24 replies to this topic

[Sandro Borg]

Hi everybody.
Happy New Year all!
Here's a personal project I've been working on the last few days,the Vamore from Guyver (anime/manga series).
Completely sculpted in 3DCoat using voxels/surfacemode/liveclay.Model is currently approx 3 million polygons.
I want to move on to retopo soon,I'm just seeing how far in detail I can go in sculpt mode.
Comments and feedback welcome.

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[digman]

Very nice work, I will leave the critiques to the more experienced.
LC is is coming along nicely...

[michalis]

A very clean sculpting sandro. Well done.
I'm also leaving the crits to more experienced on this subject.

[LJB]

Good job Sandro Its nice and clean as others have said. Good work, pose a bit rigid, But i seem to remember the it was a bit like that in the Guyver (Forgive only limited Knowledge of the monster) Still Coolio stuff!

[Sandro Borg]

Thank you for your comments guys,much appreciated.
LiveClay is making a huge difference in what I feel I can acheive with this program.
It is very stable in it's current build,I'm excited to see how it develops.
Most of my sculpting is done in surface mode,especially rapid2 tool,gradually increasing resolution by using resample,then finish off finer details using liveclay tools

@LJB , yes I agree about the pose. I worked very closely to the original reference pics and model.
I intended to rig this character,so I wanted a fairly neutral pose. However,I've just upgraded to Rhiggit Pro for Lightwave,which allows you to set up the rig in any position,not just the standard T pose,which will
be very useful,so I'll be trying that out soon.

I've just created a retopo mesh for this model,but I'm having trouble getting it into microvertex as you can see from the screengrabs.NormalMap mode works absolutely fine.
Very frustrating. I must be doing something wrong,though I haven't come across this problem in ages.
If anyone can shed any light on this...
Anyway,back to work.
Thank you all again for your encouragement.

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[digman]

EDIT:

Nice edge flow to your retopo mesh.
It is possible that you have a few interior holes or intersections in your surface mesh which I believe can cause problems in baking. Fill voids will not work as you have to go back to voxels to use it.
Run close holes first and then remove intersections under the voxel menu.
I found that remove intersections under the voxel menu will also remove interior holes in surface mode. It's worth a try but as always save a backup copy before testing. It's takes a little while to fill the holes. Plus if you do have a few intersections in the of mesh it will get rid of those too.

Andrew stated not long ago that Normal Maps are alot more forgiving in baking and displacement maps will revel some errors. If you can not find a solution, I would send the file to Andrew to look at as it could be a bug...

[michalis]

Run close holes first and then remove intersections under the voxel menu.
I found that remove intersections under the voxel menu will also remove interior holes in surface mode. It's worth a try but as always save a backup copy before testing. It's takes a little while to fill the holes. Plus if you do have a few intersections in the of mesh it will get rid of those too.

Andrew stated not long ago that Normal Maps are alot more forgiving in baking and displacement maps will revel some errors. If you can not find a solution, I would send the file to Andrew to look at as it could be a bug...

Is this right? It doesn't work David, not for MV mode.
What is more forgiving and what is unpredictable, I can't tell.
MV uses subdivisions and reprojections (shrink wrapping).
It seems that this isn't working as expected.
You know me, I tried everything. Under vox mode, under surf mode, close holes, fill voids,
It was working on earlier builds...

[LJB]

The answer is DONT USE MICROVERT. Use PTex with Smooth mesh checked. Then bake maps from the PTex to your lower topology Why Andrew cannot use this form of smoothing for Microvert? If it could then would save the step. Phil had these problem is one of his threads.

here is the example I posted -



its not a perfect solution but it removed 98% of the artifacting and allows you to paint without UV.

here are the type of area where you may experience problems.



Try it let me know.

[digman]

The method of Ptex and texture baking tool use to work great but now I have been having trouble with the linux version of the texture baking tool but I am using the most recent beta version of 3DCoat.

[Sandro Borg]

Thank you all for your suggestions - I tried them all,but to no avail.
I figured it must be something to do with the voxel sculpt,reverted back
to a previous version I'd saved,readjusted the retopo mesh and success!
No more crazy stretching.
We live and learn.
I will keep all your suggestions and comments in mind in future should
these issues arise again.
Cheers.

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[Sandro Borg]

Here's a screengrab from Layout with the VPR preview render,just
to check that everythings ok.
I'm quite happy with that,so time to move on...

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[Sandro Borg]

A quick update.
I retopologised the shoulder Pods,and successfully merged both pieces into MicroVertex along with the body,in seperate layers.
Time to add UVs.
A question.
I usually merge first,creating automatic Uv,then once merge I clear these and then create my own UVs
Is this right?
Or should I create UV first and then merge into MicroVertex?
Thanks in advance.

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[Sandro Borg]

Last update for this evening.
A quick Lightwave VPR to check everything's fine.
I plan to start UV first thing tomorrow,then on with the painting/texturing/detailing.

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[Sandro Borg]

UV mapping completed.
I reverted back to an earlier version and tried UV mapping before mergeing to microvertex.Unfortunately it gave me way to many surface errors to deal with ,so I've gone back to my method of
automatic retopo while merging into MV,then manually clean up the UVs.
I'm sure this is mostly to do with my inexperience of UV mapping and how 3DCoat's UV mapping tools work.
I'll have to spend some more time studying this area,but for the time being,this will suffice.

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[Sandro Borg]

Almost done painting/texturing.
I'll post up some renders when I'm finished.

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[digman]

Coming along great, looking forward to the renders.

[AbnRanger]

The answer is DONT USE MICROVERT. Use PTex with Smooth mesh checked. Then bake maps from the PTex to your lower topology Why Andrew cannot use this form of smoothing for Microvert? If it could then would save the step. Phil had these problem is one of his threads.

here is the example I posted -



its not a perfect solution but it removed 98% of the artifacting and allows you to paint without UV.

here are the type of area where you may experience problems.



Try it let me know.

Indeed. I have NEVER gotten anything workable from MV mode. That's why I usually just give the mesh a medium high resolution and merge to PPP, where the baking is usually right on.

[Sandro Borg]

LJB, AbnRanger - thanks for the tip,I'll have to try it out.
However,is it possible to save the mesh out at the original low resolution when mergeing to PTEX?
It always ended up subdividing the low res mesh.
Low res mesh is important to me as I do characters for animating in Lightwave.
This is the problem I had initally,and why I've since stuck to Mircrovertex.
I agree that PPP is straightforward to use,but it doesn't quite give me the results I'm after,ie displacements.
I've used MV on a lot of models,none quite as detailed as this one,and never really had any problems.
But still,Ii'm prepared to give PTEX a go if I can get a workable workflow between Lightwave,and not having
to deal with UV's is definately a plus.
Cheers.

[LJB]

Hi Sandro one word of advice for future ref, Joints like Knees, Elbows and Knuckles could always do with a little more geometry on the Out edge to help maintain the volume at full bend.

Excuse the crude paint over example, but it serves the purpose here.



hope this helps.

[LJB]

Great job on texture BTW! keep going, Maybe use the move tool on the face geo to Evil him up a little like on the ref.