Separating multiple materials on sculpted meshes?

#1

Something I don’t understand with all these super-detailed sculpts, for rendering they would have to be separated into countless materials (metals, glass, plastic, rubber etc.). How on earth is this done in any workable way? Do you really have to go in and paint a mask for every material or is there some way to lay down at least a general guide during sculpting?

I am looking for workflows or answers in a general way and also software specific (Mudbox, ZBrush, 3D-Coat, Mari etc.)

I am getting into the scultping game pretty late so please excuse me if this is a daft questions, it’s just that with these powerful sculpting tools the texturing phase would seem excruciating to me if one doesn’t use a single shader for the whole object.

Thanks!

#2

those super highly detail sculpt is modeled from polygons…
only the surface detail is sculpted… :smiley:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_1fXv2yds-Xs/TDbquXsEkLI/AAAAAAAAA8k/cBqkqinaGxE/s1600/marine_xsi.jpg

if those sculpts are made from one mesh they have to be redone with clean topology…
to animate them and render them with displacements…

#3

So you are saying the basemesh would already be more or less split up (or have mat id’s assigned) according to shader distribution and then only the fine detail would be painted in?

If the base is sculpted from polygons that sounds manageable. What I was wondering about are these sculpts where the artist starts from a sphere or similar and it ends up as a beautiful and horrible polygon soup. So this kind of sculpt would be broken up into materials during retopo, and then the parts would have masks painted?

Talking about animation and displacement, I get the feeling that sculpting these awesome figures is just the tip of the iceberg compared to getting them ready for serious production afterwards.

#4

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