Z4R2 Dynamesh Beyond the Polygon Barrier

[gasoil]

It does matter in Zbrush. You need quads for good sculpting performance, as Zbrush doesnt sculpt well over tris or ngons, and tris look ugly as sin since ZB doesnt use a smoothing shader to camouflage the harshness of triangular geometry like other programs do.

Even in the concept phase, things have to feel good, and have some sort of aesthetic appeal, or people wont work with the tool.

Well when sculpting with dynamic tesselation in Sculptris it feels and looks good…tehrefore definetely tris do not cause any problems…

Zbrush is quite capable of decimating and render perfectly smooth renders even with triangles

If you apply an iteration of catmull clark smooth it will create an all quad (with extraordinary vertices yes) but perefctly sculptable

In production we decimate and render everyday in renderman with absolutely no smoothing problem we simply rely on normal smoothing

there are some very beautiful pieces created in Sculptris that look awesome regardless of how it was tesselated or not quads or not

[Spyndel]

Well when sculpting with dynamic tesselation in Sculptris it feels and looks good…tehrefore definetely tris do not cause any problems… Zbrush is quite capable of decimating and render perfectly smooth renders even with triangles If you apply an iteration of catmull clark smooth it will create an all quad (with extraordinary vertices yes) but perefctly sculptable In production we decimate and render everyday in renderman with absolutely no smoothing problem we simply rely on normal smoothing there are some very beautiful pieces created in Sculptris that look awesome regardless of how it was tesselated or not quads or not

Yes, but you wouldn’t sculpt on top of a decimated mesh in Zbrush. I wasn’t commenting on anything inside of Sculptris, which I love, or tris in general. Merely saying that if you take Sculptris geometry into ZB for higher rez sculpting in Zbrush, you need to remesh it to quads to get the best sculpting performance in ZB (and for it to look less ugly, if you’ve ever seen an unconverted Sculptirs import in ZB), and that if dynamic tessalation ever did make it into ZB, it would need to be a quad process, otherwise you’d be re-meshing all the time anyway just to get ZB friendly geo. We’ve already got GoZ+Sculptris for that workflow.

Zbrush certainly can do tris. Zbrush can do a lot of things you probably wouldn’t choose to do in Zbrush.

[Spyndel]

i was kind of fearing the sculptris tech in zbrush for THAT reason. i use zbrush to make low poly hobby models for games. dynamesh would be totally useless no matter how good it was if it meant doing twice as much work.

Yeah, but to get geometry suitable for any kind of animation, you’re still going to have to retopo at some point for more deliberately constructed geometry if you generate the mesh in Zbrush. I dont see how that really makes any more work for you. If anything, if would speed up your base mesh generation, whether imported from Sculptris, or used with the same tech inside of ZB.

Unless you mean that you construct your final quality low resolution mesh in a traditional modeler, and just detail it in ZB, in which case free form mesh creation was never really on the table for you, in ZB or Sculptris.

[moose_o_death]

i start with a low res block man thats roughly 2000 triangles. first subd is roughly 8 and i try to target a final mesh somewhere between the 2. the last mesh i made evolved several times but the base geometry stayed fairly similar.

i add clothes and whatnot using subtools. if the clothes are static i can using the surface projection tools to modify the base mesh to conform to them. dynamesh will allow me to make minor alterations to my base mesh without destroying it’s topology too badly is my hope. whereas if i load my 2000 tri base mesh into sculptris it is sacrificed to the triangle gods instantly.

this is him here, those shoulder spikes were pulled out of a body never intended to have them so they were horribly stretched and i’m no pro at zbrush. this is clearly the lowres game model so the stretching is less apparant.

[campi]

Hey Ryan,
in your videos I see you using a Pentool here and there to quickly sketch something on screen. What is that ? Is that an external application thing ? Whixh one are you using . Looks useful.

[system]

Hey Ryan,
in your videos I see you using a Pentool here and there to quickly sketch something on screen. What is that ? Is that an external application thing ? Whixh one are you using . Looks useful.

Yes, it’s an external application. Ryan’s using Camtasia:

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/

[idlemind]

You kno, I think I commented before but on a second viewing of the Mechanized video something really dawned on me. hard surface mechanical designs work best when they are based on reality the same as anything else we do in art. You were looking at reference to a back hoe or something for to see how the hydraulics would really work and that in itself was a lesson or somewhat of an epiphany. thanks again. I think im going to order.

[tez]

Hey Ryan,
in your videos I see you using a Pentool here and there to quickly sketch something on screen. What is that ? Is that an external application thing ? Whixh one are you using . Looks useful.

I use Camtasia studio myself, and yes you can draw on screen at any time during recording, as well as many other effects that can be applied post within the editor. The Camtasia file type is called Camrec, and within this, certain infomation gets recorded like cursor movment, keyboard short cut keys, in which can be used in Camtasia editor to apply effects on like cursor size, click sounds and highlights. Camtasia is very powerfull, and I think the price reflects that. Camtasia is a teaching tool, and is well worth the money if your making a living from teaching from video training.

[Pinkamena]

dynamesh will allow me to make minor alterations to my base mesh without destroying it’s topology too badly is my hope.

As far as I understood Dynamesh it will destroy your topo the moment it is first used.

[ryankingslien]

As far as I understood Dynamesh it will destroy your topo the moment it is first used.

Dranix - I prefer to think that ZBrush liberates my topology the moment I press DynaMesh.

Visioneer - Nick is right. Its magic.

Spyndel - I agree tris are very sculptable. I sculpt decimated models all the time to fix things. I look at the brush system as having two major divisions. The earlier brushes were very topology dependent. The results you got varied based on your topology.
As soon as the algorithm for the Clay brush was invented then ZBrush’s brush system started to become topology independent. The results of the clay brush are the same no matter what your topology is doing. Once your brushes are topology independent then you can concern yourself less with tris and quads and just focus on increasing polygon count and building towards virtual clay which is where we are now with DynaMesh.

idlemind - I agree. I definitely studied the mechanics before hand and am still studying them. Its really cool to just lego these things together in ZBrush and if you keep Grp on then it keeps all the forms separated so you can adjust the hydraulics of the metal supports.

[Spyndel]

Thanks for all your input, and your videos, Ryan. I’m sorry , I didn’t actually mean to hijack your thread into a tangent discussion.

I’m off to play with dynamesh myself now, as my Golden Ticket has finally come through. I’m sure now that I actually have it, it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

[Spyndel]

[del] Question answered elsewhere.

[Paint_Guy]

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?161386-Are-There-Any-Dynamesh-Tutorials-Available-Yet&p=894632#post894632

Hey can a beta-tester or anyone else for that matter chime in on this one. I can’t find any documentation on using “Dynamesh”. I just need the basics if someone can help. Thanks.

[Richard_Marklew]

I can’t find any documentation on using “Dynamesh”
In your ZBrush installation there is a Documentation folder which has a “what’s new” pdf that includes details about using dynamesh. Also the same online http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/What’s_New_in_ZBrush_4R2

[Spyndel]

In the second vid, when Ryan uses the CurveTriFill to draw in some shapes, it looks like he is somehow interactively adjusting their depth/thickness by sliding the curve somehow. Anyone figure this out yet? It doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the documentation, and I haven’t been able to recreate it yet.

Thanks for any tips!

[Kerwin]

In the second vid, when Ryan uses the CurveTriFill to draw in some shapes, it looks like he is somehow interactively adjusting their depth/thickness by sliding the curve somehow. Anyone figure this out yet? It doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the documentation, and I haven’t been able to recreate it yet.

Thanks for any tips!

Your draw size controls the thickness. What I think you are seeing is a maneuver that involves:

1. Draw the curve with the CurveTriFill brush
2. Move off of the curve entirely (this is important–the brush indicator should be red, not blue.) Where you might get tripped up is changing the size while the brush is hovering over the curve(blue brush size rings)–this changes the CurveEditRadius, not the brush size. Dock your stroke pallet and you’ll what I mean.
3. S to change brush size to something higher or lower (thicker or thinner in this case).
4. Touch the curve again on one of its control points or edit the shape of the curve. The stroke gets redrawn at the new thickness/brush size.

(The video flashes by pretty quickly for me . . .)

HTH,
-K

[Kerwin]

Ryan, when is the R2 workshop going to be up on Zbrush Workshops?
-K

[Spyndel]

Your draw size controls the thickness. What I think you are seeing is a maneuver that involves:

1. Draw the curve with the CurveTriFill brush
2. Move off of the curve entirely (this is important–the brush indicator should be red, not blue.) Where you might get tripped up is changing the size while the brush is hovering over the curve(blue brush size rings)–this changes the CurveEditRadius, not the brush size. Dock your stroke pallet and you’ll what I mean.
3. S to change brush size to something higher or lower (thicker or thinner in this case).
4. Touch the curve again on one of its control points or edit the shape of the curve. The stroke gets redrawn at the new thickness/brush size.

(The video flashes by pretty quickly for me . . .)

HTH,
-K

Ah yes, that must be it.Thanks for that! Yes it does go by fast. I did quite a bit of frame by frame to try and figure out what was going on there.

I was using the new transpose functions to do the same thing (by masking one side and extruding), and using the new transpose duplication which is really nice, but I was wondering if there were something a little more direct.

[Ralramahi]

Im loving every bit of Zbrush R2. this forum is getting interesting