the beast

[castaneda]

Hi all

I'm a relatively new user of 3d coat and have done a couple of sculpting projects. This my first post here with an organic beast in which I'm just working with sculpting tools; no concern for painting or retopology actions. There are a lot of amazing WIP's here that essentially makes my attempt look rather immature. But here goes anyway.

[Garagarape]

Nice and very original silhouette!

I hope you'll refine it a bit more; it deserves it!

[L'Ancien Regime]

Actually for a beginner the delicacy of the fingers and the angularity of the elbows emerging from the muscles is pretty advanced.

[castaneda]

Thanks guys.

Garagarape; Yeah I think I'm going to do more although I initially wanted it to be a beast of burden, like something on the bulk of an elephant but this is what came out.

Thanks L'Ancien Regime; the comment gives me incentive to continue.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Thanks guys.

Garagarape; Yeah I think I'm going to do more although I initially wanted it to be a beast of burden, like something on the bulk of an elephant but this is what came out.

Thanks L'Ancien Regime; the comment gives me incentive to continue.

You have to continue man; 3d computer graphics is the new drug that is not a drug....

[castaneda]

I know that!!!! I'm powerless to stop!! (Even though I don't want to stop anyway).

[Tony Nemo]

Like the Dodo said, "Feed your head!" Give those neurons something to play with and they will stick with you.

[castaneda]

Don't know if any body is still following this thread but here is an update on the beast I have been sculpting. I'm learning what tools work for me and which ones don't. Still I'm having a blast learning 3d coat. This beast is going to be in a pic that I'm working on. Alien with an alien creature for his burdens. Soon I'm going to sculpt the sacks and pouches that will drape the beast.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Looks like you're ready to start painting. In fact you may want to go back and put all those textures down when you paint the autopoed mesh and it's baked out rtr normal map with the diffuse color bump and specularity all at the same time.

I think you'll find that doing it that way will be quite the trip. It's quite intoxicating once you get good at it.

[castaneda]

Yeah, I suppose I'm ready to paint but I often don't understand what people are saying when they talk about baking textures. I do know that My rendering program is Vue and I'm pretty sure it does not show normal maps which is why I need to sculpt all my details rather than paint the details through a normal map. I use the Reality Paint program which use to be called Blacksmith 3d. This program is great for texture painting as it does all the mapping, unwrapping and allows one to paint across seams and in high resolution. I don't even need to retopo. Still, I'd like to learn the 3d coat of retopo, baking textures and painting. I've watched videoes but I think I must be a slow learner or else I'm scared to tackle something like retopoing. Videoes often do not give a step by step definitive of every action, tool, and reason for said particular process. In other words I get confused because not all info is apparent and I get lost in the process.

[L'Ancien Regime]

Yeah, I suppose I'm ready to paint but I often don't understand what people are saying when they talk about baking textures. I do know that My rendering program is Vue and I'm pretty sure it does not show normal maps which is why I need to sculpt all my details rather than paint the details through a normal map. I use the Reality Paint program which use to be called Blacksmith 3d. This program is great for texture painting as it does all the mapping, unwrapping and allows one to paint across seams and in high resolution. I don't even need to retopo. Still, I'd like to learn the 3d coat of retopo, baking textures and painting. I've watched videoes but I think I must be a slow learner or else I'm scared to tackle something like retopoing. Videoes often do not give a step by step definitive of every action, tool, and reason for said particular process. In other words I get confused because not all info is apparent and I get lost in the process.

The release of Vue 8 marks e-on's on-going commitment to provide substantial, .... Vue 8 now supports the use of RGB normal maps to drive the bump channel

Seriously, painting normal map displacement, diffuse color and specularity in real time simultaneously is one of the best things in 3d coat. It's not as powerful as Mari but it's more immediate and sensual. Mari has more tricks in its bag but it's slow and clunky to handle. 3d coat is really a lot more fun to use.

You should autopo your character to about 6000 or so polygons then bake out a displacement map to 4000x4000 pixels then from the retopo room go to retopo in the menu and select Merge to NM per pixel. That will set you up in the Paint room with all the maps you'll need to get to work.

https://soundcloud.c...mt/weekend-wars

[L'Ancien Regime]

http://www.e-onsoftw...mplete/?page=10

Bump, Displacement and Normal Mapping

Vue offers bump, displacement and normal mapping channels for producing intricate surface details or large amplitude deformations (when using displacement).

The micro-polygon displacement engine is fully tailored for natural scenery creation allowing the render of millions of polygons with full level of detail optimization based on camera location and distance.

Displacement can be adjusted in any direction (vertical, horizontal, normal) and contains a smoothing slider to smooth out high frequency details if desired. Large amplitude displacement allows for extreme displacement effects without artifacts or torn meshes

Frankly if you did your painting of normal map, color and specularity in 3d Coat and took it over to Vue it would look spectacular. The Vue render engine does have its flaws but it's strength lies in it's ability to create atmospheres that are unsurpassed. I love using it.

[L'Ancien Regime]

OK Digman and I have been having a polite discussion on Normal Maps in Vue 9.5 and we're uncertain about what is really going on with them. It seems to be converting actual Normal Maps brought in on the normal map channel to greyscale displacements and bumps.

So maybe vue uses displacements and bumps...

But I'm looking into this right now...

[Carlosan]

The trick with tangential normal maps from 3D-Coat is that Vue 9/10 (and I guess 11) all need their imported normal maps force-set to a gamma of 1.0.

From 3D-Coat, export your textured model as OBJ (it is UV mapped, right?). The export dialogue box asks if you want to save the normal map into the folder with your OBJ file.

In 3D-Coat's preferences, set the Normal export to Maya, Blender format. This works best in programs like maya, blender, modo, carrara (using the Baker plugin, not the Deeper plugin which is too old like Vue's normal map importing is). But if your normal comes from a flat plane, say a wall or floor object, Vue will render it fine.

Normal maps in Vue only work if applied on planes, not objects.

source

http://3d-coat.com/f...?showtopic=9515

and

http://www.renderosi...read_id=2858218

[castaneda]

Here is a better version of my alien beast. I think I'm getting the hang of sculpting by not being afraid to "push the limits" with the tools. I was being timid before and now I'm just having a ball manipulating the voxels without worry. Difficult to get out of the poly modeling mode. There is much more freedom and creativity with sculpting.

[Garagarape]

It's a bit cruel to say so, but... I prefer your first version of the creature

with its twisted body and stretched foreharms.

Anyway, you're probably gonna tweak it again, no?

[castaneda]

Oh yeah, I'm gonna tweak it more. It's just that I had more fun with this second one because I wasn't so intent on figuring out what tools were correct or not. This was a more relaxed sculpt, and more fun. I'll post it when I'm done.