Zbrush to Maya: Tiling Meshes
I’ve wanted to try this tutorial for a while and now that I have I thought I would share it with you guys. Creating seamless textures is one thing, but tiling mesh surfaces isn’t always as easy as it may seem. Osart has posted a tutorial (http://osart3d NULL.wordpress NULL.com/home-page/tutorial-creating-perfectly-tiling-meshes-in-zbrush-for-use-in-videogame-environments/) on his blog (http://osart3d NULL.wordpress NULL.com/) that walks you through the process with a couple of different paths you can take when it comes to developing your low poly version of the mesh. The process involves using Zbrush to create a tiling displacement map. The only part of the tutorial I got hung up on was the UV section. At one point he asks you to “normalize” a group of UVs. Normalizing the UVs is done by selecting the particular UV shell you want and then going to Edit UVs > Normalize under the Polygon menu tab. This scales the shell you have selected so that it takes up the entire 0-1 texture coordinate space.
The tutorial is full of really really great stuff. You should go RIGHT NOW and check it out. Below is a tiling rock mesh I made using Osart’s Tutorial (http://osart3d NULL.wordpress NULL.com/home-page/tutorial-creating-perfectly-tiling-meshes-in-zbrush-for-use-in-videogame-environments/). To make the normal and ambient occlusion maps I used xNormal. The diffuse map was painted in Photoshop. If you have any questions I would try and get a hold of Osart, or I could help you as well.
The next step I’m going to take is to bring this mesh into the UDK and create a material for it. I’ll append this post with those results over the next few days.
Weekend Update!
I’ve imported the mesh as an FBX into UDK and softened all the verts. Rocks have a funny specular pattern and it wasn’t something I could create within the UDK so I created a separate specular map. The following material uses a normal, diffuse, and specular map. Instead of explaining the whole map I thought I would just post it along with a shot of the rock mesh titled several times in the UDK.
ZSketch: The Ear
I find the ear pretty tricky to model in a standard program like Maya, but in ZBrush.. wow. It’s so much easier. Being able to just push into a surface makes all the contour changes in the ear less scary. In Maya you’re playing with curves and nurbs, or trying to match up all sorts of curvy edge verticies. I would say that the ear is definitely the most challenging part of the whole body to model. For the base of this sketch I used a standard ZBrush cube, and modeled with symmetry on. Shaping the ear was done with the move brush. I pulled out the outline of the ear first.
Next I took the rake brush and built up all the major curves in the ear on the flat surface.
The curves along the ear acted as a guidline for where to change the depth of the ear. They each surround a kind of pocket that is either sunken into the ear or elevated. Now that the general shape was there I just worked it with the rake tool for a few more minutes then cleaned the surface up with the polish and smooth brushes. If I had more time I would have liked to have curved the ear profile. I should mention there is poling on the ears edge because of the ZBrush cube I used. I didn’t make an adaptive skin and because of this I was left with tris on the top and bottom of the cube during the sculpt.
ZSketch: Stone Doorway
(http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/door NULL.jpg) The Zsketch assignment for this week was a stone doorway of some sort. I wanted to play around with Shadowbox (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=qtIMTTGlGD4&feature=fvsr) for this one. The arch was made using shadow box and the circular mask tools. To create the rocks I first cut the spaces between the shapes out using the DAM Standard brush. Next I used the inflate brush to bulge the rocks out. To cut hard angles into the rock surfaces I used the Trim Adaptive brush. I find that this works very nicely. The far side was just clipped off using the clip curve tool. Pretty simple stuff here, but lots of fun :) took about an hour in total. Go Shadowbox!
ZSketch: Eye
(http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/eye NULL.jpg)This is the first in a series of weekly posts dedicated to quick sculpts made in Zbrush. I’ll be posting one a week over the next several months. The subject is handed out by my Instructor and the goal of the assignment is to get us as students more proficient at ZBrush. Each “sketch is limited to 2 hours. If it is relevant I will discuss the techniques I’ve used to accomplish certain features of the sculpt.
Explorer Zbrush Progress
(http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/face NULL.jpg)My last post was of the concept I had painted up for my random attribute character. For those of you who missed it, I was given the task of creating an elderly prehistoric female explorer with a corrupt disposition. I was originally going to make her a fat character, but as I started to flesh things out it just didn’t make sense. If she’s walking around all the time she is probably pretty thin. The anatomy reference I’m using for the sculpt is of a much younger woman, there’s not a huge amount of naked t-posed grandmas on Google images… thank god.
(http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/feet NULL.jpg)This sculpt was actually started in Maya. I built a base mesh to nail the basic shapes and then just exported as an OBJ file for ZBrush.At this stage in the sculpt I’m trying to work in the basic muscle forms. A lot of her body is going to be covered up by furs and leather so I’m not going to push the detail too far. I just want enough so that when I create her clothes they will rest properly over her body. I’ve barley touched the third sub division here and I’ve only been using the “move” brush. I find that at these lower subdivisions there isn’t really a need to “sculpt” detail in. At this stage is still a process of picking and pulling vertices around. This project is due on the 9th (next Friday), so I’ll be moving along on it quite quickly now. More posts to come on Sunday :)
(http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/hands NULL.jpg)
(http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/upperFront NULL.jpg)
(http://www NULL.delightning NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/back NULL.jpg)
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