Sculpt it or Shade it ?

#1

Hello Everyone,

I have been using Mudbox for past couple of months as I had to create a realistic cobra for my VFX Project. You guys can check it out in the following link if you want :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaGK2sdjFBk

Now I am working on a modeling demo reel for which I will create 2 characters. I already have the base mesh for the first character but I have some questions regarding sculpting the details of his suit in mudbox. I was actually planning on learning Zbrush to do these things but my college lab is pms’ing and Zbrush doesnt work there and they also uninstalled Mudbox possibly because they will install Mudbox 2009. Either way I am stuck with working at home so I will use Mudbox.

I am attaching 2 images with this post to illustrate my problem better. Here are the things I need some pointers on

  1. I want to detail the suit area marked by red arrow with a velcro type material which you can see in the shoe image where I have highlighted. For getting that result should I just use the material as a shader in Maya with a bump map or should I lay out the stencil over the object in mudbox and do it ? My concern with doing it in mudbox is i would like to maintain control over where the stencil affects the base mesh as obviously I dont want the pattern on the edges of the bulletproof vest where the borders are elevated. Also, I want the pattern to look properly tiled which is why I was considering using shaders for it.

  2. I am using a bamboo for sculpting. Now the area marked in green on the suit, I can use the flat fallout to get that elevated border detail but is there a way to limit the stroke to a constant pressure so the border is uniform height all around ? Right now depending on my pen pressure some parts get elevated more than others.

  3. The area marked with yellow arrow. I can just do that with an alpha brush right ?

  4. Lastly, the helmet. What do you guys suggest ? Right now I have a human head as the base mesh for it. Should I just import the head into mudbox and sculpt it to get the look of the helmet then back in maya use a shader on selected faces to get the helmet color or is there a better way of doing it ? I fear due to high geometry it will be hard to select those faces…

I’m still new to mudbox so I lack the knowledge of how things work in it so sorry if my questions are redundant. I just saw the preview videos for mudbox 2009 and I just cant wait to get my hands on it. Texture painting, real time hdri…so exciting.

Well I hope someone comes around to replying to my post. Thanks a lot people.

Cheers.

#2

Mudbox currently has a limitation of about 5-6 million polys for a single mesh, so you will run into memory issues if you want to sculpt that fine detail.

Honestly though, it will just be faster and just as accurate to use Crazybump and some photos for the pixel fine detailing you get from a texture map. You will get a better and faster results in the texturing stage because you want the color map to match the normal/bump map.

When doing hard surface modelling, where you want panels of uniform thickness you have 2 options.

  1. use freeze tool to mask area of effect, then select object, and flood the object with the bulge tool using low settings. Then clean up using the flatten and pinch brush for sharp/beveled edges. Its very fast is great in the early stages of sculpting.

  2. alternative approach is to use a layer, flood the object with the bulge tool, and then flood the entire layer with 100% of the mask tool. Then invert the mask tool and paint in areas you want. This is a great way to paint fine detailing that has to maintain a uniform depth acrossed the entire mesh. Because it is a layer, going up and down levels will slow you down, also mask tool is not very flexible. Advantage is you can do really cool patterns like lace or fibre using this method.

For the helmet you will need to model a low poly version first just to get it around the head. You can go as detailed as you want…but get an accurate mesh first.

#3

Thanks MasonDoran. I’m still sort of unclear on your second point…but I will try it out.

#4

try experimenting with the Mask tool on a seperate layer. Mask tool can also use stencils and masks.

The same concept applies with using layer masks in photoshop.

#5

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