Home Technical Talk

Zbrush4 without Zbrush4 - hardsurface blockout technique

grand marshal polycounter
Offline / Send Message
pior grand marshal polycounter
Heya,

heres a little vid inspired by the new Z4 Shadowbox, but ported over to a regular 3D app - basically using cubes as voxels to cut through. Then Zbrush (3.5!) comes into play to make it all hardsurface. Hope this is of some interest!

http://vimeo.com/14083398

Replies

  • leslievdb
    Offline / Send Message
    leslievdb polycounter lvl 15
    cool method indeed :)
    is there a reason why you switched to mudbox for the final sculpting part?
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Ill post to post more advanced blockouts using it later, but yeah its handy.
    Regarding mudbox ... I use Flatten a lot and the one in Z just seems odd to me !
  • commander_keen
    Offline / Send Message
    commander_keen polycounter lvl 18
    I dont really understand what you did in zbrush that made it look all voxely :P A simple voxel painting system could be writen in max pretty easily, maybe that could be useful for creating base meshes like this.
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Oh, its just Remesh with a resolution of 128 and tension set to 0 (its 10 by default)
    Its also very good at merging primitives flawlessly...

    (Keen : I would love having something like that in max!! hehe. With the brush tool .. hmmm delicious!)

    pior_reproject.jpg
  • East
    Offline / Send Message
    East polycounter lvl 14
    Pior, I'm a bit confused and intrigued by this. Where's the actual advantage doing things this way?
  • BeatKitano
    Offline / Send Message
    BeatKitano polycounter lvl 16
    "Freeform" sculpting, finding new shapes you wouldn't have thought of just by modeling it the hard way.

    That's the only reason i see since the topology is awful with remesh (but you can get away with it if you have a powerfull comp)
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Yup, it bridges the gap between the 'blockout with primitives' stage, and the sculpting exploration. I find it extremely useful, I have been doing full characters this way lately (keeping a final retopo and resculpt stage for the very end).

    It basically removes the need for zspheres or zsketch and replaces it by primitives wedging - so much more powerful!

    Ill try to post more complex examples later!
  • wailingmonkey
    pior...do you not use 3DCoat?
    (for some reason I thought I'd seen you mention using it before)

    would seem a helluva lot easier to just use voxels for voxels. :D
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Yeah I have it ... but the voxel implementation is a nightmare really. You cannot cut/manipulate stuff that easily, unfortunately. Kinda gave up on it!
  • bounchfx
    wait - remesh merges two separate objects together?
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Yup, it takes whatever other visible subtool you have in your tool, and shapes the currently selected subtool around them. So if you do that, then reproject all, you end up with a continous mesh looking exactly like the primitives you shoved together. Insanely useful!!
  • bounchfx
    damn man, that's awesome, thanks! learnings ++
  • BeatKitano
    Offline / Send Message
    BeatKitano polycounter lvl 16
    pior wrote: »
    Yeah I have it ... but the voxel implementation is a nightmare really. You cannot cut/manipulate stuff that easily, unfortunately. Kinda gave up on it!


    I may say the obvious but you never know: You can use the carve tool with lasso tool to cut chunks of voxel out of a curve+primitive manequin. Did you try that way ?
    I recently "discovered" that, its a bit like the clip brushes of zb4. Combined with sphere brush you got a very quick rough mesh doodler taht let you free to explore shapes.
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Yup I did :P Then again it might just be a matter of preference - its just that I like it much much more when I can still go back to the previous shapes, bend them, twist them and so on ...

    ITs addicting, gotta do some more now :P
  • Neox
    Offline / Send Message
    Neox veteran polycounter
    pior wrote: »
    Ill post to post more advanced blockouts using it later, but yeah its handy.
    Regarding mudbox ... I use Flatten a lot and the one in Z just seems odd to me !


    take the polish brush, its way better than flatten
  • BeatKitano
    Offline / Send Message
    BeatKitano polycounter lvl 16
    pior wrote: »
    Yup I did :P Then again it might just be a matter of preference - its just that I like it much much more when I can still go back to the previous shapes, bend them, twist them and so on ...

    ITs addicting, gotta do some more now :P


    I completely agree about the posing tools, they are completely unusable in the current state, I hope some optimisation is done in that area soon...
  • Michael Knubben
    In addition to what Stefan says, try TrimDynamic. It's a lovely brush, I think. I often have it set to shift instead of the smooth brush.
  • CodeFather
    Offline / Send Message
    CodeFather polycounter lvl 15
    A simple voxel painting system could be writen in max pretty easily, maybe that could be useful for creating base meshes like this.

    That would be pretty awesome and handy too ! :)

    BTW there is a REMESH for 3dsmax that comes with the WrapIt script:
    quadgen.jpg


    Pior, that is a nice technique you've explored
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Hey CF! I just tried Wrapit last night, and yeah it is plain awesome for that! It should produce a nicer topology than the Zbrush Remesh - narrowing down the Zbrush step to just Reproject all. Awesome!!

    It really is exciting. As much as I love building lowpoly stuff, being able to keep the retopo for the very end even on mechanical stuff really is liberating...
  • doc rob
    Offline / Send Message
    doc rob polycounter lvl 19
    So, the idea for the workflow is this: (?)

    1) Block in using primitives and modifiers in max - arbitrary geometry, arbitrary topology, lots of intersections, maybe even hacked voxels like in Pior's original example.
    2) Use WrapIt to create a REMESH
    3) Import both the block-in and the remesh into Z, reproject the remesh to the block in, which creates a single decent topology for sculpting.
    4) Sculpt
    5) Refine to a final high poly by building subD models where necessary to replace sculpted bits
    6) Retopo and bake

    Do I have that right?
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Yup! It seems convoluted but OH BOY its soooo fast and freeform!
  • keizza
    Offline / Send Message
    keizza polycounter lvl 18
    wait...so basically this is cool because you don't have to worry bout box modeling something for a base right? you can just slap a bunch of stuff together to get something interesting....in a matter of a minute or so.....then get to work in zbrush?
  • cryrid
    Offline / Send Message
    cryrid interpolator
    I do that even without sculpting. Block something out quickly and messily, then retopo.
  • Electro
    Offline / Send Message
    Electro polycounter lvl 18
    keizza: yep, appears so

    Really neat stuff pior, I absolutely looooove the creative new ways of coming up with new workflows to freshen things up. It can take something that used to be laborous and put a fun new spin on it, making it more exciting. That's how topogun was for me when first getting it to make low poly after high, and then 3dcoat made it even more fun again hehe. I'm all for this methodology! creativity++!
Sign In or Register to comment.