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HELP! Corals and underwater stuff?

ZBrush Artworks
#1

Hello everyone,

I’m very new to ZBrush, I just finished reading the Practical Manual 2.

Can anyone pls give me some directions or examples on modeling underwater stuff like corals etc - very very fractalized objects. I need to model them and after that export them to Lightwave and render.

One big problem is that after applying the displacement map in Lightwave (of course during render time) it tooks a lot of memory for a single coral and i’m worried about will it be possible to render that at all, I mean all the underwater life…

In fact, what I’m tryingh to make is an advertisement video in Finding Nemo style, but not exactly, I need to make it VERY realistic, like real fish etc, not like cartoon or 3D for kids. It should be REAL. As I didn’t find enough might in modeling small details in LW, I had to switch to ZBrush and learn it for 3 days, but I’m really new at it still…

So? Anyone can give advice or help? It’s quite of emergency as I’m in a big hurry for the terms of the video.

See this link
www.sdv-studio.com/sss.jpg

It didn’t take me a lot of time to make this in ZBrush, but rendering it in LW it became about 630 000 polygons, and adding SSS really made thing quite slow. Even on dual xeon 2.4 with 4GB ram and a Wildcat III video card!

See what I want to achieve:
www.sdv-studio.com/Leather.jpg

Those small little “flowers” should sway and open and close. There should be a feeling of LIFE there. But if i have to render 600k polys for a single coral, what is needed for 50-60 corals ??? Maybe a CRAY?

If anyone can help with some advice or whatever (examples, tutorials), I will be really grateful.

Waiting for you,
George

#2

Example 01
Example 02
Script for seascape
Challenge with a lot of Tuts :cool: :cool: :cool: Explore the tread!
Somptuous tut :cool: :cool: :cool: slide the page !
Bon courage!
Pilou

#3

Is no problem, joro, show on my underwater-series :cool:

and other ones… :slight_smile:

#4

oh, merci bien, Frenchie, for PR :+1: :smiley: :smiley:

#5

It’s a pleasure :smiley:
Pilou

#6

Hey

Thanks everyone for the cool links.
But I think you should have a look at:
www.garf.org

(if you haven’t already) to see what i’m talking about. Especially the wallpaper section!

Can anyone explain pls how to clone an object (say like those small flower elements) over the bigger body of the coral, and after that animate them? ZBrush can generate very cool static things like a paint program, but i need to animate everything in Lightwave.

Thank you
George

#7

Best thing is made your initial modele in Zbrush
Export it and in your your 3D animation prog make the clone !
In different orientations!
Like this just one modele to animate :slight_smile:
Pilou

#8

phew, tough one …
i have absolutely no idea about lightwave, but assuming that it works more or less like all the other 3d packages (good guess, isn’t it?) i’d say, ‘this will be complicated’!

since you need a helluva lot of detail in your scene and even need to animate it, all i can say is: instantiate! instantiate! and then some … dunno about LW, but in max/cinema (those 2 i know) it’s possible to scatter ‘references’ to a single obj over another objects surface and animate them individually, which won’t alleviate your ‘millions of polys’ problem, unfortunately.

but: another approach might be, to model animate and render most objects separately and compsite them together (with ‘aftereffects’, ‘combustion’ or such) i remember a nemo ‘making of’ and they composited a ‘lot’ to achieve that detail.
you’ll probably need a ‘layered’ impression with rocks, corals etc. vanishing into a blue ish haze anyway …

and: your corals ‘tendrils’ (?) will probably be tiny, so you might be able to cheat and use opacity maps insted of ‘real’ polys (again, generating those maps from prerendered single animated objects), presuming you don’t move around your camera too much.

and: ‘xfrog’ may be worth a look ( look here ) … its cinema plugin offers a neat feature to make e.g. the branches of a tree sway towards an animated sun and more … plus: it excels at modeling/generating tree and flowerlike structures.

and: instead of rendering surface detail in LW, try baking it into the texture, might save a few 100k in polys.

well, i don’t have a real solution either, but maybe i gave you some ideas :slight_smile:
keep us updated on your progress, sounds interesting :slight_smile:

cheers and good luck!

#9

hi again

the complicated thing is not the “instances”, the hardest part is the rendering. zillions of polys…

i’m sure i have to use compositing and i will. that thing about texturing polys works, but my camera will be drawning and moving

see the storyboard here:
www.sdv-studio.com/storyboard.jpg

anyone pls tell me how to clone tiny objects on another object (like fine tentacles etc) and export the whole thing as a singl object with displacement and color textures

greetings
george

#10

i found a way to “merge” objects using MultiMarkers tool

but how to keep the displacements?

after merging it flattens the surface of the objects, only colors are kept

greetings
george

#11

Open the sub menu of the Menu Markers :slight_smile:
Here you can enable Material, texture etc…
Pilou

#12

oh thank you so much !!!

can you give me a tip for reducing polygon count?

i need to export a low poly smooth model that i will be able to convert to metanurbs in LW and after that subdivide it during render time and apply the displacement map

george

#13

From Zbrush ?
It’s exist a Optimize function in the Menu tool/Modifiers/Deformation/Optimize :slight_smile:
But test the visual result :slight_smile:
Maybe Better is made a lowpoly as Adaptative skin!
Pilou

#14

http://www.garf.org/100/gorg/paragorg1000750.jpg
http://www.garf.org/34/3rdd1194850.jpg
http://www.garf.org/37/feed/duck1000865.jpg

any ideas how to make this?

george

#15

He he You have not seen this Tut ? (slide the page)
With it you can make all that you show !!!
Pilou
Ps garf.org is a very good site ! :cool: :cool: :cool:

#16

YAAAAAH, Frenchie and joro, http://www.garf.org/ is my absolutely favorite site :+1: :+1: so much material to learn…Thank you both, fellas :smiley: :smiley:

(Frenchie, unbelieavable, but I have seen PGhetty´s thread ´bout deep-sea for first time
:grimacing: thanx again for remembering)

#17

hey guys

does anyone know how to fix this problem:

i make a model using zspheres and then at subdiv=7 i create a lot of displacement and color texture stuff. when i try to make a normal map i get the following picture with those holes in the texture (after about 26 minutes of computation!).i tried modeling with other tools - but rezults are the same. i need the normal map for a low poly model in lightwave (no TANGENT!!!)

pls help if you can

george

#18

p.s.

i tried lower resolutions and lower subdiv levels - same problem

#19

I think, you should flip your texture…

#20

hi again

flipping worked - no holes now. thank you.
but there is sth really bad about that texture. pls compare the 2 renders below and the previous screenshot.

the darker image is made using the normal map from ZBrush. the other one is made using microwave’s normal map baker. 7344 polys

any ideas about fixing that difference?

george