Makin a Tut for 3DT DWV entrants.

[Sathe]

If anyone has some ideas or requests as to what will be most useful, Ie, Baking out hard surface to low poly or Hard Surface techniques I'm all ears, I will make it over the next couple of weeks.

[Robbert543]

Well.. erhm.. baking out hard surface to low poly is what I need.... ;)

plus..
I love you. :)

[NinthJake]

Why not do both in one? ;)

I want some more tips on modeling details on curved surfaces and after that you can show how to bake all the modeled sweetness into the low-poly?

[Sathe]

Yeh alright.
Got any ideas for whats curvy enough for you?

[Raul]

i have a request, something ive been wanting to try and would like to see how people approach it. Texturing baking from the high poly to the low poly. Things like complicated shaders baked into a texture using the render to texture feature. Mainly on hardsurface stuff. Not so much a character head. Although, i also wonder if its possible to use Render to Texture to bake a SS shader into a the diffuse. And maybe even the specular.

These maps of course, will just serve as a base to keep tweaking inside of photoshop. But it is something that i would be interested in seeing. Specially the part of creating the shaders themselves for the high poly geometry.

[Imajus]

Isn't baking out high to low poly kind of a waste? Anyone can show you that and there are tons of tutorials. What about something more personal like how you go about creating textures or shaders (love your texture work) or some overall process on your work flow.

[Raul]

i wouldnt call it a waste. i just wanna see what people think about it. And how to approach it. I will say tho, that my original question is kinda pointless as i use layer styles to texture quicker. However, i recently saw The Gnomon Workshop - Hard Surface Shading and Texturing. And the stuff he talked about was pretty amazing. Gave me some ideas im still not sure i wanna head that way as i already have a good workflow stablished. But it was still pretty badass.

Although, if someone is willing to make a tutorial for dom war it should mainly focus on the low poly and textures.

[dhin]

I'll just take anything I can get my hands on... as far as tutorials go.

[poopipe]

A claw hammer head or anything with an awkward junction like that and surfaces that go from angular to smooth.


Front fender for a car (wing if you're english - the bit with the wheel arch cut out of it) with thickness and mounting brackets. Basically a formed sheet with brackets, nicely filleted edges and so on


also a fuzzy sack

[Imajus]

i wouldnt call it a waste. i just wanna see what people think about it. And how to approach it. I will say tho, that my original question is kinda pointless as i use layer styles to texture quicker. However, i recently saw The Gnomon Workshop - Hard Surface Shading and Texturing. And the stuff he talked about was pretty amazing. Gave me some ideas im still not sure i wanna head that way as i already have a good workflow stablished. But it was still pretty badass.

Although, if someone is willing to make a tutorial for dom war it should mainly focus on the low poly and textures.

That does sound cool actually you were asking for something different than what I was talking about.

[thefmilyofblood]

also a fuzzy sack

Make it extra fuzzy.

[NinthJake]

Yeh alright.
Got any ideas for whats curvy enough for you?
Something like this is fine.
http://www.holamun2.com/files/images/mun2-images/news/video-vixens/angelica-curves-1.jpg

Nah but I don't know, maybe like details for the armor like this? (http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=63624)

Or maybe even for something like your Mauro model :)

[poopipe]

Stuff like this...

http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?p=817165#post817165

[BiG ToE-3DT]

I would like to know how one would go about making an AO map in Max.

I know there are a few tuts out there for this, but they never work for me. I always get splotches in mine, which then leads me to xNormal to get it done, but it never comes out the way I see others looking.

If anyone can shead light on this subject, that would be nice. A good AO map can take a texture to the next level. But remember, you can polish a teard all day long, in the end, it's still crap.

[poopipe]

splotchy sounds like not enough samples - turn it up (128 usually does ok on a 1024x1024 image)

keep the range low too.

[BiG ToE-3DT]

well I guess splotchy is the wrogn term, so here is an example of what I mean:

it's like the low and the high, where they overlap, are showign up in the renders.

[poopipe]

ouch

That looks like projection cage fail but you'd expect the normals to go wrong if it were that simple.

are you using the MR AO preset from the render to texture dialog?

maybe this discussion belongs in another thread?

[NinthJake]

Much of that looks like problems with the normals, I had that problem once, it was really tedious because I had to check and flip all normals that were wrong manually.

Though the "splotches" in the middle I can't really explain because problems with normals looks like polygon shapes.

One other thing is I notice that you have this flat-shaded look on some of your baked objects (like the rocket thingy), this might be because you haven't set your low-poly object to smooth shading before baking the AO map.

[Warlock 279]

BigToe, can you set it so that the lowpoly cage doesn't cast shadows/affect the AO, turn off double-siding/backside faces or something? I don't know Max, haven't used it since version 3, maybe 4 [?] so I'm just spit-balling, but what it looks like to me, is that the polygons in the lowpoly cage are double sided, giving you that checkerboard look in some places, and the backside faces are then also casting shadows on the high poly you're projecting from in other places. Just a guess, based on similar issues I've run across when baking in LW and/or Blender. That's a hot mess you've got tho for sure.

As Poo suggested, maybe we should get an AO Baking thread going in addition to the anatomy threads in preparation for DomWar? Covering Max, xNormal, etc, so that anyone that's stuck on it can get a quick hand before things kickoff.

[BiG ToE-3DT]

new thread coming right up.

Warlock: I did have double sided textures turned on, so maybe that was the issue.

[Sathe]

Ok I'm making it tonight. Finally have some time

[thefmilyofblood]

Ok I'm making it tonight. Finally have some time

Yeeeesssssssssss.

[MonteCristo]

You can count me in this year. Just moved to a new place near Cambridge and am itching to work on the next big project.

Sathe, if there is one service you could do this community, it's to teach people how to render a game character. Tutorials on Vray, Mental Ray and Turbine would be EXTREMELY useful. This is the area where a lot of people fall down IMO. Myself included. :)

Toodles.

[Sathe]

You can count me in this year. Just moved to a new place near Cambridge and am itching to work on the next big project.

Sathe, if there is one service you could do this community, it's to teach people how to render a game character. Tutorials on Vray, Mental Ray and Turbine would be EXTREMELY useful. This is the area where a lot of people fall down IMO. Myself included. :)

Toodles.

OH. MY. GOD.

Reallly? :O


Tut is done, but need to do all the lame conversion stuff to it.

[Imajus]

Can't wait to see it, thanks sathe

[MonteCristo]

well I guess splotchy is the wrogn term, so here is an example of what I mean:

it's like the low and the high, where they overlap, are showign up in the renders.

Big Toe -- Looks like you need to set an object ID to the projection mesh (Say 30 or something). Then set your render settings to exclude it. I can't quite remember where. No max on this computer. But I know you need to put -30 somewhere, and it willl prevent the low poly appearing too.

EDIT -- Ok, remembered now. Assuming you are using the Mental Ray Ambient Occlusion shader, set the low poly mesh to ID 30, and then in the material, set the "Incl/Exclude Object ID" parameter to -30. This way it won't render the low poly mesh too.


Sathe -- Yup defo. Looking forward to seeing you tutes. As soon as I can sort a new wireless adapter for my Pixie Cab I will catch you on messenger.

Laterzzz.

[Crispy4004]

You can count me in this year. Just moved to a new place near Cambridge and am itching to work on the next big project.

Sathe, if there is one service you could do this community, it's to teach people how to render a game character. Tutorials on Vray, Mental Ray and Turbine would be EXTREMELY useful. This is the area where a lot of people fall down IMO. Myself included. :)

Toodles.
Great to have you back this year, really looking forward to what you come up with.

Funny you should mention rendering improvements, I brought up in one of the DW practice threads for the exact same reasons. Not everyone is keen on the idea of using Mental Ray, Vray and the like in this competition, but it's a significant loss if they allow it again and few here make us of it. Even without them, tossing on simple blinns and taking viewport screen grabs is not going to cut it when many of the top entries last year were using the Marmoset toolbag, which keeps getting better and better:

Example 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9auRorYlx4&feature=related)
Example 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAIzlq2kLeM&feature=related)

Like it or not, our competition is going to be making the most of this stuff, so we should too. It's enough to scare me as a MR user because there is no way I can compete with a real time render engine when it comes to quickly making tweaks. Sure, I may be able to achieve higher quality images, but at what cost of time that may be better spent fixing other things? (at least for the purpose of this competition)

[BiG ToE-3DT]

MonteCristo: way to go dude.

[poopipe]

You can count me in this year. Just moved to a new place near Cambridge and am itching to work on the next big project.



I'm in Cambridge - fancy a pint?

[MonteCristo]

Defo. :dance:

[Sathe]

Tutorial will be uploaded tonight, Latest tomorrow.

It is basically on modeling highres mechanical details which can be used as a library for random stuff on mechs.
Will also be attaching the 3D files.

[Robbert543]

this is why we love AND hate you.

[MonteCristo]

Tutorial will be uploaded tonight, Latest tomorrow.

It is basically on modeling highres mechanical details which can be used as a library for random stuff on mechs.
Will also be attaching the 3D files.

And when will you be making a rendering tutorial beeatch?

[Imajus]

Yeah second the rendering one

[Sathe]

FUUUU Monte. I'm not a modeler anymore. I'm 90% rendering these days and we have fierce competition in our niche. If i go makin tuts how to render stuff, unfortunately It will come back to me eventually.
Modeling I couldn't give a ****e though.

[BiG ToE-3DT]

ok, so it sounds like Sathe just volunteered to render out everyone's final images for them.

Yaaaaaaaaaaa, Sathe.

[Crispy4004]

I get where Sathe is coming from. All the bad rendering tutorials and miss-information out there is exactly what separates his Renders from everyone else who hasn't sifted through the crap or learned from a professional. Why break those barriers down when it's your livelihood?

I'm definitely not as experienced as Sathe, but what's stopping me from doing a tutorial like this for us is professional obligations. I picked up on a few little things at my internship at Zoic relating to their Rendering pipeline that might not be kosher to share. If it's widespread info that is a different story, but it gets a little grey.

[dhin]

While all of that is understandable, there are those of us who are students that comes to learn a the feet of a masters, (a PRIVATE tutorial would be nice... I have a few close friends I can bring, Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin, and Euro.)

[Imajus]

You don't have to tell ALL your secrets... just a few tips

[BiG ToE-3DT]

just the tip, Sathe, just the tip.

[Sathe]

HAhahaha ****en BigToe... I missed these times

[thefmilyofblood]

Tutorial will be uploaded tonight, Latest tomorrow.

Did you do the time warp again?

[Buzzy]

...it's just a jump to the left, and then a step to the right...

[thefmilyofblood]

Oh, great, now I've got that song stuck in my head again.

[Dreamexpress]

i have a request if you are not done,
i watched your hard surface tutorial, but one thing you didnt explain was
when the mesh becomes really dense to support all the hard edges on curved surfaces,
how do you align all the vertices, do you do it by hand? every single vertices?
or do you have some tool to help you?


and if you do it by hand how do you know how much density you can handle?
i always seem to hit some spot where too many vertices becomes impossible to align

plss:)

[thefmilyofblood]

i have a request if you are not done,
i watched your hard surface tutorial, but one thing you didnt explain was
when the mesh becomes really dense to support all the hard edges on curved surfaces,
how do you align all the vertices, do you do it by hand? every single vertices?
or do you have some tool to help you?


and if you do it by hand how do you know how much density you can handle?
i always seem to hit some spot where too many vertices becomes impossible to align

plss:)

Wait, what?

[Sathe]

He means, you start adding so many edge loops along a curve it can start to pinch/warp in places to which I'd say, yeh I manually fix stuff. You have to, unless it's a straight line and you can use the x,y,z snap tools on your selection.

Sorry about tutorial delay. Just lost a bit of time last couple of days and don't wanna sacrifice personal modeling time.

I will edit it asap. its not that amazing anyway haha.

[thefmilyofblood]

I thought so, but the wording was kinda weird.

Now get that tutorial done. Now. NOW.

[poopipe]

the relax modifier is quite handy for relaxing areas like that also.

but yeah

tut!!

[Dreamexpress]

ok thanks
then i think i must be missing some other piece of information ,maybe it has something to do when to not and when to redirect the polyflow to minimize edges, i will study you meshes further

[thefmilyofblood]

Did you ever post this tutorial?

[Sathe]

Well when i finished it , it had a terrible voice over and i just wasn't happy with it.
Last night I started re-recording it and it crashed camtasia after 1:20 in :(

Giving it another shot tonight.

[poopipe]

if camtasia's giving you **** try the microsoft expression encoder thing - I was very pleasantly surprised when i used it for some demos a week or two back

[Sathe]

Got it working now. Here's a sneak peek at what I have been doing. (hahaa have i really become a tutorial douche now? SNEAK PEAK? ****s sakeeeeeeee.)

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/2866/mask001.jpg (http://img135.imageshack.us/i/mask001.jpg/)

[poopipe]

fraid so


douche :p


so, is that going to be a solid sheet with thickness and nice hard corners like i asked? ;)

[Sathe]

Thats basically from the first 30 minutes. Whole thing is about 3 hours long.
I'm not going off reference and just designing it as I go so I don't really know or even care what you asked for/.

[poopipe]

well, I'm excited anyway.


where have all your golden eyes gone?

[BiG ToE-3DT]

where have all your golden eyes gone?

He was talking alot of crap, so I blinded him.

don't screw with Threedy, we will take your eyes.

[Sathe]

Ahahaha don't steal signatures ideas! oh :(

[Sathe]

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/7881/helmetprogress.jpg (http://img28.imageshack.us/i/helmetprogress.jpg/)
More progress on the tut.

[BiG ToE-3DT]

Ahahaha don't steal signatures ideas! oh :(

if I can't be you, then being like you will have to do.

[Sathe]

Hey funny fact-

Next part of the tutorial is "Thightening up the graphics on level 3"

I kid you not, just wait for it Bigtoe :dance:

[BiG ToE-3DT]

have the graphics been tightened?

[washka]

Hmm, that's why they delayed DWV. :D
I'll keep an eye here, your last tutos were thightly nicez.

What happened to your golden eyes? You trashed some light?
Maybe that's a sh*tty question...