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Garagarape sketchbook


Garagarape
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Tony Nemo > So maybe you were working on Yokosuka base? I went there once for a rugby game. I also have relatives in Oofuna. Feel strange to think you once lived there!

Yearoftheox> Oh... You fixed the tail. But I like it massive. I'll have a try with your version once. But it's a long way to Taper ary :) haha

Michalis > Yes those are great Masters. Hokusai can evocate things with great strength by using only a few strokes. The right stroke at the right place!

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Thanks!

A lot of time on the dragon since last post, but no big changes.

The wings, though they look simple takes a lot of time (because they're thin?)

Had a little fun drawing on the pic ---> Concentration down.

dragon_12.jpg

Listening at "American Dreaming" from Dead Can Dance.

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It looks gorgeous already!

Yah, the wings issue, they are very thin and this isn't very helpful for sculpting apps and/or on retopo processing. Snapping is getting crazy under such conditions.

My usual workaround is to make them fat and reworking them after retopo/multi resolution sculpting methods. I'll keep asking for such a sculpting room inside 3dcoat but for now, I use blender sculpt or zbrush.

It's also a difficult task, when real SSS gonna take place in rendering.

On static sculpture cases, like a bronze or on marble gargoyle, I make thinner only the close to edges areas.

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Sorry Michalis, yes, it's the old sculpt room.

I may have to get in touch with admin as no matter how many times I try to follow this thread, it always reverts back to unfollow and I therefore don't receive email updates. ermmm.

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Lots of things have changed. And one very happy new thing is that you can retopo a model,

go back to voxel room, change the model pose with pose tool, and when you go back to

retopo room, wow! The retopo mesh has followed voxel moves. I saw it in a AbnRanger video,

and it looks really handy.

Yep, there's no other solution than making the wings a little thick. And reduce them after.

We'll see. I think I won't use alpha masked texture on wings this time.

As Wave of light said, it is now "tweak room" wich sounds better

because sculpt is more voxel related, may be.

When I'll have more time, I'll have a look at Blender sculpting methods.

I gave up with Zb wich I used for a while. Great tool, but It takes time to understand its interface and functions.

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It's not zb related though.

It's about multi resolution based possibilities.

To be able to go to the lower "base cage" subd and edit some vertices. Resulting to thinner wings.

Sometimes we tend to miss the easiest way.

Same goes for mouth opening. Sculpt it opened. You can close it later. It also makes retopo easier.

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Yep, you are running out of ram memory.... How much is your voxel count and how much ram memory do you have...

Try and resample down some. Resampling does try to keep details... Similar to how when you resample a 2D image to a lower resolution. The routine works to keep image detail while throwing out some pixels. Voxels are really in the long run 3D pixels... (Marching Cubes routine)

Unless your are in surface mode already... then there is the decimate tool to help and a couple of manual tools too...

I use LC because of this very reason but I know how to avoid most current problems with it. Raul is working hard to fix these problems...

If none of this works, listen to Smashing Pumpkins... "Rocket" and drink a little MadDog... "MD" :declare:

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Hi Digman,

Thanks for your help.

I have 6 Gb of RAM. The model polycount is 61 875 756. May be too much.

On the previous work (Skeksis) the model was split into several parts; that was OK to bake little

by little separately.

The dragon is made of three parts only: Body+legs +head and tail / wings/ eyes.

The resample solution didn't work (and I can't even go back to voxels on my last saved data).

Seems that resample is also a big memory eater.

I think I'm gonna listen to "Rocket" and have the special drink you talked about :)

I should have been more careful. It is a beginner mistake (I'm still Apprentice though)

After a while, I will try something else.

1) Finish the retopo model

2) Save the voxel Dragon file into a few files "Head" "Neck" "Body", "Legs" and so on.

3) Cut anything that is not head into the "Head" file --> Import retopo mesh, Bake Normals.

Do the same for each Dragon part data.

4) Gather all the partial bake texture into one .psd.

That's a time consuming way, but I don't wan't to give up and throw hours of work into the rubbish-bin.

For now, I'll just relax as you suggested.

Cheers!

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Trying to bake parts separately was almost my last hope.

But... I can't even cut parts of the model to make it lighter.

dragon_14.jpg

I have no choice but to use an older data in voxel, less detailed.

It is the first time I noticed a huge difference in the data weight between Voxels and Surface.

For almost the same content and polycount:

Voxel: 357,790 KB

Surface: 1,629,360 KB

Almost X5!

By the way does someone knows a tutorial explaining the benefit of LC mode?

I just don't understand clearly what LC means. "Low cost"? It seems that it enable

to subdivide model only where you drop your pencil instead of subdividing the whole.

But I don't understand why the data grows so much in surface or LC mode.

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If you're in surface mode, you could try 'decimate' from the voxel menu. It helped a lot when my 'thing' model was getting too big. To make sure I wasn't loosing too much detail, I focused in on a small part and did the decimation in steps.

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some time ago i had a similar trouble

what i do first was:

- Voxels > Resample*

* trial and error time

- and then... i add a new layer and move the old object to the new layer

duno why the data weight was reduced a LOT

i another way... i always try to make models that volumes stay inside the grid perimeter

gl

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I have 6 Gb of RAM. The model polycount is 61 875 756. May be too much.

Wow, that is really pushing the limit of your ram... I went wow that you even got it that high in voxel count...

LC, I do need to make a video tutorial on using it effectively from building the basic mesh to adding the details... Voxel mode can be used as well in the beginning of this process as well using the resample tool to keep your voxel count lower as you build the base mesh. Then switich to surface mode...

My entire gladiator scene so far is 6,500,000 polygons in surface mode. I have lots of polygon room to finish out the body and add more fine details on the armor or body...

EDIT: I think your details are finer than the gladiator but using LC can give you lots of specific area detail at a lower overall polygon count.

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Wow, that is really pushing the limit of your ram... I went wow that you even got it that high in voxel count...

LC, I do need to make a video tutorial on using it effectively from building the basic mesh to adding the details... Voxel mode can be used as well in the beginning of this process as well using the resample tool to keep your voxel count lower as you build the base mesh. Then switich to surface mode...

My entire gladiator scene so far is 6,500,000 polygons in surface mode. I have lots of polygon room to finish out the body and add more fine details on the armor or body...

EDIT: I think your details are finer than the gladiator but using LC can give you lots of specific area detail at a lower overall polygon count.

I would love to view what you have described! I have little experience of surface mode and none of LC. Looking forward to your hand-holding with these tools.

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Carlosa, Digman, Tony Nemo, Nichalis, thanks for your kind words.

I Agree with you Michalis.

If the app gets heavier, just add RAM in the pc is not the only way IMO.

Optimize the routines and make the application lighter (But I'm sure Andrew is doing it) sounds better.

I'll bake the dragon parts by parts, that's what my former company friends used to do when running out of RAM memory.

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I'll bake the dragon parts by parts, that's what my former company friends used to do when running out of RAM memory.

Indeed. I hope you won't do it as a butcher though. LOL

You could sculpt a bit more, it's a kind or armor and you can create some seams-friendly parts.

There're other cases though, like a nude... lol. What then? Not too many polys needed for a nude... maybe. Maybe not, in the case of an aged ruined statue... or something more pervert LOL. A nude covered with an alien skin.

Yeah, I'm in the middle of a project, right now, huge mesh. It is already separated into parts but counts 40M already. I wonder.

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instead of butchering it like that you can try to model in separations. Like the feet you can see the scales above them have a harder line to cut along. Make more of those areas that hide the cuts. I see pro models broken up into lots of objects too so its not necessarily a hardware thing. At the end of the day what do you do with it? Reduce it and use it for something or just render out of 3DC? b/c the bake down process is easier with many parts. Also it has to be UV's so there are "cuts" again. Unless you only want to render out of 3DC as a beauty image.

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Yep, area that hide the cuts is a solution.

But I have also another idea. I f you look carefuly the parts I cuted,

you will notice that I didn't cut each part in order to fit perfectly the others.

Theres a "common" neutral area on each; that means even if the cut line hard edge

is baked on one part, it will be covered by the next piece baked texture in the end.

I'll post a screen-shot when I'll be ready. Retopo first.

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