Im also really interested in the normal mapping or displacement mapping workflow. Ive managed to get some decent results with normal mapping before but sometimes theres ugly looking edges and strange looking mapping, I put it down to my horrible uvmapping skills but I need to find out what other people do so I know what I was doing wrong.
Ok, I got him mostly done, there’s still some tweaking that needs to be done, but since the overall shape is there, I can go ahead and start adding some accessories. I’ll go ahead and start in on the tut from here.
[attach=45437]BladeWorm-Max_01.jpg[/attach]
Rep, I’m actually fine with the generating displacement in zbrush and then setting it up in max workflow. But what I’m not so hot on is the do’s and don’ts. Basically I uv mapped my entire model breaking it down into manageable pieces, i.e parts of the head, torso, arms, hands etc. Then I just took the head across to zbrush for detailing thinking if I for now setup the different uv’s for the head into different uv groups, I could use these to select quickly different parts for detailling. But I’m starting to think now it doesn’t work like normal mapping whereby you can re-import the mesh easily. I was going to re-import the mesh with its uv’s back in place and then generate a displacement map. But when I take it back to max it doesn’t seem to have have picked up all the detail.
But if with my ztool for the detailed head I take it back to base level 1, export, put the uv’s back into group 0 and take it back again, the displacement then picks up much more of the detail as obviously the model matches closer to the higher sub levels. Should I really just keep the whole model together when detailing for displacement as another question in my head arose after thinking that when rejoining the head I won’t beable to edit the displacement maps back together for the one uv group in photoshop since it can’t handle 32bit.
Anyway I don’t mind starting again as what I have done is just to test my idea of splitting up the model for easier detailing.
Looking pretty nice so far, enjoying the process. 
Ooohhh, damn, that part I don’t know about, bro, sorry. You’re probably doing experiments for stuff like movies, right? That’s a whole other kettle of fish. There’s a lot of rules for that kinda **** I never learned. I wish I could help you, but that’s really out of my league, is what I’m trying to say. Sorry 
Just to note to say I didn’t edit my last post, cause this is the tutorial part, and answering a question, and shooting straight to the tut seemed kinda rude. Anyway, here’s my little tut on making accessories for my models. If you have questions, ask away, and I’ll answer them as best I can, IF I can, that is.
Here’s where I start adding accessories, that’s things like his saddle, horse blanket, packs, pockets, and armor. This type of thing is all done in Max.
I start by importing a mid res version of the creature, something around the low 100,000’s poly area. In this case it’s about 315,000 poly’s, with this mid res count, I have the smooth surface I need to ensure a good fit for his stuff, and still be able to tumble around in the viewport without too much chug.
Then I open up polyboost, one of the best plugs for Max you can buy, and pretty damn cheap for something I use on every model. Hit www.polyboost.com for more info if you need it. There’s some vids there showing some of the stuff I’ll be talking about. I use the PolyDraw options, they allow me to place poly’s directly on top of other geometry fairly easily. There’s a lot of options here, but I’m just gonna explain the ones I use. First and foremost, when you open the PolyDraw options, there’s a little menu up top, with a button, and three little dots to tick. The dots consist of, Grid, Surface, and Selection. I never use grid, as it just locks everything to the grid, and is pretty useless for me. Surface is the one I want, and that leads to the button. This lets Polyboost know what you want to draw your poly’s onto, so hit it, and select your mesh. Polyboost wants the mesh to be an editable mesh, but adding certain modifiers can get it to work without it being an editable mesh. Things like Turbosmooth work, but since we wanna keep the polycount where it is, just make it an editable mesh.
Now that that’s done, there’s more options beneath the previous ones. In the Edit pane, you got, Build, Connect, SwiftLoop, Border, Move, and Optimizer. That’s a lot of **** to go through, so again, I’ll just talk about what I use. To start most of the polyboost made meshes, I use Build. Build allows me to draw verts on the surface I chose earlier, and when there’s 4 of them bad boys on there, I can hold the SHIFT key, and click and drag between them to make a polygon. After that’s out of the way, I go to the Border option. Holding SHIFT and clicking and dragging, will pull a polygon out of what you already have, much like holding SHIFT while having an edge selected, and dragging creates a polygon. With Polyboost, however, it drags across the surface of your high res mesh. Doing this several times across the mesh, keeping edgeflow in mind, allows me to add those accessories I need.
Once the flat geometry is in place, I add a Shell modifier to it. This is like a polygonal extrude by local normal, but since it’s a modifier, you can turn it on and off, and still be able to edit the flat geometry. So if you spot a mistake a little later on, you can fix it using polyboost extremely easily.
One option I didn’t talk about earlier that comes in VERY handy while doing this kind of work, is the Move tools. They allow you to move, verts, edges, and poly’s across the surface of your high res geo, depending on which key your holding down. Great for cleaning up that geometry you just made.
[EDIT] I forgot to mention a couple of things I do while working with Polyboost. Select the mid res mesh, and hit ALT+X to put it into x-ray made. This makes it easier to see what you’re doing when adding geometry on top of it. Then right click on the viewport where it says what view you’re looking at, drop to configure, and on the lower left tick the box that says “Display Selected Objects with Edged Faces”. Now whenever you select on object, it’s in wireframe so it’ll be easy to work with, and you don’t have to have shaded wireframe on with your mid res mesh in the viewport.
Alrighty, I gotta get to work on these accessories, first up, the horse blanket, as it’s underneath everything else. It makes sense to make this stuff in layers, bottom first, then working up. That allows you to make this **** fit properly. This is also a lot to read, so I’ll hold off on anymore for a while, don’t want you guys falling asleep on me. More soon.
{MY theory on modeling part 2}
Making accessories before the final high res is a good idea. Besides ensuring a good fit, you also want to make sure the accessories have weight, and cause the weight of the mesh they’re going onto to show through. I’ve been guilty of it several times, but just slapping accessories on your high res model, without thought of weight, takes away the believability of the model. Straps, for example, cause skin, and clothes, to puff out around the edges a bit. Clothes more-so than skin most of the time. Showing weight around those areas is a good way to make sure that when people look at your model, it has a bit more of a “holy ****!” factor to it.
Oh well no worries Rep. I’m thinking im just going to keep my mesh together if I’m planning on doing details for displacement.
And that was a interesting read. I have had a play around with polyboost. I may have to look into this more.
Thanks for the info on the edge loops. If could ask a couple more questions about the passes you made. How many passes did you end up doing? What roughly did you do in each pass? About how long did you spend on each pass?
Thanks again.
I was gonna explain the passes with the video I did, but I’m having a lot of problems with it, and forgot about this part of the tutorial, sorry. 
I’ve only done about 4 passes so far, but I still have to flesh out more anatomical details, and do the final stage of detailing, so there’s a lot more to go with him.
I spent about 45 minutes, to an hour or so per pass, generally speaking, there’s really no time limit. It depends on how long it takes for you to get a feel for the creature/character.
At first I followed the design sketch, making the muscle masses look right, and putting them where they need to be. Proportions are a big part of the first pass, getting bones, and joints in place, and blocking out the over all shape of the creature/character is very important early on, so you don’t have to worry about it while having millions of poly’s on him. Second pass, is where I do the same thing, but take it a little farther. More anatomical detail, starting to place larger folds in the skin, adding certain part of the creature like the mouth, place holders for the eyes, things like that. Third pass, more of the same, just popping out those details, knocking back some of smoothness, making things a bit more crisp. Fourth pass, is about where I break out the pinch brush. I use that to help flesh out things like harder muscle groups like the forearms, making them appear more hard, and defined than say, the shoulders. Nothing too intense, just a crisp line for better definition. Fifth pass, will be finalizing the anatomical shapes, and getting everything preped for the final pass, things like skin textures, and the like. The fifth pass mainly consists of getting muscles looking tight, larger skin folds in the right places, making sure the weight of the creature/character is working, and making sure everything is as tight as you can get it before getting into the skin details.
{MY Modeling theory part 3}
If you get a chance, and have the money, grab the gnomon analog training vids by John Brown. It’s all about sculpture, and it really helps when working in this kind of medium. One of the things he said in those vids stuck with me, and is something I try to implement everytime. Paraphrasing here, but this is it; “when you think you’re done with your sculpt, work it for another hour, and you’ll be surprised what more you can get out of it” He’s absolutely right there.
Here’s the start of the saddle, harnesses, and horse blanket. Things are starting to fall into place. Still gotta add the armor, pockets, buckles, blankets, and other stuff. I’m thinking about adding some more armor than what’s in the sketch, but we’ll see how that turns out.
[attach=45446]BladeWorm-Max_02.jpg[/attach]
I edited my polyboost post, with some things I forgot to add. be sure you check that out.
A little more work on the accessories. Got some more shape to the saddle, and straps. Added some armor bases to the back, as well as the sleeping bag, which will get a lot more attention later. Right now I’m more concerned with how everything is flowing together, than with details.
To elaborate on a point I made earlier, you can see how the extra **** he’s got on him looks decent for a base, and there’s a certain level of believability to it, but since there’s no evidence that it’s effecting his body like these things would, it doesn’t really feel right. The accessories still look placed on there. Once go back and add detail in the creature that shows how the effect him, it’ll look much more believable.
[attach=45458]BladeWorm-Max_03.jpg[/attach]
A little more work, and this is where I am right now. A lot of ths stuff is gonna get a ZB pass, like the pockets, the blanket, and maybe the saddle.
Now that most everything is place, I’ll be detailing, and further editing the accessories, and going into the finishing mode on them.
How do you add things to an already made tool in zbrush? I have tried this and have never figured it out. Sorry for the noob question but it would be helpful to know.
I was gonna answer that question when I got to that point in the process, but I guess here will do. I’ll post it again later for anyone who misses this post.
There’s no decent way to add things to an already existing mesh in ZB. I’ve tried several ways, and the results are iffy at best, so a work around I came up with is this;
Since I made all the little things in Max, right on top of the mid res mesh of the Blade Worm, I’ll delete the mid res mesh, import the high res, and export everything into one file. That’s the Blade Worm, accessories, and all. I’ll import it into ZB, edit it as needed, adding weight, and getting everything to fit, WITHOUT ADDING ANY DIVISIONS. That’s very important, cause when you’re done with it, you save the tool just in case, then you’re gonna export just the main mesh. Then you open up the original mesh tool, that’s the one you exported to Max, the one without all the accessories, and import the newer version of that mesh. If you do it right, all the changes you made to ensure fits, and add weight will transfer straight to your original tool.
Sometimes ZB doesn’t wanna import the mesh even if you do things right, so when you first start to work in the weight, do a test export, and see if it’ll behave. If it does, then you’re solid, if not, then something got screwed somewhere, so go back and make sure you’ve done everything you can to keep the exact same polycount on the main mesh.
Hope that helps.
Very cool man,I like the muscle details on the arms…or the legs ? Whatevah,they are freaking cool !
I guess you are pretty much done with the body…just got a Q,are you gonna put some scaly-skin pore level kinda detail stuff on it ??
The Accessories are coming out very well too,looking forward to the update !
Btw,I just got back from my first exam;did well…now only 4 more to go before I get back to Sculpting !! 
How large the file gets right now while you switching between Zbrush and 3ds Max? (in polys and MB.)
looks great replika! thanx for sharing your techiniques…i thought i’ll give mine concerning the multi-tool problem 
i create my main character and it’s eventual equipment in maya …Making sure i have an optimum poly count based on my machine specs:
i know my mahcine can handle rufly around 4 to 4.5 millions polys, so i know that if my full object is made of around 900,4000 or 15000 polys, i’ll hit the spot(zbrsuh subdivides X4)…so i model my model keeping this in mind (and placing more polys where i want more polycount)…the ideal is having a model made of 4 part , each containing approximativly 900 polys…once happy with it,i’ll
export them as an obj file (without combining them together)
once in zbrush, i bring the model in (as i didn’t comnined the models in maya, they come up as groups)
store it as a morph target (help me bringing back specific edje loop to place, handy when you got constraints for, as an exemple, a specific skeleton or so)
work on it and start suybdividing the whole thing. work on it again and go up to as many subdiv i can get…the model will be around 4000000, wich will already get me some nice details…
But, when it come to very high detail, it’s not enough, and this is where i save each part as an individual peace ,delete the unuased parts (dont forget to first export the ighest subdiv of that part as an obj file as when you delete hiden part, it smooth out the highes level)…once the high detailed re-imported, i can go even higher (and if i did it right, i can go to my 4000000 limit
i’ve also recalled its morph target…
dont know if it makes any sense but it’s ruffly how i usually proceed…the final peace is a different low poly model and i transfer the normal using the zmapper…get really good result from that…until we get Z2.5
Thanks guys, for the comments. It was starting to get a little lonely in here.
sriram, I got more to go on the body, still gotta get the fifth pass done, and then go into skin texturing. And congrats on your exams, hope you can get to your models soon.
godlike27, the obj file is around 220 mb’s, and about 1 million poly’s right now. The mesh in Max is around 300,000 poly’s.
Abe, thanks, man, glad you could stop by and give some more of your wisdom. I’m sure lot’s of folks would like your way better. The reason I do things this way is, that more often than not, I get a change to the design mid-job, and have to make changes to the model. Doing it this way for me, works great, cause I can go back, have just the fleshy bits to work on, or just the armory bits, make the changes, and get on with it. I do like your idea too, it seems to allow for the same thing. I might try that soon, thanks for the info.
There’s a little more detailing to do for the accessories, and I’ll bring the body into ZB for the start of the fifth pass. Hopefully everything will come together, and I’ll be able to get this walkthrough to the low poly section soon. See ya in a few.
Thanks a lot for the Tut man… its helping he understand a few things and know new techniques… … jus one request as my monitor is really giving up on its life and getting darker day by day can u jus give a render with a lighter grey background so that I can understand the character even better .
I did the first part of the fifth pass, adding weight, and making wrinkles, and folds where the saddle, armor, etc. are. It’s kinda hard to see in this render, since this is still only the 317,000 poly model, but they’re there, and help quite a bit.
I also went through the armor, removed the symmetry and smoothing modifiers, collapsed them to poly’s, and beveled the harder edges so I can get a nice highlight on them. I then replaced the modifiers, and just as always, that highlight comes out just fine. 
I also added some smaller changes to the armor, nothing big just an extrude, and added some noise to it to break everything up a bit.
The blanket, and pockets got a little ZB love, and thigns are looking much better now. I’ll be finishing the fifth zb pass soon, and going onto the skin textures shortly after that. Before I get too involved in the skin texture phase, though, it’ll be time to break out polyboost again for the low poly version of the model. I’ll definitely be bringing that here in as much detail as possible.
As always, hit me with questions, comments, or whatever. Here’s your render with the lighter background, smoothy. Enjoy