Most efficient way to use bendy limbs in built in character rig

[kanicki]

OK… All within c4d? Or some simpler or better (mac) tool for the job? I don’t have it personally, but I can get access to a machine with zbrush if that’s helpful. This is my first time doing ANYTHING relating to polygonal modeling, 3d character design, etc, so it’s the learning curve that’s draining the clock. The simpler the better.

I don’t have low poly version of separate hair / brows, but I suppose I could create them with simplified shrink wrap of wider mesh. Should I be doing that, combining face / hair / nose into single mesh, and then doing single normal / displacement? Each separately mapped / displaced and then separately bound?

Also, does affect normal / displacement map process affect ability to do facial deformations? I probably don’t have time to work out anything with the mouth, but I was thinking of simple pose morph to grow/shrink Pinocchio nose.

[everfresh]

OK… All within c4d?

you can do all that within c4d…

I don’t have low poly version of separate hair / brows, but I suppose I could create them with simplified shrink wrap of wider mesh. Should I be doing that, combining face / hair / nose into single mesh, and then doing single normal / displacement? Each separately mapped / displaced and then separately bound?

you can do it either way, but probably easier to keep those separate.

Also, does affect normal / displacement map process affect ability to do facial deformations? I probably don’t have time to work out anything with the mouth, but I was thinking of simple pose morph to grow/shrink Pinocchio nose.

no, it doesn’t affect the ability to do deformations.

[kanicki]

OK, thx. Wrapping up a few other fixes right now, and will be tackling later today.

I was thinking of simple poly seection for face paint because it’s simple and easy. Areas like lips that need different color follow poly flow anyway.

If I understand correctly… do I poly paint only the low poly version since that’s the one actually being used, and then the high poly is used only to generate the displacement and normal map?

[everfresh]

correct.

[kanicki]

I’ve spent half a day now following every tut I could find multiple times. Each seems to be making assumptions that are never explained.

I have:

1. Low poly face mesh: 3 Poly groups assigned different color textures. No UV map. (Shown on Left)

2. High poly face mesh: Exactly 3x sub resolution of low poly., but with wrinkles (both positive and negative). No UV map. (Shown on right)

So what’s the fastest way forward?

1. Do bake texture tag? If so, do I need to create UV map first? Adding UVW tag doesn’t seem to make any difference. Normal then applied to main (non poy selection) texture? Applied to all 3 poly selection textures (eye mask area, lips, skin)?

2. Do sculpt tag with Bake Sculpt Objects command? Looks fine, but doesn’t work upon baking.

[everfresh]

did you sculpt the high res version based on the low res version? if so, do you still have that file with the sculpt tag on it? because the proper way to do it would be to just uv unwrap you low res mesh, then bake from sculpt.

if you don’t have that file any more or if you created the high res version in another way then there’s still methods to get the high res details onto the low res, but i’m no expert when it comes to workflows like that… did it once and it worked for normals, but i couldn’t get a displacement map out of it… i cheated it by baking an AO map, which i then altered a little and used as displacement.

btw, your mesh does seem to have proper UVs as it seems from your baking screenshot.

[kanicki]

Not exactly,. Original (not shown) is super high poly imported object with horrible topology.

Low poly (Left) is retopo that was then shrink wrapped to super high poly object.

High poly (Right) is that same Low Poly (Left) mesh with 3x sub applied, and then RE-shrink wrapped around original super high poly object to get the wrinkles.

Topo is very clean on wrap, though. so there shouldn’t be any weird criss-crossing of vertexes in high vs low poly, and it’s a straight-up 3x difference between them.

Yeah, everything LOOKS fine following this Sculpting tag tut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wctcAZijtk

But somehow, even though the preview always looks fine, the TIF file it then generates when I hit “Bake” is pure black. I’ve gone through this particular process half a dozen or more times now, and not seeing anything different that I’m doing. I’ve checked over and over that my settings match those in tut. And yeah… preview looks fine.

[kanicki]

Seemed to be an issue with the TIF. Switching to PNG now gives a non-black normal map, though the results are clearly awful. Before I can even apply the normal map to the low poly on L, here is the auto-generated copy of the high poly on R that automatically has the normal map applied to it:

And then the same, but with the normal channel disabled:

There appear to be multiple issues. I jsut used default layout created by UVW tag, so obviously seam placement is not ideal, but I don’t get why it’s breaking like that even in the auto-generated copy of high res head, so doesn’t appear to have anything to do with high vs low res.

Additionally, the normal application is terrible… though again, it’s equally terrible applied to the high poly as the low, so issue doesn’t seem to have anything to do with mismatch of any kind between them.

PNG is 16 bit 4k.

Change to 8k, and I get equally horrible, but completely different results (and different seam placement.

Do I need to do something first where I define UV seams, and somehow get uv map resolution to match that of normal map, or something like that?

[everfresh]

yeah you need proper uvs here. hide the seams at the back of the head, with normal maps seams always are quite visible. look at how many UV islands you have, resulting in dozens of visible seams. you can unwrap the whole head with just one seam at the back of the head…

place the seam like that: https://www.google.com/search?q=head+uv+seams&rlz=1C5CHFA_enDE726DE726&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMv_rPp6bkAhUMbFAKHQItBNcQ_AUIESgB&biw=1120&bih=559#imgrc=WD3c1a32zx_nAM:

[kanicki]

I only vaguely remember process from a few weeks back. I’ll have to look it up again. No separate island for nose since all it’s side geo would then be super condensed in front view since it’s centered?

[kanicki]

OK, I managed to unwrap the low poly one with just the seam you indicated.

Trying to think through problems ahead:

Now that I have properly UV unwrapped low poly head, should I ditch existing high poly head and instead recreate it by taking newly unwrapped low poly one, and redoing sub / shrink wrap process so that the resulting new high poly head then inherits the existing UV map from the low one? Just thinking it might be helpful to have identical maps (to the extent possible).

If so… or not… just want to double check before going back through multiple past versions of project to do that that it wouldn’t be useful to maybe split off nose to separate island since all it’s side geo is on top of itself in front view.

[everfresh]

perfect… i wouldn’t stress about the nose, since it’s not gonna need much detail in terms of wrinkles and whatnot…

and yes, probably a good idea to have identical uvs on both.

[kanicki]

OK. I was mainly thinking with nose that if the normal map ends up conforming to the uv map contours that the resolution might be so low on normal map that nose fails to benefit from smoother high poly count.

Speaking of which… it seems to me that the phong tag is no longer useful when using normal map because the normals seem to be taking over similar duties… but the high poly isn’t high enough to be smooth without a phong tag, so it ends up looking much chunkier than the low poly with phong.

Is there a way to apply the normal map and still get phong smoothing?

[everfresh]

can you show a screenshot of the issue?

[kanicki]

Will do, but need to work out another issue right now where all normal maps coming out gray.

EDIT: Fixed. The process of going back and reshrinking the high poly one was creating scaling issues with the uv map where it scaled itself off the canvas. Fixing now…

[kanicki]

Images show low poly model with normal from high poly applied. Looks decent in most areas, but…

Remaining issue seems to come down to normal map following UV map which has insufficient resolution (despite 4k map) for ears and especially nose. Those areas clearly pixelated in vp (right image), and while better in render (left image), the nose loses all definition and becomes flat and low poly.

Seems like what I need to do to fix is break out ears and nose (room left on canvas) within UV map, and expand.

I’ve followed several tuts now on UV unwrap, but none mentions how to break off a section into it’s own island. If I select, for instance, all nose polys, is there a specific command to do this? Assuming I would then need to put seam along bottom to flatten nose.

[everfresh]

what i usually do is i select a point at the middle of the nose and scale that up with the magnet function activated (like a soft selection for UVs)… that way you can pump up the UV poly size for areas that need more detail. also 4k might not be enough, rather go 8k.

[kanicki]

Will look into. Just seemed that all the blank space at bottom was being wasted… though I have no firsthand knowledge of whether the additional seams might cause other issues.

[kanicki]

Trying a number of techniques with mixed success. One thing I keep seeing that I can’t find a reference for in tuts are these areas where the uvs are broken or disconnected from each other. (Bottom two highlighted, and some highlighted near top that don’t line up with others.) Do these indicate that the mesh isn’t properly formed? Optimizing doesn’t seem to fix, and I’m not seeing when I go back to mesh that it’s broken.

… or like this that seem completely disconnected, yet when I go back to mesh seem fine… not doubled somehow or a hidden poly.

[everfresh]

no, those don’t indicate errors in the mesh, it’s just uv polygons that you probably accidently moved… in uv plygon mode, if you move a polygon, it isn’t connected to the rest like it would be in regular poly model mode. i polygon points mode though everything is connected. so it really can just happen very easily that you accidentally move polygons in UV mode… happens to me all the time unfortunetaly…