dapharmers models and experiments

[dapharmer]

so im working on sketching up some plans for an insane little snowtube run at a friends house that we're planning on making this winter, and as part of the planning i decided to try to make a model of the friends back yard to work with... i used this as an excuse to learn some tricks towards mastering the zsphere topology tools to basically create the entire landmass out of a single starting cube.

here's the end result :



aside from the trees and 1/2 of the plants everything was completely done using a cube and zsphere topology. The end result let me make great use of texture files to lay out the basic areas.. the whole process took about 3 hours.. the next step will be to add an overlay of snow to make the tube run and resulting snow-bowl at the bottom .. twill be an adventure

full size image here : http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6144/...ffdeaf8f_o.jpg


any c&c would be welcome

[slocik]

wait, how you did this ? Im confused ;D Dont look liek somthing made in zrbush

[dapharmer]

i'll post the low poly structures later.. the basic landmass and stairs was made from a few hundred polys. i actually went about the topo proces like i was working in autocad. starting with a really simple 6 faced cube, i just set up a grid using the zsphere retopo to insert points at halfpoint marks.. and then just slowly carve out the landmass into 3d space.. after it was at a point where everything was laid out nice and smooth and even, i broke up the tools to detail closer.. make each section laid out proper for use of textures.. and then just plugged in trees into areas of his yard that were dense with them..

i've been trying to learn topogun of recent but i still like zsphere retopo when it comes to breaking things into precise halves and sections.. its pretty amazing what you can get when you start with a single cube and soem patience... topogun is good for quick laying out of new lines, and filling things in super fast, but i still like being able to move the points along the surface in zbrush that is a pain to do in topogun.. just need to keep things under 15k points per subtool if ur gonna use it but u can get alot out of that..

[slocik]

So you sculpted the whole thing, and the used retopo to make new topology ? And thenb sculpted it again ? Or am im still getting it worng ?

[dapharmer]

the whole thing was retopo .. i used topology to create the initial mesh here :



then i used topology to refine the mesh and create new features. here :



and finally refined it further to get path's structures and prepare for further detail work and use of texture files here :

[slocik]

ok, i have no idea how you did this, the more you explain the more confused i am ;D
Good job, i didnt know you could do so much box modeling in zbrush.

[dapharmer]

i'll come up with a way to show an example of how to do it.. it's a simple method but its also a little complex because your jumping back and forth between working in a zsphere.. making an adaptive skin with no subdivs.. using transpose to stretch pieces.. using retopo to divide those stretched areas.. etc etc etc.. you make the whole thing into a big grid and once you get the hang of how the zsphere retopo works as far as how it automatically divides edges when adding new points to them.. you can lay out points and lines exactly how you need them.. like you were working in a cad program. give me a bit to make a little example using a cube and it should make better sense.. im horrible at explaining things

[slocik]

yeha a small tutorial would work ;D I can never do any hard edgy modeling in zbrush ;f I usually tend to project things i do in modo onto zbrush modles and pretend nothing happened ;D

[polaroid29]

@slocik he's not sculpting or retopo'ing anything. He's using Zbrush's topology tool to create everything, the same way you would use the topology tool to make a cape, or shirt or collar or something. Am I interpreting it right dapharmer?

Anyway, it looks really nice man! One question though, why do this in Zbrush when you can do the same thing using standard poly modeling in max or maya or whatever else?

[dapharmer]

ok so here goes :



a: starting with the tool attached to this post open the tool.. clone it.. append a zsphere.. scale down the zsphere and move it completely out of the view of the box.. select topology (pick the clone of the purebox) .. edit topology.. solo the zsphere

b: using draw mode create a grid pattern bissecting every edge, and pretty much recreate the effect of a non-smooth subdivide (doing it on your own gives you a feel for how you need to plan out splitting edges. lay out the general structure you plan to create

c: refine the structure by bissecting lines further, constantly checking adaptive skin to make sure you keep the structure solid. wherever possible change triangles to polys by bissecting additional edges as necessary

d: keep refining until you have your structure laid out with extremely good layout for applying textures evenly across the structure.


if you can think of it in terms of a cad like program.. you need to just create your own grid as you go.. theres trial and error involved as you need to hide bits and pieces to be able to get where you need and bissect lines... and you also need to keep in mind that if u want to add a point at a 1/4 way into a line, first add one at the middle.... when you click a point quarter way up, the new midpoint of the resulting edge is not gonna be an equal distance unless u establish a mid point first.. if that makes no sense to you play around with bissecting lines in the attached box and you'll understand what i mean quick enough.

[slocik]

yeha it works, but it seems a bit time consuming, there should be some way to dive it faster. Addding every vert by hand would drive me insane on a bigger model ;D
Tanks for explaining.

[zber2]

Originally posted by aurick:

Here's a bonus tip: If you don't want a specific image to create a thumbnail in the bottom row, change the ATT and /ATT to ATN and /ATN. ZBC will skip over any images with that tag, looking for the first image in a post that has the ATT tag instead. You can control which image will create a thumbnail simply by changing any images before your desired one. You can ignore the images that come after, since ZBC will only create a thumbnail for the first image with an ATT tag.

[FatherO]

Pretty awesome that you can box model like that in ZB, but I would much rather do stuff like this in Max, Maya, Modo, etc..

[dapharmer]

helpful to know though when you dont have maya and / or modo, etc.. for the most part it was done just to practive with some retopo methods and such but yeah, i wouldnt suggest using it for anything stupendously big... one area zbrush is helpful in though with big models is that you can hide parts of the structure just like you would a normal mesh, and by keeping it all in one program, you can quickly shoot the topology into a new polymesh , split things off into subtools as needed, and go deeper into the retopo on the smaller pieces to get more detail out of it without having to juggle the full model's worth of points.

[dapharmer]

just cause playing with that one box design was fun... had to take it further..