Member MarkG Posted June 8, 2009 Member Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 I was curious what kind of response rate you all are seeing with 3DC when sculpting detail into an existing mesh. I am not referring to Voxel sculpting, because I don't think it will work for what I want... though if I am wrong, I will be happy to be corrected. I want to take a low-level mesh built in Silo, and bring it into 3DC to create detail... When finished, I want to export that out as either a normal or a displacement map, and then render the whole thing in another program (Messiah). I can do this in zBrush. How does 3DC compare with this workflow? I know that zBrush sort of "cheats" when it comes to polygon count. (meaning they do not do a full 3D representation of the object, but rather have their special 2.5 D mode...) so it will always be able to push higher polygon counts. But, what kind of polygon counts are you able to use in 3DC -- version 3.0. (And, if you could also give your machine stats, that would be helpful...) Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member e214 Posted June 8, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 I have used Zbrush before and mostly I got stuck on hands and feet. Voxelpainting gives you a lot of freedom,most comparable to building with clay. When you've finished your voxel you can do an automated retopo,or do the topo yourself in the "retopo" room. Basically you could import your zbrush obj file and retopo it there as well. The retopo works very fluid and is not complicated to learn.,here you can go back to low poly,or any polycount you choose. A little knowledge on how polygons and topology work is still needed for that. The Autoretopo gives a useable mesh but might not have its' poles or folds where you need them.(you can also choose a meshresolution before the autoretopo is generated,high or low poly.) Difficult areas like nostrils and such are much easier to do now I think. Anyway hope that helped a little. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member wailingmonkey Posted June 8, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 Silo->3d-Coat path is my workflow for the most part, and it's quite effective for me thusfar. If you are fine with a more limited sculpt capability (but still higher than Silo's 1-2million polys) in terms of brush tools within 3d-Coat and focus on using the 'Sculpt' room for forms and shape control, then using the 'Paint' room for your high-level detail, you won't be disappointed. 3d-Coat certainly doesn't have the sculpting toolset Zbrush has yet (nor the feel of polish with the brushes). Nice thing is that you can work back and forth between 'Paint' and 'Sculpt' if/when you need to without incurring too much warping of your detail (say, for instance, you wanted to adjust a sleeve that's got a woven detail already applied to it). Also, you can fully erase out your detail if you need to without having to think about creating a prior morph-target (or go through special dances with layers ala Zbrush). Things like 'Draw with Splines' and all of the other 'Paint' tools are also additional icing on the cake (lots of goodies that folks forget like being able to hover your 'Pen' over an area and ctrl-c whatever is underneath and ctrl-v it somewhere else). I like to have at least 4mil polys when micropainting and keep to 4096 or 2048 for textures (which can be dropped in size later). Filesize when saving a .3b 'project' file can be quite large. In terms of the process of creating the normal or displacement map, you are doing it as you sculpt, so it's fast to export the texture files out (or bake them down to your lowpoly)...it's not like you have to wait for the normals to be created in the fashion Zbrush does with Zmapper or via the Tool->Displacement panel. I haven't tried to push my polycounts with micropainting any further than 6mil so far. With voxels, I can still work on 24mil objects (up to version RC 3.00.3...haven't upgraded yet) but large brushes and navigation are pretty slow (Andrew has potentially fixed this with 3.00.4 or 3.00.5 but I haven't been able to check yet). My system specs are in my sig. Hope it's of some help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member erklaerbar Posted June 8, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 i wouldnt want to miss ZB or 3DC. To me its a "and", not an "or". Both complement each other pretty well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member GED Posted June 8, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 i want to get both, and zb4 is a free upgrade they say? i wonder if zb4 would have anything voxellish? havent pushed the latest release of 3D coat voxels at all yet but I have got up to about 6 million triangles without much slowdown at all Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member wailingmonkey Posted June 8, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 I agree, guys...but he said "I can do this in zBrush." so he evidently already has it, hence my long-winded wall of text. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted June 9, 2009 Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 I have used ZB but couldn't bare to use it for any length of time, I barely got through one of the tutorials on their site. However in 3DC I was able to sculpt a character with lots of wrinkles including sculpting fine detail in the voxels like pores and prints on the skin. Then I retopologized it and baked the normal map. After that I painted the textures in 3DC and I was able to export it to LightWave for rendering with textures, normal maps, and displacement maps. And I had fun through the whole process. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Unleashed Posted June 9, 2009 Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 zb & 3dc are like this emoticon, they go hand in hand, and are best together, not individually. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member geo_n Posted June 9, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 I have used ZB but couldn't bear to use it for any length of time, I barely got through one of the tutorials on their site. However in 3DC I was able to sculpt a character with lots of wrinkles including sculpting fine detail in the voxels like pores and prints on the skin. Then I retopologized it and baked the normal map. After that I painted the textures in 3DC and I was able to export it to LightWave for rendering with textures, normal maps, and displacement maps. And I had fun through the whole process. are you able to bake the details you had in voxel like pores and prints and bring it back to painting/sculpting mode. Do we have that feature yet? I've only used 3dc for painting and sculpting. Havn't touched voxel much really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member lc8b105 Posted June 9, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 are you able to bake the details you had in voxel like pores and prints and bring it back to painting/sculpting mode. Do we have that feature yet? Yes, "Quadrangulate and paint" and "Quadrangulate for per pixel painting" these tow commands can do this. Or you can also manually retopo and then merge into scene, the details from voxel will be baked to the map. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Reactor Posted June 9, 2009 Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 When you've finished your voxel you can do an automated retopo... Where's the option for this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member lc8b105 Posted June 9, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 Where's the option for this? Right click on Volume, "Quadrangulate" equal to auto-retopo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Reactor Posted June 9, 2009 Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 Ah, right... I should have worked that one out Thanks lc8b105. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member geo_n Posted June 9, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 Yes, "Quadrangulate and paint" and "Quadrangulate for per pixel painting" these tow commands can do this. Or you can also manually retopo and then merge into scene, the details from voxel will be baked to the map. So voxel details can be exported out as displacement maps now? When I quadrangulate I get a loss of detail. Is it possible to bake the voxel detail and use that but not the high poly quadrangualted mesh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Reactor Posted June 9, 2009 Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 Actually, whenever I quadrangulate, I get nothing. Is this a beta problem, or...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member MarkG Posted June 9, 2009 Author Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 Hmmm... I must have worded things badly... I am not asking: "Which is better, zBrush or 3DCoat?" I am asking... "How do the Polygons compare?" In other words, if I am working on something in zBrush, and crank up the subdivisions so I can get something like 8 million polygons... and I take that same object, put it in 3DC, and subdivide it... how far can I go before I start seeing a huge slowdown... 3 million? 6 million? What...? I'm not comparing zBrush to 3DC, just the maximum polygon count of both. (A couple of you gave me some data points there, thanks!) My experience is that questions that start with: "Which application is better..." are too subjective to be useful... so I am not asking that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member e214 Posted June 9, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 I can do about 20 million and still work. Mac g5 8gb ram 8800 pic shows a 20 mil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member MarkG Posted June 9, 2009 Author Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 I can do about 20 million and still work.Mac g5 8gb ram 8800 pic shows a 20 mil That is great news! Thanks, e214. (That's not voxel sculpting... right?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member e214 Posted June 9, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 Yes,it is,on the bottom you have a counter wich says 20 million. Hope that's correct interpretation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted June 9, 2009 Report Share Posted June 9, 2009 are you able to bake the details you had in voxel like pores and prints and bring it back to painting/sculpting mode. Do we have that feature yet? I've only used 3dc for painting and sculpting. Havn't touched voxel much really. Yes you can bring it from voxels into painting / sculpting but while you can edit the sculpting and such after baking, I just wanted to be clear that there's no way to alter it and then take that back to voxels. I am asking... "How do the Polygons compare?" In other words, if I am working on something in zBrush, and crank up the subdivisions so I can get something like 8 million polygons... and I take that same object, put it in 3DC, and subdivide it... how far can I go before I start seeing a huge slowdown... 3 million? 6 million? What...? I can go up to 25 million without having much trouble. Of course that's triangles, while I think ZB is counting quads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member MarkG Posted June 10, 2009 Author Member Report Share Posted June 10, 2009 I can go up to 25 million without having much trouble. Of course that's triangles, while I think ZB is counting quads. I think you are right... hmmm... I wonder if 25 Million Triangles means 13 Million quads? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor artman Posted June 10, 2009 Contributor Report Share Posted June 10, 2009 Yes you can bring it from voxels into painting / sculpting but while you can edit the sculpting and such after baking, I just wanted to be clear that there's no way to alter it and then take that back to voxels. You can use export highpoly option and merge it back in voxels.I use this process a lot when working on thin surfaces like wings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member e214 Posted June 10, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 10, 2009 There a demo you can download,give it a try maybe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member MarkG Posted June 11, 2009 Author Member Report Share Posted June 11, 2009 There a demo you can download,give it a try maybe. Yeah... I actually know there is a demo... but me playing around with a demo for a couple of weeks will not give me the same answers that experienced modelers who have worked for a long time in both apps... Thanks to everyone who gave feedback... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member geo_n Posted June 11, 2009 Advanced Member Report Share Posted June 11, 2009 Yes you can bring it from voxels into painting / sculpting but while you can edit the sculpting and such after baking, I just wanted to be clear that there's no way to alter it and then take that back to voxels. i just tried it. hanks. Man I'm left behind 3dc features. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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