Here's a block in I did of Eugene's body tonight... I wanted to play with zspheres a bit so I did. I feel like this sort of block in could have done just as fast if not faster in Maya , but whatchya gonna do? I'll post the final tomorrow, if all things go as planned.
Still a lot left to do, especially on the arms and he slippers, but any feedback would be great! My plans are to sculpt all the characters, texture paint them, and then resurface them for animation in maya.
7 comments:
Dude, as always, looks awesome.
Greg
So I have a question ... I've recently been using zbrush for some quick sculpts to use in product demos, but I don't know much about resurfacing in Maya. I've generally been generating normal and bump maps to help. So when you are resurfacing, do you import the extremely large zbrush sculpt (like 2 million poly version) into Maya? How much do you use normal maps, displacement, and bump maps? And when resurfacing from such a large poly count, what would be an ideal resurfaced poly count?
Thanks!
And the modeling looks amazing!
When I get to resurfacing I'm going to post a video here showing how I do it. I've been promising Greg I would do one for a long time now, I just need to do it. Usually I import ion a high res mesh that has nothing more than the silhouette, I try to keep it under a mil. But that's really becoming a thing of the past... Check this link it's totally sweet! http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=071265 - I've used it at work just testing it out and it took my 9 million subtooled out mesh down to 800K combined (no Uvs). The results were so good I could even do normal maps from it. Also the performance in Maya was really good enough to resurface from.
I have a pretty decent machine , 8 gigs of ram, quad core working in win 64 with a quadroFX 3500.But with my other machine AMD quad core, 4 gigs of ram, a geforce 9600GT running win 64, I could still get 1.5 mil in with not many problems.
As for the actual resurfacing, I use this... http://draster.com/nex-1.5/ . I've been using this for about 3 years now and I love it. It not only does resurfacing it also changes Maya's manip to be a lot better!!! One note though, if your not using a quadro you may have some graphical glitches, just look around their forums to fix it, it's not too bad. Keep an eye on the blog I'll post a vid soon of my resurfacing process.
Oh... sorry didnt answer your question. I use resurfacing a lot for work , so I resurface, do the uvs, then generate the normal map from the high res mesh. For this Character, I'm doing this for the design sculpt, so I'm not planning on going into any High resolution details on this, there's no point. I'm also going to set up some simple procedural shaders that can be reused with all the characters, I have 4 to do. After the design sculpt I will resurface but model with as much geo as possible. I probably won't use normal maps or displacement maps at this point as they are 2ndary characters and aren't seen that often. Does this answer your question?
Okay I'm still attempting to wrap my brain around all this so bear with me. Let me see if I get what you are doing. First you create the zbrush model - is this the high res model? Then you go to resurfacing in Maya, do the UV's, and the normal map from the high res mesh. Do you generate the normal map in Maya, using the newly resurfaced mesh and the high res mesh? Or do you generate it in zbrush and it just applies really well to your resurfaced model?
Does all that make sense? Maybe an easier way to ask it would be does the resurfacing happen after you are done with zbrush? Or do you model the "design" first, resurface, then reimport to zbrush for fine details? I think that is whats holding me up.
Thanks for taking the time! I'm impressed with your work for sure and want to learn as much as I can.
Sure thing, so here's the steps
1.Make a super simple base...like the zsphere model I did in this post. Don't worry about edge loops just very basic forms, think of a stick figure or an armature. You don't want anything locked in while in zbrush design phase especially edge loops because they may get pushed and pulled around making the model useless for animation even on the lowest subdivision level. Look at my next post for an example of what I use as a base mesh.
2.In Zbrush sculpt everything from simple forms to high frequency details. This is the high res.
3.Export the high res to Maya (You may need to decimate to keep Maya
from freaking out)
4.Resurface the high res for animation purposes (proper edge loops apply). Keep within poly budget and try to model as much as possible trying to match silhouette as best your polycount will allow.
5.Do the uvs for the new low res.
6.Bake normal maps in Maya using Transfer maps from the high res to the low res.
7. Done!
I rarely generate normal maps from zbrush. I really only use Zbrush as a design tool not as a finisher as some people do. I only worry about the tech-y stuff until after I'm done with the art. Does this make sense?
Here's a link to a really good dvd for this kind of design first tech later workflow.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/361/Digital-Sculpting%3A-The-Human-Anatomy
Hope this helped.
Yeah that helps a lot and answers all my questions. I'm excited about incorporating it into more of my work flow and overall process. Still a bit more to learn, but i guess there will always be. Thanks again! Look forward to some future posts.
Post a Comment