Trying A New Workflow...

[darkeye]

i had a reply from a talented Pro on ZBCentral called Peter Minster.

He was very helpful and had some good tips; low and behold, he has some tutorials on Digital Tutors which i belong to and in those he was sculpting a dino and a dragon. He used to be a clay sculptor for the museums and Dinosaurs are his passion.

In the dragon tutorial he revealed he likes to use a mesh that looks like a wire armature . i scaled down one of my z sphere rigs to look like wire and thought i'd see what its like to flesh out. picture shows the base mesh being created over the armature using simple shapes like balls and tubes and shaped using Transpose tools- mostly the Move one. only other tool/brush is the Move Brush. the shapes are dynamesh shapes and can be re-topo'ed with a click and drag. I left WireFrame on so you can see this following a re-topo.

I like how this flows as it feels like shaping blobs of digital clay/wax. this isn't many minutes of addition; it took me longer to re-edit the Rig. any hoo i thought i'd share this very cool and intuitve method that he uses. the 'armature is much easier to pose too so you could start with a posed figure same as in real sculpting. when i turn off visibility on the 'armature' i would be left with a sculptable mesh.

atb --tim

 

[RKapuaala]

Interesting.

 

[darkeye]

i think i has its uses in forming a pose with out having to rig and animate Richard. better for guys who prefer sculpting to Topo-headaches.....

check this out Richard -- same idea on horses..... Ryan Kingslien's blog

http://www.isculptstuff.com/

atb --tim

 

[RKapuaala]

Wow, some cool stuff, I added it as a bookmark. I would really like to do a good anatomical study. I have attempted a few, but I loose my nerve by the time I work up to the superficial muscles because I only have 2 dimensional resources and don't know exactly what the shape of the muscles are.
I have the same issue with most of the figures I pose. I can't afford models so I use DAZ3D for my models, and they are fair, but not completely accurate, especially with cloth. I really would like to work with a live model like I use to do when I was in school.
I do look fussing with the topo though. It appeals to the left side of my brain. That's what I like about sculpting in general. Even if you are sculpting something totally expressionistic or abstract, there is a technical side of the process that unites both halfs of my brain for a single goal.

 

[darkeye]

well, pter Minster only uses the armature as a guide in 3d space but still builds a zsphere rig and gets his mesh thata way. i thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if i could take ideas from both guys and make figures in a more sculptural way. topo just frustrates me sometimes . that said, the new topo brush in ZB lets you redraw topo lines how you want them to be. so thats kinda cool.

atb Richard --tim

 

[RKapuaala]

That is a very cool feature. I use to have lightwave 3D and I made some of my original meshes with their Modeler. I built a simple armature each plane at a time then used their metanurb function to give it a more organic look. I found that if Nurbd each part of the mesh separately I had better joints. I sure miss that tool. My license expired about 3 years ago and I haven't been able to afford renewing it since.
After all the great things you are telling me about zbrush, I may have to save up for that. Just the feature that allows you to turn your mesh into parts with joints is well worth the price to me.
That would be great to just send my parted out object to be printed. Making molds would be so much easier

 

[darkeye]

i looked at the site that Jon gave us today and spent some time reading on there-then i down loaded Nettfab studio for free and loaded up a mesh i am doing in stl format, just to see.
now dynamesh is supposed to self seal and re-topo. i found 336 holes in the mesh!! really cant understand it. so maybe the 'proper' meshes are the way to go. which is funnily what Peter said i should do.
i'll have to try loading up what i have done above and check it. just to see...
nice thing about that company is they can cut your model for you if you tell them how. i am liking having Nettfab; now i can learn more about meshes.
I'd say Zbrush will be one of those tools you'll wishyou'd had when you started Richard. i think its worth every penny.

atb -- Tim

 

[RKapuaala]

I use meshmixer and accutrans to check for leaks. accutrans is a pain to fix them in, but meshmixer is very easy. I do my resizing in accutrans though because meshmixer and sculptris don't have those functions,,,, at least not accurate methods for resizing.

 

[darkeye]

tested my other meshes like old Pun down below and this one; no leaks or errors so i guess dynamesh does work after all. thats re-assuring. only thing i dont know yet is how to get wall thickness. i sculpt on the mesh and it stays the same thickness. need to investigate a bit more i guess.....

i saw accutrans but havent got it on yet. perhaps later.

article on Dynamesh for ya Richard. might be interesting read.


atb --tim

 

[RKapuaala]

Is there a link you were going to share?

 

[darkeye]

woops!

http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/Dynamesh

musta been sleepy! ...

atb --tim

 

[RKapuaala]

Thanks

 

[darkeye]

welcome!

atb --tim