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Zbrush2 and Silo

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#27

XSI is not as efficient as ZB in handling high ammounts of polys on meshes. LEt’s say you make a 1 million poly model in zbrush. I would import this into xsi and run a polyreduce operation o bring it down to around 100,100. At this stage the structure and planes of the model will still be intact. What will be gone are the small details, which you don’t want in your mesh anyway.

The good thing that I’ve found about this workflow is that topology never precedes design and aesthetic. Topology becomes almost an afterthought, which you complete at the very end of the process, without compromising form. You could think of it as scanning a maquette and then importing it into a 3d app for re-parametrization only that here you would sculpt the ‘maquette’ in zb.

This process was described by Eric Sanford in a Siggraph03 presentation. you can watch a video of his demo here:

http://www.softimage.com/downloadsrv/process.asp?file=/education/seminars/eric.zip

#28

Well that is just beutiful,

I have a question for you skycastle. Lets say you have this awesome character rig and it has all the muscles on it and the slide around and colide with each other and just rock the house, now when you bind your character to this rig and start to do the muscle simulations what happens with all the muscle definition that is modeled into the mesh itself.

Seems like they would “betray” one another when the simulated muscles moved around under the muscles that dont dont move around, know what I mean?? I know you guys do that a lot there and I was wondering how you get it to work.

Thanks, and as always great inspiring work!!

#29

I think that the edge draw function in Silo is only a first step in the process of topology automation. I dreamed of a tool for ZBrush too that would automate, or simplify the redraw process. Rather than redraw every single edge, you could simply have an optimize topology function that somehow finds the flow of the model, recreates the base topology, and then applies the proper displacement to keep all of your details. It is unlikely that this automatic step would get it right every time, or have what you had in mind for the base topology. For that there would refinement methods, such as drawing flow lines that would not be exact edges drawn onto the model, rather key edges that directed the directional flow of the topology, and the optimize tool would fill in the rest for you. For example, on muscle topology, you could draw in the valleys of the muscles, and in the creases of the armpits, and elbows, since these will need to animate.

In the case of the topolgy redraw tool in Silo, you have to redraw the entire mesh, I see this as a limitation of the tool. I would rather see it possible to redraw a portion an d have it updated to fit in the mesh. Let the cpu think about how to make quads and such. Being limited to redrawing an entire model , rather than the portions of the model that need it, seems like it could become an inconvenience

There could also be a topology slide tool. This would allow you to keep the current topology and lock the current shape of the model. You could the slide the mesh edges over the model like cloth and keep the shape that you have already spent time to work out.

I think it would be the hardest thing that Pixologic ever did, but if anyone would or could do it, it would have to be Pixologic. Dave, I am sure that Pixologic has a plate full. But I would love to see your influence in this area of 3d.

#30

I’d like to see this as a Zbrush feature as well but don’t underestimate the Nevercenter team. Once they unleash Silo 1.3 to us all I’m sure we’ll flood them with more feature requests like the ones you’ve stated…they’re awesome developers so I’m sure they’ll be game for some things like this. The tools is new as far as functionality goes so there’s probably room for them to play around with it. We’ll have to see when they release it publicly! …which I can not wait for much longer I’m gonna burst!? :lol:

#31

hey-ahou skycastle, you and Strike are both c_r_a_z_y :sunglasses: I like your work as well :+1:

:+1: Abyssis:+1:

#32

Thanx Ariel for the infos and link :+1:

#33

As usally when I see such a great modell I would like to see an szcript of it :smiley: Awsome work you got there dude, keep on going

#34

argh.HOW do you do it?!?

#35

I personally haven’t had as much pleasure in using the post-topology brush approach. I still find it easier and faster to establish the edge loops at the beginning in the rough form then use zbrush for detail work and export displacement, normal maps, and/or bump maps (depending on whether I’m doing the animation for a realtime environment or not) to add the detail to the low level cage. Sometimes, if my rough level 1 cage is really sparse, I use the second level cage instead for my animation work.

When I’m doing high-res models, I also use ZBrush for corrective morphs (along with regular morphs for muscle animations) instead of fiddling with vertex weighting and bone placement all day long. I can make them really quickly in ZBrush.

I also don’t see why, in animation packages like Maya which support hierarchical subdivision surfaces, the entire hierarchy can’t be exported. I bet that’s a strong possibility for future updates and would make it so you can animate ultra-high detail zbrush models very easily without the need for displacement (unless you are going for speed and need to eliminate some resolutions at the top of the hierarchy).

I use Lightwave which doesn’t support hierarchical subdivision so I can’t look forward to this feature, but it’s something to think about.

I think that as computers become more powerful, topology in faces at least will become unimportant. Right now, the only big advantage to establishing proper edge loops in the face when using ZBrush for creating high-resolution morphs is that it’s easier to avoid the jagged stair-step look in creases and wrinkles which can form if the model’s edges don’t lie on those creases. This is simply a matter of resolution, and as computers can handle higher and higher resolutions, the effect won’t even be visible anymore.

#36

well, maybe one day we will have enough resolution to do that and topology polyflow and other will be a thing of the past. that day will be a great day!!:slight_smile:

seems that an app like ZBrush is able to handle those millions of polygons because of it’s way to work. incidentally i’d like to know better how it does this , but maybe it’s a factory patent…

other apps aren’t apparently so powerful, and that’s why the low-mid poly mesh has still a reason to exist for now. so a good process seems to me that of using zbrush to fine-detail and texture an existant mesh,with a good polyflow made in Lw , Silo or other package. a good polyflow seems for now to allow even less subdivisions in Zbrush so this is very good.

#37

Hi Skycastle. The modelling and detailing of this model is quite spectacular. When utilizing
Silo and ZB2 workflow, How do you redraw topology? What is your recommendation for learning Silo? What helped you?

Thanks a great deal for sharing and inspiring…
:+1:

#38

This is a very interesting thread. With a lot of good points. I think people should make sure they differentiate between game and other areas to see if certain trends appear.

I come from the feature, television and vfx side of things. The most useful modeling tool for me prior to Zbrush was NURBS and Photoshop. I could create high detail models with little mass (polygons) until render. I used an old ILM approach (Cubic Mapping) for the details derived from Photoshop - almost exactly as TextureMaster/ProjectionMaster work. Then Zbrush came along and what took weeks or even a month was now a week or less. The major thing I noticed was not how complex a rig was, not how high quality weight maps were or even how many detailed morphs were used - BUT - how you modeled and placed elements. I found that in 80% of the models if you modeled it right it acted right and usually with the simplist rig. Yes, this is hard - especially if the design is by someone else who just made a cool doodle. I am alos taking into consideration working/fixing models for others in order to complete a project.

The reason I bring this up, is someone mentioned ‘more powerful computers’, other things like EdgeLoops, TopologyBrush, etc. were also mentioned. Well, the problems won’t go away, they are just pushed along the scale, and this discussion begins anew. You have to try a few things, it’s always easier to something that has been done, but you can apply what others do to your own models to prevent issues. Forums like this help, in the last year alone I have scene facial rig setups that reduce production time by several factors - as an example. Yet the ability to do these has been around alot longer.

I for one have never given topology a second thought. All I have cared about is - looks right - acts right. This is not to say it isn’t important, or that you shouldn’t consider it. However as with all things, perhaps you should look at the process and not necessarily the tools. I am big on pushing the creative approach (traditionally trained), and I am a process/technology freak (main focus of my career). I don’t like redoing anything, I don’t mind fixing it, but I should only have to do it once.

I will have Zbrush2 at months end - it did get a chance to put it through it’s paces recently and found it amazing - the time savings is fenominal.

I probably haven’t contributed anything useful, but… :slight_smile:

#39

I think we re discussing these things about ZBrush/Silo because sculpting in Zbrush is realy natutal, and brings a totally intuitive approach to modelling organic shapes shapes.
modelling that way directly in Z Brush implies millions of poligons but Zbrush handles them very well. i wouldn’t be so surprised if a topology brush or other clever tool will find its space into zBrush sooner or later, to let u model as u mwant , naturally, and then simply use your mesh as a tempate to draw on (IMO this isn’t redoing things, infact you’re only optimizing things a lot, to use way less polygons - good for animation):lol:

obviously, the best and more effective process is currently to build your model into another app, then fine detail it in z brush, for all things u cannot achieve into a normal app. but i think we are not so far to change this way to work, wich is indeed more technical than artistic.

#40

:small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond:ironed out some spelling mistakes:small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::small_orange_diamond::

One step towards being freed of legacy edgeloops may be the transfer tool
in Maya 6.01´s bonustools (remember it´s grandfather, the wrapmesh?)
in short the workflow could be described as follows:

*Model a neat lowrez blockout of your character, describing the pose.
Use loops and such to get a feel for the volume.

*Import into ZBrush. Detail it like crazy. Bend. Sculpt. Subdivide. Play.

*Import back into Maya. Adjust your lowrez cage to better fit the highrez one.

*Redo the UV´s on the Lowrez version. Do a transfer calculation from
highrez down to lowrez. (The highrez doesn´t need good UV´s or a
similar, subdivided topology to make this work)

*End up with a Normalmap describing the difference between the highrez
and the lowrez. Use that for displacement or just for rendering.

The same should work inside ZBrush, e.g. creating the Normalmap from
the two meshes, the updated lowrez and the highrez version at least
by using the MayaNormalmap to displace to higherrez and refining the
result in ZBrush before redoing the calculation in ZBrush itself.

The last sentence sounds like overkill, that´s due to the fact that I don´t
know if ZBrush can generate a Normalmap from two different objects or
if it is restricted to bake subdivision levels.

tim

P.S: Editing the Normals and creating a useful shadingnetwork is quite
a pain still. Be it due to 16bit limitations in Photoshop or slight buggers
in the creation process like AA killing transitions between UV borders.

#41

Just created this ugly guy to test Silo and Zbrush together. Basicly Im
using Silo for blocking my form here and Zbrush for all the sculpting work.
Its nice to have a seperation between the two task. It allows you to focus
on one then the other for beter results overall.
In my opinion edge flows should not drive the sculpt at all! And the concept of
edgeflows is just a temporary shortcomming in computer graphics. Personaly
I dont like it in my way when Im thinking about character and form. Silo and
Zbrush will let you work this way.

You can’t possibly imagine how true your words are for me…Impressive work :slight_smile:

#42

Those having 16bit issues - get Cinepaint. We’ve been using it in the film industry for years, it’s OpenSource and kicks but. It will load your Pgotoshop layers (not effects) - othrewise you can do all the needed work without trouble.

#43

Lately my role at work has shifted from modelling to rigging. So theoretical issues of surface topology have become concrete realities. Basically I have had to rig everything I model… The further indepth I get the more apparent topolgy becomes. I don’t think it will be an issue that every trully goes away, especially if skinning systems become more dynamics driven. Wether you work with miniature puppets or digital puppets, as soon as the form must deform in a life like fashion, then there will be technical concerns to address on how the surface moves. It’s part and parcel with the trade. I don’t see that changing no matter what funky buttons they put into programs. The more the computer does it for me, the less I like the results. I just want better tools so that I can get what I want easier.

#44

Topology issues from scanned data or dense “freeform” zbrush sculpt.

Instead of making topology in Silo, can’t you use a reverse enginering application like Paraform, Cyslice, rapidform etc to rebuild toplology from a dense point cloud?

These dedicated tools have sophisticated tools for reverse engineering…
Cyslice can convert to nurbs, poly, sub-d, extract displacement, normal maps, morph target between different scans/models…etc.

http://www.headus.com/au/cyslice/

#45

Yeah, that’s definitely a possibility. However, at least for me, Silo is a no-brainer at $109. Those other programs are much, much more expensive. For actual studio work though, your probably right. Those programs offer a bit more functionality, and are more flexible.

#46

True, those software costs thousands :frowning:
Hope Silo and Zbrush incorporate tools frfrom those apps in future.