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Garagarape sketchbook


Garagarape
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Hi everybody!

I've just started a sculpt with the voxel tools.

That's a first trial. I like to use "Sculptris" too,

but it seems that 3D Coat gives more possibilities.

This horse was made out of primitives such as boxes

and tubes (those you can distort).

Will try to finish it quickly.

post-3507-12866147197218_thumb.jpg

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Hi everybody!

I've just started a sculpt with the voxel tools.

That's a first trial. I like to use "Sculptris" too,

but it seems that 3D Coat gives more possibilities.

This horse was made out of primitives such as boxes

and tubes (those you can distort).

Will try to finish it quickly.

Limbs are quite a bit too long maybe scale them in length around 1/4 - 1/3. each of the peices is looking good but the overall proportions of the amatomy are just not coming together right. Head and neck could probably do with being reduced in scale.

Keep it coming though i can see that you have good use of the tool.

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BeatKitano, LJB,

Thanks for the crits and the reference pics.

Yes, there may be a problem with the proportions.

In fact, I still don't know if I want it to be a "Quater Horse",

a "Morgan" or something else. Probably have to decide this first :)

I'll try to tweak it a bit with the move tool in the end.

But for now, Breakfirst time!

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Wooohooo! 24402352 tris and the app still works smoothly!

It's a pleasure.

I just wonder if X-normal will swallow all that heavy structure;

Noticed that the AO render was quite different baked in each soft.

May be I just don't know how to tweak 3D Coat baking parameters...

By the way, is it bad to work on "Non Uniform" voxel stuff.

Those red letters down the screen, I wonder if it is important.

Still working on head details:

Horse_Head.jpg

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Wooohooo! 24402352 tris and the app still works smoothly!

It's a pleasure.

I just wonder if X-normal will swallow all that heavy structure;

Noticed that the AO render was quite different baked in each soft.

May be I just don't know how to tweak 3D Coat baking parameters...

By the way, is it bad to work on "Non Uniform" voxel stuff.

Those red letters down the screen, I wonder if it is important.

Xnormal should eat your 24mi I think...of course you can always use 3DCoat powerful decimation's process

when exporting the voxel topology,its very good at preservation of details.

About non-uniformity of space,Andrew fixed it affecting the brushes so in that aspect of working there should be no problems

...the thing is picmat shaders display wrongly in non-uniform spaces,the more it is the more wrong is the shader display.

On 24 mil voxel layer it could take 2-3 minutes but I recommend using "to global space" function anyway.

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Artman, Thanks for the tips!

I found "To global space" function in the voxtree, that was quite fast

(surely added a few tris, upgraded poor parts or calculated average values between "low" and "high" parts?).

Anyway, thanks. It feels better to work without a warning message :)

I didn't found the decimation tool. Is it something automatic when you're done with retopo

and ask 3D Coat to calculate maps for painting? Or is it "export raw voxel object" in the file menu?

(this one crashed when I tried it, may be this model is too heavy).

I'll try to search a little more today later on.

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:rofl:

Artman, Thanks for the tips!

I found "To global space" function in the voxtree, that was quite fast

(surely added a few tris, upgraded poor parts or calculated average values between "low" and "high" parts?).

Anyway, thanks. It feels better to work without a warning message :)

I didn't found the decimation tool. Is it something automatic when you're done with retopo

and ask 3D Coat to calculate maps for painting? Or is it "export raw voxel object" in the file menu?

(this one crashed when I tried it, may be this model is too heavy).

I'll try to search a little more today later on.

Its when exporting from voxtree.

Use 'Export pattern for merge'(even if name is weird) instead of using 'export object'.

You will get asked for decimation at the end of process.

There is problem with scale when using 'export object'.

Its also possible you will run out of memory on export. :(

Because you can display more polys than you can export.

For unknown reasons it seems 3dCoat needs more memory to export than to display(at least,on my side).

I can export 14mil max but i can subdivide up to 20-30 mil in voxel room.

Good luck. :)

Nice horse btw.

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Oh my!

You are right. It ran out of memory with "Export Pattern for merge".

Too bad. I guess there is solutions to that problem.

1) Create all the textures for the low model into 3d-coat

with the "Merge for pixel painting with normal map" option.

But still I'm under the feeling that AO maps are a little poor

compared to those you get with X-normal. I will try to make

tests if possible when the sculpt is done (with a light version?)

2) Cut the horse in different parts like Z-brush users do,

and bake them separately in order to keep details.

Anyway, that's good to have your advices. I learned something today

thanks to you.

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Oh my!

You are right. It ran out of memory with "Export Pattern for merge".

Too bad. I guess there is solutions to that problem.

1) Create all the textures for the low model into 3d-coat

with the "Merge for pixel painting with normal map" option.

But still I'm under the feeling that AO maps are a little poor

compared to those you get with X-normal. I will try to make

tests if possible when the sculpt is done (with a light version?)

2) Cut the horse in different parts like Z-brush users do,

and bake them separately in order to keep details.

Anyway, that's good to have your advices. I learned something today

thanks to you.

Ok,you have another option...

Which is using auto-retopo and do strokes on your model to get good mesh for projection.

Then once that is made, you try "merge with Ptex" from retopo menu .

You then select something like 13 million polys.

The thing is, those 13mil polys will be enough density to capture the details of your 24mil sculpt.

Ptex merging is really crisp.

When merging to Ptex note down the "carcass resolution" number you have chosen,it will be important for next step.

Once merging is made go to file/menu,there you got "export hires" it will export displaced ptex hires mesh,

there you have 3 kinds of export possible ;multiplying original carcass 4x 16 x or 64x.

(Example:for a 200k carcass, Export Hires 16x would give you 3.2 mil so you have to use more like 800k carcass for merging to get 13mil.)

That mesh can be used in Xnormal to get your occlusion map and all tools from Paint room are now available. 8)

Also now,you get access to the occlusion tool that is only available to Ptex and Microvertex merging.

Its different than PPP occlusion,it uses an array of lights along an half-sphere or a sphere.

It gives very nice result but it generates a lot of self-shadowing compared to PPP occlusion,which is local.

But maybe you will like it.Of course Xnormal occlusion is best occlusion avaible now .

You will find a way,Im sure.

btw,I must tell you,your Dominance War IV entry is just awesome.

Really nice finish and design I thought. :)

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Artman, thanks!

I'm going to try the last method you talked about soon;

I think the sculpt is ok even if it is not perfect

(could add details, but may try just to paint them with bump and stuff).

Updated post #6 picture directly.

Dominance War? Yes that was fun (and pain too).

Next time is scheduled during winter holidays.

Will you try to make something?

Can't take part to the DW this time

for I'll be back to France just in the middle of the competition...

I wonder how many people will enter the challenge using 3D Coat.

That is surely a good weapon to fight with.

Ahhhh! Wanna participate!

Next post probably next week-end.

Too much work at work :)

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Wow, that's a very nice Horse you have there. 24 mil tris and still working. I think my PC would have had trouble with that. Look forward to seeing this textured.

On a side note.. I liked Sculptris too, but I've heard that the makers of ZBrush have bought it and the developer, to incorporate it into Zbrush of the coming years.

Ricky.

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Nice. Well done. I can't understand how you divided UV islands though. No stretching as I noticed.

Another question, did you bake AO too? I started to avoid this, it looks good but not the best.

Thanks! I've just used the "mark seams" tool and unfold the whole.

It's just a trial to see what it will look like in the end.

I must admit it is not the best place to insert seams.

Yes, AO and normals are baked on the last shot.

You are right about AO; it is slightly blury with the default settings

(didn't try to tweak the ray cast though).

I will probably use X-normal only for AO baking at the very end of the work.

Nice sculpting job. :good: I use to love to draw horses when I was growing up.

Thanks! It hasn't got a really artistic value, but

I think horses are good to practice. I didn't draw

horses when I was a kid, only dinosaurs and monsters

like gollum or Smaug :)

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??!!! Doctor Banner?

Is there a way to control the mesh color when re-opening a file?

I prefer pink if possible.

lol.. Hulk-Horse smash!

Ah man wouldn't that be nice? I put in a feature request for this, no luck so far. It would be great if we could control each retopo layer's color with a simple swatch-looking icon on the retopo layer itself, a few preset and custom colors. I'll send this to Andrew again in hopes to see it implemented.

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Something went wrong today...

bull.jpg

Wanted to bake occlusion in X-normal using a Ptex merged high poly version of the horse, but failed.

Sorry Artman, I didn't make it :( (but thanks to you I found the occlusion bake options)

It seems that X-normal went on a infinity loop when he tried to calculate the map area corresponding

to little holes on the high poly mesh. Those little holes, I don't know where they do come from.

The low mesh I used for "Ptex merged" was clean (vertex merged on the symmetric line, no holes

on the whole structure)... Mystery.

Then I tried to fix the problem of the legs that are too thick by importing the low version into Maya

and scaling down each edge rings; that seem to be the easiest method when it comes to low poly.

Because I'm lazy, I didn't want to modify the voxel sculpt, modify the retopo and re-bake maps.

I never managed to import the new .obj into 3d-coat paint room. I'm asked to smooth it into millions

vertexes, wich is something I don't want to do. Wanted to paint directly on the new low model.

So I went back to the old file in 3d-coat and tried to modify the legs in the sculpt room.

Then the horse turned into a bull!

Poor me. Need some sleep.

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About Xnormals:

Try new export Dense quad mesh option from File menu.

I was able to export a 29mil mesh that would cause "out of memory" issue with other exports.

(problem is there is a good chance that the exported hires scale gets wrong and doesnt match the lowpoly anymore :( ...but maybe you will be lucky.)

Anyway,its not long to test.Much quicker than merging to Ptex.

About Bull-effect:

It seems to me you accidentally activated the Warp tool and pressed enter. :)

Its the only tool that can do this effect.There is absolutely no other possibilities.

About painting...

Import to Perpixel painting,no subdivision is required there.

Use a normal map as a guide.

Hope that helps.

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Artman, Michalis,

Thank you for your help.

I found out where the problem came from.

Two triangles located inside the mesh

on the symmetry line of the low mesh.

I probably built them during the retopo

without noticing the error.

render_bug.jpg

What is surprising is that the high poly made with

"Merge with Ptex" had the same holes on it.

That means that the exported high model is not made

only out of the voxel sculpt, but is an average mesh

calculated between the voxel structure and the low model

used in retopo?

I should have check the low model before crying :)

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Little update,

I refined the horse legs

and the whole shape in order to lower the heavy feel.

Now it's painting time.

Tried to tweak the specular channel without success

(imported from a .tga file).

Will try to find a tutorial about it tomorrow.

oil_horse.jpg

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