Wow a full zscript from Dave Cardwell! Sweet! thanks so much! top notch modeling as usual. very nice accuracy in anatomy, i especially like the abs in the larger picture. i wish i had a bigger monitor to vew that nice big pic. i would really like to s how you sculpt a head as well. thanks again!
artboy
I’ve done something similar to what Ken Brilliant posted many times over the years, specifically with NURBS models for animation in various productions. The process is somewhat tedious, but no less than modelling in NURBS for detail. That’s when we started using Zbrush - Wwooohoooo! Can’t wait to use Zbrush 2.0 (Mac User).
Zendoftheworld,
I just found this thread, so sorry for the late entry. I read your article in HighEnd Mag about your Cyslice workflow when it came out. It was very similar to a workflow that I posted on a forum a couple years ago using Paraform 3 to re-mesh a zbrush model. The advantage that Cyslice or Paraform have over making a model live in Maya for re-meshing is that the nurbs patches conform to the shape of the original model much better in these programs. Then when you import the patches into Maya, you can then go back to poly’s and apply your displacement map. I’ve long wished to have a re-mesher program like Paraform built into Zbrush, but Z2 makes this less necessary.
I have a question, I still dont understand how you can create a mesh in Zbrush and save off the dismap to reapply to your reworked animation friendly mesh, when you make a mesh in Z all your gonna get for uv’s are those tiles which is basically every poly stetched to a square, so when you bring in your new mesh and want to apply the original dis map ( the one that is a bunch of squares for uv’s) that wont apply to the new mesh with new uv’s, so what am I missing, I would love to get that down cause that would be an awesome way to work!!!
use your own uv’s from the low poly mesh by pressing poly groups>uv groups
This is pretty cool! I wish I saw this before I did my Unas character. I love how you did the shoulders, very nice.
Thanks for sharing this Dave!
look at the nice thread you miss when you go on holiday…
another method and again not for the poor, is to use freeform+ (sensable- phantom) and draw the surfaces onto the model. this can be a nice technique but as the export is Nurbs, it becomes pretty useless if your a 3dsMax user (ie nurbs are crap in max). Will probably work reasonably well in maya.
Zak (if you read this ) have you used this technique as I know you used to use freeform alot.
El-d
yes, I’d like to know more about this also. If you rework the original model’s UV in Maya and import back into Z2 (after you have created a high-frequency map for displacement or normal mapping), won’t applying the orig disp map from the orig high-frequency model screw things up on your new model? Isn’t there a way to transfer UV’s from the reformed mesh with new UVs onto the orig level 0 mesh with bad topology? Or am I missing a step? If i’ve done a lot of detailing to my original model and then find out that the model’s topology needs to change for our game, I don’t want to have to redo all those medium and high-frequency steps just because the initial model has new UV’s. I’d like to be able to use the final high-frequency shape that I had already generated, but just associate it as the new level 0 mesh. Help. Anyone? Bueller?
Wow this is great im gonna use this method for my very first model made in zbrush
What do you think?
To answer the question: Yeah, FreeFrom works on the same principle as Paraform or Cyslice. Its similar to having a live mesh to define your curve network over.
Dave (skyCastle) thanks for the Zscript. Very nice to see your workflow. So, the time to truly critique CG designs might be here? Maybe Fiorelli would have a few things to say about our posts.
Also, I enjoyed your smaller torso image. Very well done.
It takes a lot of confidence and humility to post a half-body, nude, self-portrait for all eyes to see. I respect that you put your work first and don’t worry about such trivial things.
The never ending Fiorelli vs. Stanzak debate. It would be nice if you guys came back to town and did a little talk at CIA.
Zack, have you heard anything from Cheezum, I was just wondering how the old crew is doing. PM me if you like. BPR
Ken B - you mentioned a LW plugin that sims Maya’s make live feature ? Where does that live !? Did a quick search on Flay with no obvious luck. Hope things are going well !
Is some body here using cyslice …? please answer… a really apreciate
Zalu2!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! For all your sound advice on modelling… Your recommendation that modelers strive first for form then topology really resonates with me. I have been toiling over a model over the past month with fastidious restraint because I have been overly preocupied with how the mesh will behave when animating.
Your suggestion of using your “form” mesh as reference for the topologically correct mesh, by making the former live, is absolutely brilliant! I knew about making nurbs live, but wasn’t aware the same could be done with polys. I greatly appreciate your comments - it is wonderful to have a veteran modeler in our midst!
By the way, here’s an image of the character in question - still a long way to go before I have a fully animatable puppet.
very nice character
I’ve been thinking this whole topology issue ever since I started modelling (even before I knew about Zbrush) and recently tried dozens of ways to trace hires mesh quickly. I use 3dsmax and the cut tool there is brilliant for this. I’ve explaided the whole process at http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=21320 (even though I stated the instability issue it is usualy not a problem at all). It’s in the community forum that most seem to ignore so little pimping will not hurt :).
Also, what does the “make live” feature do in Maya?
My last post was concerning this cool head by kublakai.
The original model on this thread is also great and it has caused some useful info to be shared - good ideas.
I’d like to sate an old design philosophy - ‘Form and Function’, and the order of those words is very important, derived from many years and alot of great people.
Oh yeah, one last thing… MORE!!! :lol:
Thanks Jason, for your words of encouragement; you don’t know how many times I’ve come this close to scrapping the whole thing - part of the problem was this obsessive compulsion to sculpt using all quads because I wanted a MR-compatible model (though I’ve recently learned on other posts in this forum about Turtle that does away with this silly limitation).
This too is a detriment to good modelling - fussing about to get rid of those tri’s invariably forces one into increasing geometry where it really isn’t required and goes counter to the design goal of keeping the polys down to a minimum in order to produce a model that is animation-friendly.
In the process of modelling I’d often find myself dedicating about 95% of my efforts to vertex gymnastics and the rest to actual form modelling. So, reading skycastle’s post about concentrating on good form before getting dealing with topology really struck a chord and it is a philosophy I will seek to embrace in the future.
I think the cage for the model I posted is too heavy, there are simply too many superflous edges. This being said, I like for a models’s essential form to be apparent before all the texturing is applied. I mean, if the character has a prominent adam’s apple I think it should be visible to the animator before rendering… Sometimes these details have a way in insinuating themselves in the choices one makes when animating and fleshing out a personality. The hardest thing in art I’ve found, regardless of the medium, is striking a balance between conflicting desires…
By the way, “making live” is simply a function in Maya that constraints the drawing of curves and other geometry to the surface of the selected object. You can think of it as locking the drawing tools to an object’s UV space.
Jason, not to split hairs but the correct phrase is “form follows function” which I think is precisely the paradigm that we have to overturn here - in this case, function meaning animation. Skycastle is suggesting quite the opposite - first get an interesting, spontaneous model, divorced from any technical conrcens, then, only once you’ve achieved this, twiddle with the underlying vertices to your heart’s content to achieve correct topology. To this end I saw promising tools to facilitate this workflow in one of zpetroc’s posts, called Free Form. Anyone else have any experience with this app?
Don’t worry about hairs. Actually I have a long history of design in media, industrial and conceptual and I meant it the way I said it. The other is neat in theory, but impractical in the real world. Almost everyone I know actally starts with a concept and sketches long before we get down to the nuts and bolts of function. Most don’t even let the worries of production set in until your way along.
Someone posted a link to some great physical monster sculpting awhile back and I have to say that was the best expression I have seen. Sketch, support (Zspheres go hear), adding/moving mass, detail, texture/paint. Then worry about movement. I find that a lot of people really make motion far more complex than necessary when uit comes to that, besides it is usually an issue of the chosen app. I’ve always tried to follow the KISS rule no matter what. It has saved me a lot of headaches.
However I love all the different approaches, I’m just an efficiency freak, because I’m involved with production pipelines. Doesn’t mean another process is worse or better, just that possibilities exist - try everything, then try it again.
Shutting up now. :eek:
Jason,
I think we’re saying the same thing… In any case, it is easy to come up with neat simplifications, but the reality is that the whole process is interconnected and every stage informs every other, wouldn’t you say?
For example, in the “form follows function” case, naturally an appealing concept design is such because the creature, vehicle, etc. communicates in a credible way the function it was designed to perform.
In this logic, dwarves are short and stout because they live in caves and are used to lugging heavy objects (rocks), a wing has an airfoil profile because it needs to slice through the air, etc. So that even when we’re being creative and forgetting about the technical specifics to come, the truth is that we project our concepts in a hypothetical functional scenario.
So while we may not necessarily be thinking about how the vertices of our model may deform when binded to a skeleton, we are nevertheless thinking about how it will move and the kinds of actions and behaviors it will perform to communicate its character.
In other words, I will design a creature that is to live in a swamp in an entirely different manner than if it were, say, subterranean. The process is interconnected in that if the swamp monster I create is supposed to paddle in the muck and his flippers don’t move in a credible way, it’s back to pushing vertices around… the process is ultimately cyclical no matter how you slice it!
Personally, I like to be as free as possible to do the best I can at each stage. So, it makes perfect sense to me that if I’m intent on vertices when I should be looking at overall form, my model will suffer as my attention will be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss this - ultimately discussions of this nature are more important than what app you use, for this and that. It’s easy to lose sight of this sometimes. Have a great weekend!