Modular Wall Workflow Thread

[Quack!]

Heya fellas and fellettes.

I see the need to incorporate sculpting into my workflow and started for the first time today.

I finally decided to try Zbrush out and try to produce something. Peris posted his nice Generic Wall Tutorial (http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/generic_wall_tutorial/generic_wall_tutorial.html) and that has given me inspiration to create one of my own.

My goal with this first test was to get the workflow down. I didn't spend a whole great deal of time in Zbrush as I wanted to take this all the way to the low poly and baked normals as fast as I could to learn the workflow.

Zbrush
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2344272/wall/wall_z.jpg

Low-Poly in max with Xol's shader, AO for spec/diffuse, 450 tris per module
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2344272/wall/1stWall.jpg

I feel that by whipping through this one I am able to see where I need to improve on.

Things learned for the next wall:
-Super fine details can get lost no matter the texture res (work on lower sub-d)
-Xnormal hates large .ase files from max, but loves large .obj from zbrush
-Low Poly version takes too much time at the moment, work smarter and faster
-Using less geo on low can still result in a nice silhouette, normals seem resillient
-Use Teaandciggarettes idea from his thread to create more angular creases
-Sculpting each brick in Z, take into Max, arrange into wall, export back to Z and remove symmetry seems viable.
-Less blobby
-Drink less coffee when sculpting
-Get tablet

I hope to move onto my next wall tomorrow and concentrate more on the shapes and forms in the sculpt this time, now that I have gone through the workflow and will, hopefully, have your critiques to incorporate.

[Shiraz]

Try make the wall on a grid so you can use the snap tool to evenly align the wall segments, also remove the back and sides of the wall to cut down on Tris as i don't think they are really necessary. I also think you can get away with cutting down on alot of tris let the normal do most of the work not geometry unless of course it really affects the silhouette.

[DarthNater]

Shiraz is right on, the grid is your friend, the grid is god, the grid is all knowing.... You get the idea. Without the grid, making anything modular is going to be damn near impossible to keep clean.

[Quack!]

Shiraz - Agreed. These don't have a backside but I will need to keep the sides to hold it's silhouette (as I plan on doing a doorway and some more features) Thanks for the help.

Darth - Thanks!

For the next one I'll definitely be working on the repetitiveness as that seems to scream out in the low poly form. I'll also try to reduce the polycount substantially as I have some unnecessary edges in my low version.

[Quack!]

Small test sculpt. Trying to achieve hard edges. Clay tubes and flatten brush used. Not really practical but learning nonetheless. More!


http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2344272/wall/rock_test.jpg

P.S. Mouse sculpting sucks.

[Hitez]

sculpting with the moose!

[dudealan2001]

you can do it
hell I was painting inside of photoshop for the longest time with a mouse. and sculpting in Z brush with a moose..

[Quack!]

More moose sculpts.

Thanks for the support dudealan.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2344272/wall/stone_floor.jpg

Painting on layers is definatley very helpful, thanks for the suggestion teaandciggarettes. Can't wait to get better at this stuff.

[Titus S]

More moose sculpts.

Thanks for the support dudealan.



Painting on layers is definatley very helpful, thanks for the suggestion teaandciggarettes. Can't wait to get better at this stuff.

http://www.brameulaers.com/tutorials/generic_wall_tutorial/generic_wall_tutorial.html

I thought you might of found this tutorial informative and inspirational.

[fearian]

*whisper* pssst, its already in the OP ;)

[Neox]

hm what i don't like is, that you have a perfect square pattern as your base and not a bit offset on the other boundaries like you have it on the inside

[Firebert]

looks like you are off to a good start. re-analyze those corners and how beveled and rounded they should be in relation to the detail on the face of the sulpt. all the edges are too clean and give it a very 3d feel at the moment.

[Quack!]

Titus - That tut is a prime source of inspiration for me as fearian has pointed out.

Neox - Thanks for the crit. So you are saying that I need to create a less square outer silhouette? I guess it is so square right now because I wanted to tile this one on a 1024x1024 texture.

Fire - Thanks for the feadback. I will definately get into those corners more on the future ones. I was planning on these having the latest ones to have the inner detail of stone but maybe cut with precision blades to be placed in a tiled pattern. I will continue on and make some new stuff and beat the shit out of the corners and less uniform.

I planned on having an update tonight but unfortunatley I have drank too much wine. And beer.

[Thegodzero]

i like how it took 11 posts for someone to say that neox.

take that screenshot and offset it, youl realize that you have a box with boxes in it, when what you want it a free flowing set of boxes. each edge should overlap onto the other side all around the tile.

just take a look at the shitty tile in the bottom corner for what i mean.
http://www.tgz3d.com/images/Egyptex.jpg

[Jarm]

I agree that the square template is working against you.

It could help to design your wall segments to fit together from the front and side.

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/9026/brickshighside.jpg

http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/7611/brickshighfront.jpg

The walls in the generic wall tutorial you mention above do a similar thing.


You also mentioned that building the lowpoly takes too much time. I find that (assuming I'm using one brick with six unique faces rather than six unique bricks) if I retopo a single brick at the beginning of the process, I can pass the transformation values from the highpoly bricks once I've arranged them into a wall segment to duplicates of this single retopologized brick. I find this to be a useful starting point. It would be annoying to pass these values by hand, but a simple python (or MEL or maxscript or w/e) script can do that.

Here's what I mean:

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/1082/brickslowandhigh.jpg


After this point, its more or less a simple matter of deleting unneeded faces and loops and fusing whats left.