Starcraft - Marine

[Otk]

Hi all !!!

This is my first big project, I am a Starcraft fan so i decided to draw a Marine... I sculpted all of the details in ZBrush without using 3ds Max, only lightbulbs and eyes were made with 3ds Max 2010. There are also some post-production adjustments with Photoshop, eyes, background blur and some sharpings on helmet...

There are 24.140.160 faces on this mesh. It took 4 minutes to export from Maxigo to Indigo with a i7 920 - 6gb 1866 mhz computer and took nearly 5-6 minutes to see the first image in Indigo. And this image was rendered for 2 hours.

I know that there are some mistakes, but working with such a massive mesh was really hard even on a strong computer 4 white dots on the front armor supposed to be white holes but i dont know why they were rendered as plain textures...I could repair them with Photoshop but i thought that doing this would be "cheat" so leave them Problems while exporting subtools to 3ds Max were so boring.

And i got a question for you, can you please tell me the difference, advantages or disadvantages of using normal, bump, displacement maps rather than using just your brush in ZBrush to create bumps, displacements? Because i used only texture maps, i am sure it is wrong but i am amateur as you see, but i will use them after now

I am also posting wireframe image of the mesh, it is actually wireframe but there are millions of faces so it seems like subobject division or something else

Waiting your critics and comments...

Regards,
Buğra

[suvakas]

I'm not familiar with zbrush, but the difference between bump/normal and displacement is, that displacement changes the actual geometry, but bump/normal maps are just faking it.
Usual work flow with those sculpting programs is, that you sculpt your high resolution mesh, then export a lower resolution version of that same model and then render out a displacement map of high res model and use that map on the lower resolution mesh inside your 3D program. Confusing? Hard to explain with few words.
Was that what you was asking?

[edit]
Your scene is excellent test for Maxigo though.
It would have taken about 30 minutes to export with older Maxigo version.

[StompinTom]

That mesh is waaaay too hi rez for what it looks like. Subdivision is much faster within Indigo iitself, so if you were to use a low-poly base and some displacement and bump textures, you'll cut that export/rendering time down by a LOT.

24 million polys is way too much for what you're showing us. Waaay too much. I don't even get up nearly that high with scenes densely packed with foliage and trees.

[Otk]

I'm not familiar with zbrush, but the difference between bump/normal and displacement is, that displacement changes the actual geometry, but bump/normal maps are just faking it.
Usual work flow with those sculpting programs is, that you sculpt your high resolution mesh, then export a lower resolution version of that same model and then render out a displacement map of high res model and use that map on the lower resolution mesh inside your 3D program. Confusing? Hard to explain with few words.
Was that what you was asking?

[edit]
Your scene is excellent test for Maxigo though.
It would have taken about 30 minutes to export with older Maxigo version.

Thanks for your comment and answer suvakas but i think i was misunderstood. My question was, the difeerence between using bumb, displacement, normal maps rather than using your own sculpting brush on your mesh. For example i carved on a smooth armor mesh with my brush in ZBrush and i get this carved surface result but i am sure you or another professional can do this with bump or displacement maps on a smooth armor mesh and can get the same result without touching to main mesh. I was asking the advantages of this method

Yes i get the same answer on the ZBrush forums too, i saw some tutorials but it was too late to do this

My 3ds Max file was 1.4 gb, i was thanking you while exporting for improving Indigo ))

[Otk]

That mesh is waaaay too hi rez for what it looks like. Subdivision is much faster within Indigo iitself, so if you were to use a low-poly base and some displacement and bump textures, you'll cut that export/rendering time down by a LOT.

24 million polys is way too much for what you're showing us. Waaay too much. I don't even get up nearly that high with scenes densely packed with foliage and trees.

Thank you for your comment; yes yes i know that, actually while i was creating different parts of that Marine, i was adding a mesh, then carving it and finally i was checking its apperance. While dividing geometry of these parts, it was getting better and better And i was afraid of seeing edges on meshes so i subdivided them 4-5 times. But it was an experience for me, i will use this method, you and suvakas suggested to me

[suvakas]

I usually use bump when the main model is done. Mostly for small detais like skin pores and smaller irregularities. You can't actually "model" with bump. For me it goes hand in hand with texturing process. But it depends on the artist you know.. Test and play with the tools and find out what works for you best.

[Otk]

Thank you for your suggestion suvakas, i will use this method next time, now i am starting to model Worms, thanks god there are no textures, bumps or displacements on this video game characters

[CTZn]

What you can do also is, instead of rendering the sculpt directly you can use it as a guide in 3dsMax to create a clean surface. ZBrush has a retopology tool nowadays I think...

from a sculpted sphere...

rebuild.gif (36.23 KiB) Viewed 12822 times

[Otk]

What you can do also is, instead of rendering the sculpt directly you can use it as a guide in 3dsMax to create a clean surface. ZBrush has a retopology tool nowadays I think...

rebuild.gif

Second mesh was created in 3ds Max whit this method?

[CTZn]

In Maya, I adapted my sentence

Basically I created new polygons constrained to the sculpted surface, after having drawn a network of splines to define edges flow.