Sculptris and its future

[michalis]

Serek, are you talking about blender normal maps? I'm not sure you gonna like the results. A chaos is hiding there.
As for mixing two normal maps a more stable workflow could be this: Don't use them, do your UVs and reprojections on a multi res - after retopo mesh, use displacement maps instead. Bake them in a new normal map in the end. You have full control doing so.

[justadeletedguy]

No. When you Retopo and bake, whether you use Zbrush, Blender, Xnormal, whatever, it's a hit and miss. Depending on the uniformity of the UV-stretch, the shape integrity of your retopo, and the size of your texture, you may or may not get the results you want. However, depending on what your model is supposed to represent (main character, enemy, background scenery) it may be enough. That's what the Skybox is for, to get a better idea of what your model will look like in an environment. It can be exported to Blender. It can be used as an example to build your own. It's just a tool.
To get the best results from a bake, you'll want to subdivide your 100k model to 1,000,000 verts, then polypaint from texture, then bake that to your retopo. Sculptris doesn't Polypaint, so you'll have to subdivide to keep your detail.

[michalis]

You put it very nice justadeletedguy! Now use some seams and see what you get. Maya format or LW for starting?
In any case this technic is coming from scanline render engines. A physically correct engine, like cycles, lux, yafaray, Kray, and some other can't support it. Some of them just trying to convert nor maps to bumps leading to ridiculous results. Bumps are supported correctly though. Especially in latest blender builds (BI)

[wasa]

You forgot the essential step of shrinkwrapping projection.

Nope, I didn't forget it, I've tried that method, and seen others use it, you get weird snapping issues that you don't get with surface snapping.
I would leave shrink wrap to those times when you're in a hurry and are projecting a displacement onto an existing mesh. (it will still need some cleanup)

[reidh]

Even if ? No way other. But if they only paid all the money to the code writting/testing etc. dept and or to Dr. Petter, and ZERO to their stupid art and/or marketing dept. Their gui strikes me as having been literally Screwed by and with some F from G knows W.

[michalis]

wasa, what normal maps are you planing to bake without using shrinkwrap? Shrinkwrap is the only way to bake hi frequency details on a low poly UV cage. Learn how to use it, not so difficult. Advanced mode please. (projections).
You probably confused it with the involvement of this modifier in retopo methods.

[wasa]

Are we talking about the same thing?
I'm speaking of the mesh modifier shrink wrap.
If you're speaking of the same, no, you do not have to use it to bake details from one mesh to another or it's uv space.

If you still don't agree then watch this video before you respond.
http://www.blendercookie.com/2011/04...ormal-mapping/
And no i wouldn't have a retopo mesh floating off the surfaces, that's why I use the snap to surface option on when I create the new topology. (that means it's already on the surface and shrink wrapping would be pointless computational power.

[michalis]

Hey wasa Thanks for the link, great tutorial! What I learned is this bias parameter! Never noticed how useful this is.
Still didn't work for me though. I need a nice multi res model in blender. Having all the details from sculptris. How?
Easy I can do this using displacement modifier, but disp-map is baked in zbrush. I still get wrong displacements in blender 2.5x, though I can easily bake them in blender 2.49x. I'm doing something wrong.
But using projection / shrinkwrap + normals baked in zb or 3dcoat. Have a look. A BI render, full huge scene, no background photos, no compositions, all 3d.
The temple in 3dcoat-voxel + retopo, nor maps.
Venus statue as box modeling in blender then Zbrush. 3d trees from library
All these before sculptris but I doubt if it could help much in this scene.
In this scene there're all the 'dark' tricks we're talking about.
Boxmodeling, groups, retopo, UVs, baking, baking dirt, painting more bumps as normals, zbrush, multi res transferring, shrinkwrapping etc etc. Most of all I had to fight with this ridiculous Blender BI UI. Now, cycles, a decent nodes system, at last. But not normal maps.

[wasa]

Nice work Michalis, very skillfully done.
Ya I remember someone talking about cycles and other unbiased render engines having a limitation when it comes to normal maps. I personally wouldn't use normal maps in a final render other than to maybe for fine details like pores and other stuff that I feel it would be overkill to have in the displacement maps.

What I would probably do for something in the background that needed a look of decent detail would be to decimate it to reduce memory usage and render times.

[michalis]

Just watched this new video on top row.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=160240

I believe that Dr peters should continue the development of auto topology.
A dynamic tri mesh can describe sculpture better than marching quads - voxels or as pixologic likes to name their remeshing technic.
I still believe that this could be the future of zbrush and sculptris.

Now we're in the stage of lot of wows. So many years, the majority of zb users didn't pay attention on sculptris development, neither on 3dcoat voxel sculpting.
Wow then, voxels! wow. They were existing in zbrush for long time. Remesher works like this, now a live remesher, we'll put it to tests anyway.

You can watch what I (without any particular talen or technic) was able to do using 3dcoat, (the temple above), why I should start wows?

Wow, how is this possible... thanks pixologic.
Of course, but one year ago, this video, not lot of wows, this isn't fair.
http://vimeo.com/15740131

[wasa]

Just watched this new video on top row.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=160240

Wow, how is this possible... thanks pixologic.
Of course, but one year ago, this video, not lot of wows, this isn't fair.
http://vimeo.com/15740131

Voxel sculpting received plenty of wows and aahs.
I think part of it is that 3D-Coats voxel solution requires pretty beefy hardware. And believe it or not, most hobbyists have better computers than the freelance artists. Also by the time 3D-Coat added voxels and that video was made, ZBrush already had ZSketch which demoed similar pieces. Both apps could use with a major UI overhaul, but most artists that have been using ZBrush are going to stay with it because it's become second nature for most of them. I know I'm definitely more comfortable with ZBrush over 3D-Coat, even though I hate both UIs.

[michalis]

@wasa
I don't try to compare the two apps.
I use them both and I admit I'm addicted to this UI. It isn't a linear UI(like in 3DC) so, more effective. Just these wows before we put dynamesh to tests...

[wasa]

That's typical, I don't know if you're a gamer but I work at a video retail store and we see that all the time. The company releases some amazing looking screen shots or video clips with a bunch of cool looking stuff. Then when you get the game it bombs because they showed the best of the best and everything else is just dull and plain. I guess movie trailers are same thing, show all the good scenes and leave you wishing you hadn't seen the rest, ha ha.

[michalis]

Speaking about the future of sculptris, how different the new dynamesh could look if dr peters had finish his auto retopo work?
BTW, pixologic didn't give some information on the new release. Can we use dynamesh on an imported obj? We'll find it in five days.

[Knacki]

Exactly - see it in 5 days.
I don't think someone had given up something - it's just something has to be finished first or want to be saved for z5 giving some reasons for an update.

Well I am definatly not an experienced zbrush user - by far not.
Every attempt is forced back by an UI playing hide and seek with me.
3dcoat? Just installed it and played around with it a bit.

Easier to find your way there and I was absolutely impressed by those videos showing features zbrush didn't had those days.

Anyway - final results in zbrush have looked so much better. Just bigger community with a lot of brilliant artists? I don't know.
The most important for me: Pixologic is working with DrPetter, the man who brought me into this beautiful world of digital sculpting.

Due to sculptris - one of the worlds most intuitive creative software - I am here. Without sculptris and DrPetter I wouldn't even have thought about it.

We will see how much demo video and reality will differ for zb4R2.

Reality is already: Sculptris is getting more and more people into digital sculpting and into zb