morphing displacement "Neckling_Changing"

#41

First of all, for eveyone, who may have missed the origine of the Neckling, here’s a link to the messiah techniques I’ve posted…
Technique behind the Neckling

Here’s also the ZBrush post that goes into some more details on that end…
[color=DarkOrange]Animating with Displacement

And another link to the ZBrush part for the current post…
[/color] Follow-up “Neckling_Changing”

As for the use of other packages, except for our “TextureDeform”, which takes care of the tendons underneath the skin, it is obviously possible to do a lot of things with displacement and most likely blending them as well, but it’s highly questionable whether it is as easy as it is with messiah. Let’s see…here’s the camtasia recording I did to show how to hook up displacement…it’s just 5frames per second, but it is realtime, so don’t think it was timelapsed…hahaha…just by looking at the steps, you will see that it is as easy as it looks!
Setting_up_Displacement(DivX5.x)

I will also prepare a whole tutorial DVD that shows the entire process of rigging and texturing with messiah:Studio. I may as well make it a series that includes all steps, Lightwave modeling, ZBrush displacement creation, Messiah rigging+animation+texturing.
Those DVDs will have sound, too…hahahaha…sorry about the primitive recording. You’ll soon find a nicer version with sound as well! (if you can take listening to me, that is!) :stuck_out_tongue:

Alrighty…lot’s of more to come…

BTW: THANK YOU EVERYONE!!! I’m blown away by your response. Again I am so excited to see that so many of you share the euphoria this causes for me. I can’t wait to see what you all do with these new ways. I just wish that you get to see, too, for yourself why I’m so ecstatic with these tools.

#42

Glad to see the morph finally Taron. Remember you dont need to limit yourself to displacements from the base mesh. One can use a traditional blendshape style morph (i.e actual geo changing) to vastly change the size and dimensions of the base mesh. This increases the range and magnitude of possible displaced morphs. I.e. small weedy 5’ guy into 7’ werewolf with barrelled chest.

Only tricky part is updating the rig so its functions correctly.

#43

Rebo, you are EXACTLY right! It’s totally possible to morph the mesh and blend the displacement maps not only just like that, but controlled by the exact same weights, which can also be used to blend any surface properties, so you can practically do anything you could ever think of, almost, I believe…kind of believe that it could be everything. However, it is also possible to simply go ahead with ZBrush and make any wicked highres deformation as you want and you can literally save out the obj it generates for the level 1 division and use that as the morphtarget for your base geometry. I’ve done that a while ago as a little test. So the comfort of that is unspeakable beautiful. I love things that cause the “no worries” situation. But then you should watch out with the setup of the deformations of course. If you were using a lot of blendshapes for lipsyncing and such, it actually should work in your favor, because they should be relative and would continue to work even after some more dramatic morph changes the the basic look of the mesh…ahh…exciting…hmmm…now I want to play more…but I need to prepare some more tutorials now!

#44

I love it!
It’s awesome how you have explained it all to us as well, I have learnt allot.
Thank you.

#45

Awesome work Taron, I’m constantly amazed by what ZBrush enables the artist to do.

I see you’re up to your neck in 3D, but we’d still like to see you in the Daily Sketch forum from time to time.

#46

looks amazing! :slight_smile: Inspired me a whole bunch! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

#47

HAHAHAHA, THANK YOU, SteveV! I miss the DailySketch forum A LOT! I’ve just made at least a tiny quicky for the Netherlands topic…huh…man…I’m so out of it…need to do more sketches again, too, really! By the way, I really recomment that to everyone! Get some 2dsketching practice, it’s some beautiful exercise and gets your creativity boosted! Look at the DailySketch forum here on CGTalk…it’s well worth it! Great artists, there, too!

#48

Very nice! :thumbsup: :buttrock:

#49

good GOD things are moving fast these days! not only have you successfully pushed the boundaries of realism in modeling, but you have kept it fast and feasible in production, too, without the overhead of ultra-high-poly meshes. that’s quite an achievment by anyone’s standards.

keep up the incredible work - looking forward to your future tests with great anticipation.

#50

Wow Taron, congratulations, you have revolutionized the way people are thinking about doing 3d. Seriously, props.

I was really inspired by this blending displacement maps thing and tried it in 3ds max and mental ray. I got shut down so hardcore. Mr wont allow it at all. What gives, its just blending a map right? But ah well.

Beuatiful work man.

#51

i swear it looks like a lot more than 350 polies in that viewport to me…

hhmmmm…

and it sounds an awful lot like making animated bump maps.

good creative use of the tools, but this still has long render times right?? for several diferent characters, individual displacement maps would still have to be made?? there is still lots of work involved and lots of rendering time.

I dont understand what is revolutionary

#52

Then you’ve never rendered displacement maps in messiah, my friend … it eats ZB-generated displacement maps for breakfast.

Blazingly fast. :slight_smile:

#53

great reply…:thumbsup:

#54

FlyByNight, I usually appreciate everyone’s concerns, but in your case I shall make an exception. It’s one thing to be afraid that the unspoken may hide terrible realities, but to accuse me of lying is quite a few steps too far. Not that it makes me angry, but it certainly makes me release the little more cynical side of myself.
Chances are that once you’ve experienced the performance of messiah and you find that every single fact I have listed here is not only true but also justifying all of the positive excitement, you may consider taking a day time trip as you’ve made it back down to earth! :scream:

Lucky us, you’ll get to play with it first hand, if you have or get messiah, because I’m actually giving out the full project file of the Neckling as demo scene. You will soon notice that it’s not so difficult to accept the good that is happening around us. Enough bad things are happening elsewhere! :shrug:

But, it’s truely not my place to educate you about trust, behaviour and selfawareness. You really have to discover that for yourself! Keep your keen eye on things that could deceive you, but take a chance and see what you can proof to yourself. It’s our turn to proof our skills and our understanding of what artists really need and how we can make it available to them. The benefit we have right now is, that I can act as selfish as possible, because I want the easiest and fastest tool to create what I want to create with the least if not even no handicap! If I disapprove of what we have, I do not brag about it nor would I publish anything. I held back for more than 8 months, because we had to grow to this point at which we can stand behind the tool and its powers, especially for rendering, since animation has already been a success. In many ways we have to continue growing and we sure are and will, but right now we already have the tool and the content to proof the fantastic results you can achieve with it. It’s so simple when you think about it. If anyone tries the software and came to believe I was bullshitting right now, we’d be screwed for all of ethernity. We can not effort that…so…trust me, what ever I show to you, you can use it in exactly the same way for your own art or even better, you can figure out your own ways to make use of it all.

For more facts like rendertimes, please, go 12 replies backwards and check out the previous posts again behind the links I was putting there…

#55

Hey Taron don’t worry, for some people you and Messiah Studio, are too good to be true. :smiley:

#56

:blush: …without words! :beer:

#57

Picking jaw off the floor, drive to North Atlanta for reconstructive surgery thanks to chikega, Gasp! and Jaw hits the floor again…

I was a maya meeting a year ago, and several Visual FX artist from the Xmen2 film were there.
There were explaining how they morph Mystique (bluekskin gal played by Rebecca Stamos) from Woverine to the fat guy and it wa sall high tech words but now after seeing Taron’s example, I believe thats how it was done: Displacement morphing. Objects can be changed form a 5’7’ amazon gal to a 350 pound, 6, 4 fat guy to a muscular build without having each mesh poly count be the same.

“Who knows, maybe I will even create a library for messiah:Studio users! :D”

You of course know, that you sold a few xtra seats by mentioning this. As I live and breathe, a Taron DVD is coming soon. SWEEET!!

Oh How can we get this on the front page.

#58

I’m totally blowned away!!!
I was trying to write a thesis about extreame 3d transformations using combine methods with blend shapes. What I would like to know is if this is applicable in other apps. If it is then, we have just witness the beginning of a new morphing era.
Congrats Taron, on a most ground-breaking project and with good management of resources may I add.

PS: sorry for my english today i dont know where the hell all the spelling went!

#59

First of all sorry to repost this here… its on the Maya forum.
But I wanted to keep the topic here where it started but also post my progress in the maya thread as well.

I tried the same thing in Maya with the following results… I’ve been trying at it for only 30min but its 2h00am so I think I’ll leave it for tomorrow…

     Here is my render sorry for the brief render but its late.[b]  >>>[QT](http://www.blueprint3d.com/cgtalk/displacement/displacemaya.mov)<<<:wip:[/b]

I know its not anywhere decent lol but I think its a first step in the direction that Taron is right now. My current situation is that I can only morph from one color to another. I think I can manage multiple transformations if I use layered shaders. I’ll post the printscreen of my hypershade when I get something more clean and labeled to show.
The object is a common poly sphere (no special settings). The displacements used where these two at 1024x1024 each.

    [img]http://www.blueprint3d.com/cgtalk/displacement/displacement2.jpg[/img][img]http://www.blueprint3d.com/cgtalk/displacement/displacement1.jpg[/img]
    
    The render time for this test was of about 3 seconds per frame.  my specs are dual 3.06, 2gb ram, nvidia quadro fx 1100.

Thanx a lot Taron for pointing this out!!! It’s simply amazing…

#60

The results look great. Is there anyway of doing this on a Mac?