby J Rice 3rd

That's awesome. Very good high poly approach. I do something similar but in 2.5d. Also, regarding your stretching issues early on in the sculpt, try using zbrushes "dynamesh". It will fix those issues.

Have you considered using polypaint instead of mudbox? Polypaint would give you more realistic results.

spahr

Bookmarked and Subscribed!

SniperStealth

These are very insightful! Subscribed; I'll be keeping an eye on your videos.

raul

Nice! Thanx for taking the time to make these!

Alberto Rdrgz

you... rock my world.

Zelenkov

Thank you doing all this! This is great stuff

EArkham

I really appreciate the effort, but the mic popping makes it unwatchable for me with sound on. The voice is too quiet (almost a whisper) with the occasional loud "PTTH-THU-THUD"... probably worse for me since my speakers are bass heavy.

Computron

Here's some suggestions for video tutorials:

Get all the important details down or write everything out before you start the parts that need video demonstration so you save time in the video and pause when you fiddle with file systems, load programs, paint out seams and other less important stuff.

Good Stuff Choco! I learned several new useful techniques.

choco

Ya sorry for the terrible sound quality. This might be last series of tutorial that I'm doing. I'm crossing a difficult financial situation at the moment which doesn't even allow me to buy myself a pack of cigarette, let alone buying a better microphone. I also wish the sound quality was better but unfortunately thats what I ended up with after recording over an hour of video.

I have very limited time but I still allowed myself to share with you some of the techniques that I use, which I wish was up there on youtube when I was trying to figure out how I should approach the creation of such an asset.

If you find the quality of the tutorial not up to your standards, I'd suggest to spare some money and buy a tutorial made by a pro (eat3d, 3dmotive etc...) for around 50 bucks.

Joopson

Woah, Choco, do you not have a job in the industry? Your work is some of the most breathtaking stuff I've seen, I'm sure you could get one.

Iciban

wow thanks for the tutorial! was always wondering about how you did the rocks. Great to see another workflow from another great artist. Keep it up!

SnaFuBAR

oh wow i had managed to convince myself you worked for a studio...

Darkmaster

Epicness.

Computron

choco wrote: »

Ya sorry for the terrible sound quality. This might be last series of tutorial that I'm doing. I'm crossing a difficult financial situation at the moment which doesn't even allow me to buy myself a pack of cigarette, let alone buying a better microphone. I also wish the sound quality was better but unfortunately thats what I ended up with after recording over an hour of video.

I have very limited time but I still allowed myself to share with you some of the techniques that I use, which I wish was up there on youtube when I was trying to figure out how I should approach the creation of such an asset.

If you find the quality of the tutorial not up to your standards, I'd suggest to spare some money and buy a tutorial made by a pro (eat3d, 3dmotive etc...) for around 50 bucks.

Don't get me wrong, these are some great tutorials. :thumbup:

Best of luck!

EArkham

Computron wrote: »

Don't get me wrong, these are some great tutorials. :thumbup:

Best of luck!

Same here, seems you were taking our words as being harsher than they were intended. It's a good series, I just can't watch with sound on.

Cibo

The Stretch Shader is fantastic. I found RoadKill but it only install a standalone version with maya plugin. But the plugin kills itself is not what you are using. You use the shader alone in maya. Is it possible to share this?

Looks like the Maya integrated Shader is a Proffessional version only or? Weird their homepage is for me death...

Miodnre

Thanks.

ps: The scene we can see in the 3rd vid

S_ource

Thanks will look through them, seems interesting.

choco

added part 4/5 : Setting properly the asset for cryengine export, LOD creation and collisions.
part 5/5 will feature UDK export/import and setup.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I7P_sHzs8k"]Rock modeling techniques [part 4/5] - YouTube[/ame]

I'm currently testing my new microphone, I still need to learn how to properly compress the video in order to avoid the artifacts shown when I'm working within the cryengine sdk.

Makkon

I'm sorry to hear about your financial situation, man! What can I do to help? Do you take donations?

Joopson

Seriously, with all you're teaching everyone, I'm sure many people would be willing to donate to you.
Keep up le good work.

schneller

Thanks a lot! There were a lot of things you were doing (ex. edge highlight textures) that I had never heard of until now.

jimmypopali

Thanks! Choco CG good-guy.

Alkogolik

Hi, man.. very useful info, waiting for the final part..

choco

Joopson wrote: »

Seriously, with all you're teaching everyone, I'm sure many people would be willing to donate to you.
Keep up le good work.

Makkon wrote: »

I'm sorry to hear about your financial situation, man! What can I do to help? Do you take donations?

Thanks a lot man, I'm currently doing some freelance work at the moment which should hopefully help until I get a stable job.
Most of the time I'm just creating sets of models and selling them to a reseller.

Thanks again :thumbup:

Now that I got a better microphone, I'm currently considering of making a tutorial regarding the creation of a whole scene in UDK or CE3. We'll pretty much pick up a nice concept art and make a scene based on it showing each step of the creation process (modeling, texturing, optimizing etc...). Once that is done, I'll probably put on my website and maybe add a donation button on it.

bac9-flcl

Hi there!

First of all let me say this: your tutorials are absolutely amazing! I've been doing hard surface modeling for years, never venturing outside of that field, but now, thanks to you, I'm hooked to Mudbox and WM, and I'm finally able to create canvases to place my stuff on: beautiful terrains made with your amazing workflow.

Right now I'm starting to follow your tutorials on rock modeling techniques, and if you don't mind, I wanted to ask several questions on Mudbox as I'm having some minor issues there.

NAIMA

choco wrote: »

Thanks a lot man, I'm currently doing some freelance work at the moment which should hopefully help until I get a stable job.
Most of the time I'm just creating sets of models and selling them to a reseller.

Thanks again :thumbup:

Now that I got a better microphone, I'm currently considering of making a tutorial regarding the creation of a whole scene in UDK or CE3. We'll pretty much pick up a nice concept art and make a scene based on it showing each step of the creation process (modeling, texturing, optimizing etc...). Once that is done, I'll probably put on my website and maybe add a donation button on it.

CE3 ^^ Awesome work , love your work .....:thumbup:

Rhoutermans

Thanks Will defo be using this. Guess it's off to learn mudbox

bac9-flcl

Amir, that was AWESOME! I've just completed all of your tutorials, and I must say, the results are mindblowing to me. I never though I'll be able to create such a content someday, but thanks to you, I just did. My best wishes to you and keep up the great work!

Here are my results:

. . .

. . .
. . .

. . .

choco

bac9-flcl wrote: »

Choco, that was AWESOME! I've just completed all of your tutorials, and I must say, the results are mindblowing to me. I never though I'll be able to create such a content someday, but thanks to you, I just did. My best wishes to you and keep up the great work!

Here are my results:

. . .

. . .
. . .

. . .

Glad I could help out man, the techniques used have been improved.
I'll probably update the whole thing once I get some time.

For rock modeling, you can just duplicate the base mesh and do the placements all in mudbox then select all your sub-meshes and export them to 3dcoat.

In 3dcoat just go to file -> "merge object" and open up the exported model from mudbox.
This will automatically merge your model which is ideal for generating a low poly mesh suitable for decimation.

Later on in xnormal you can use the mesh exported from mudbox as your highpoly and the merged version as the low poly mesh.

This method is faster and allows for better interactivity with the different parts that make your rock formation. (you can edit the individual parts in mudbox before exporting to 3dcoat).

I wish that there were a remeshing option built in mudbox just like in zbrush.

bac9-flcl

Thanks for advice!

One thing that was bugging me, though, is xNormal AO/Normals bake quality. I've fiddled with ray distance settings a lot, but artifacts persisted no matter the values (clipped sides in cracks and other problems like that). And even putting that aside, the maps that were rendered by xNormal featured areas with completely incorrect coloration (e.g. black and white areas or unusual colors that won't represent correct vectors and have no place on normal map) and were strangely blurry.

Out of curiosity, I've rendered normals and AO directly from final highpoly to final lowpoly in Mudbox, and got much more satisfying results. Here are the maps in question, just open them in separate tabs and check the difference.

xNormal
Mudbox

xNormal
Mudbox

What do you think could be the reason behind such an output from xNormal? I doubt the software itself has flawed algorithms or something, - after all, it's a widely adopted product. Maybe the reason lies in the absence of a cage, and it's not possible to render normals properly without it?

In any case, I'm currently using Mudbox output and I'm quite happy with it, - just curious what went wrong there with xNormal.

choco wrote: »

For rock modeling, you can just duplicate the base mesh and do the placements all in mudbox then select all your sub-meshes and export them to 3dcoat.

In 3dcoat just go to file -> "merge object" and open up the exported model from mudbox.
This will automatically merge your model which is ideal for generating a low poly mesh suitable for decimation.

Later on in xnormal you can use the mesh exported from mudbox as your highpoly and the merged version as the low poly mesh.

This method is faster and allows for better interactivity with the different parts that make your rock formation. (you can edit the individual parts in mudbox before exporting to 3dcoat).

I wish that there were a remeshing option built in mudbox just like in zbrush.

That's more efficient way for sure, and I think I'll prefer it over the older one, - but one thing I really liked about 3D Coat was the ability to subtract the volume (with Ctrl+Enter). With some additional meshes (specialized for cutting) loaded into the library, that would make an awesome way to add damage to your rocks. So whenever I'll need some utterly destroyed forms (for landslides, for example), I'll probably use old 3D Coat workflow to exploit that.

P.S.: And here is the diffuse, for no particular reason. )



P.P.S.: Oh, by the way! I'm frequently using diffuse alpha channel to store specular maps (awesome way to save memory and speed up rendering, recommended in Crytek guidelines), and I've stumbled upon a small problem. How can I disable Maya from using diffuse alpha to render opacity on a material? As you can probably guess, having semi-transparent ghosts in a viewport isn't too handy

Makkon

Amir, I hope you know how big of a impact you've made for all of us. I'm your biggest fan, thank you for sharing your wisdom. I want to be as good as you some day.

LtChicken

What's the equivalent of that scrape brush with the stamp feature in zbrush if there is such a thing?

eyo

Hey Choco, thanks so much for posting all your tutorials. I hope things get better for you job-wise, can't see ya having trouble cause your work is seriously awesome. Keep at it!

fearian

Why the hell hasn't some AD scouted you out and flown you over for a full-time job already! Your work and tutorials are fantastic and they never fail to inspire!

RaPtoR_v9600

You my friend just speed up my rock, cliff creation by 50% or more by introducing 3d coat. And for fist time modeling rock, cliff is fun
Thanks

RaPtoR_v9600

You just speed up my process on creating rock, cliff by 50 % by introducing 3d coat
And for the first time modeling rock is actualy fun. Great tutorial
thank you

roosterMAP

very nice work. cant wait to see the scene come together.