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SVU Fan posted:Dynamesh has a lot of uses, but I use it these days most for doing concept sculpts from a sphere. So start off with your polysphere, get your move brush and pull out a neck/arms/torso/legs etc. If you were to do this without dynamesh, you would have an unusable, stretched out mesh, but you can just ctrl+drag click with dynamesh on and remesh it all perfectly. Once I have the low level concepting stage down, I usually turn dynamesh off and start working up my subdivision levels like normal. Okay cool, i'll try that. Haha I don't actually mind it, are there bonuses to using other materials?
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Jul 26, 2012 01:42
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EoinCannon posted:In my opinion and experience thus far any kind of formal qualification is useless if the prospective employer doesn't find anything in your reel they like. Not to say formal study of 3d stuff is useless but it means zero if your reel isn't good enough. There's heaps of material for free on the net as well as places putting out good quality training DVDs etc. I'm in Australia and the standard of teachers in 3d courses is pretty... variable here so it could be different in other countries. In Vancouver there are a few schools (Vanarts, VFS, BCIT, Think Tank etc) that are reasonably respected in the industry and a lot of students from there end up in Jr positions fairly quickly. But nobody is getting hired off of which school they went to. If your reel isn't good then nobody gives a poo poo. That said and with the disclaimer that I teach a part time class at VFS (and am therefore one of their "industry contacts") it does seem that some of the schools are becoming more and more focused on turning into Roto/Matchmove farms that are solely focused on getting people roto,prep and matchmove jobs with the promise that you can move up later. Whilst that is true I think it is selling some students short. You aren't going to get to do FX if all you do on your reel is roto and paintouts. I went to VFS back in 2006 and since then the amount of people that have asked me about it in interviews is still sitting at 0. Honestly the most useful thing about going to a school to do 3d is immersing yourself in an environment with other like minded students. I learned a crap ton more from other students than I did from all the instructors combined.
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Jul 26, 2012 16:32
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Well, at long last, the film I've been posting about in this thread since 2009 (!) is well and truly on its festival run. It's playing next month at White Sands International Film Festival, and was a finalist in the Australian Effects & Animation Festival this week. I've cut a trailer for it here: https://vimeo.com/46444201 There are little things I'd like to change, of course, but it's good to have the film finished and out there and stuff. I know it looks a little dark, but the film is kinda supposed to be that way. Critiques? I'd post the whole movie online, but festivals are usually disapproving of that sort of thing.
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Jul 26, 2012 20:35
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Cool, I remembver seeing WIP renders of this in this thread over time. Good work getting it finished. The only small thing that jumps out at me is the sand explosions look a bit stuck on and maybe slightly uniform in particle size. Maybe the shadows under the tank and derrick are slightly dark but that could be the overall grade. Looks cool overall.
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Jul 27, 2012 00:20
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schmuckfeatures posted:Critiques? I'd post the whole movie online, but festivals are usually disapproving of that sort of thing. Yeah I wouldn't recommend posting it online for a good while, apparently at some festivals that can invalidate you for any award nominations and so forth. Wait a few months at the very least. Which is a shame, cos I kind of want to see it 
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Jul 27, 2012 00:50
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Does anyone know of any plugins that re-mesh objects in Rhino? I'm using a Rhino plugin called Gemvision Matrix for rings and jewellery forms, but when I import those things into ZBrush, sculpting on them is a total  because of what i assume are all those awkwardly spaced triangles and stuff.Or should I just bite the bullet and learn to use another modelling program for base meshes, that works better with ZBrush?
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Jul 27, 2012 02:39
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These days it's easier and easier to start and finish models in Zbrush. Zbrush 4r4 just came out yesterday, and it tweaked the hell out of their retopology tools to essentially bridge the gap between it's old weak retopo tools and 3d Coats really awesome guided retopo. Start your model with a basemesh, or zspheres or a dynameshed sphere, do all your sculpting, then use Qremesher inside of Zbrush to retopo the whole thing in a few minutes and not have to leave to a different program. Speaking of, have you guys seen these new videos for 4r4? Some of it is really ridiculous. http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?170100-ZBrush-4R4-Are-YOU-ready Auto or guided retopo: http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/lesson/topology/ Cool new insert mesh stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h72YFffJSPw SVU Fan fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Jul 27, 2012 |
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Jul 27, 2012 02:51
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SVU Fan posted:These days it's easier and easier to start and finish models in Zbrush. Zbrush 4r4 just came out yesterday, and it tweaked the hell out of their retopology tools to essentially bridge the gap between it's old weak retopo tools and 3d Coats really awesome guided retopo. Start your model with a basemesh, or zspheres or a dynameshed sphere, do all your sculpting, then use Qremesher inside of Zbrush to retopo the whole thing in a few minutes and not have to leave to a different program. I would totally be fine with starting and ending in zbrush, if I didn't need to worry about things like ring sizes, and certain measurements of the model/aspects of the model  I need a way to make a ring "blank" basically, that conforms to certain dimensions and then get it into zbrush to sculpt. I know people use modo, and I tried. But it seems so confusing  Maybe I should give it more time.
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Jul 27, 2012 03:01
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Every part of me wants to just put everything on hold and learn zbrush really well for like a month so I can just gently caress around and sculpt when I'm bored. But then I remember I need a better demo reel and to learn naiad and I realize it'll be awhile until I have time to learn non fx stuff
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Jul 27, 2012 06:34
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Trintintin posted:Every part of me wants to just put everything on hold and learn zbrush really well for like a month so I can just gently caress around and sculpt when I'm bored. But then I remember I need a better demo reel and to learn naiad and I realize it'll be awhile until I have time to learn non fx stuff You honestly do have the time. You can go a few pages back and see the crap I came up with after playing with it for a month, and not putting much time into it. It's not the most technically difficult Zbrush stuff, but I'm really proud of what I could produce within DAYS of learning how to use it, whereas I've been trying to learn poly-modelling on and off for years starting with Maya, moving to Max, and finally C4D since that's what is popular here at work. With Zbrush I was up and modelling incredibly complex shapes very very quickly and the retopo tools are simple too. EDIT: This guy is what I was last working on after using the program for about a month, I really gotta get back into it but personal issues have come up. Looking at it now I still can't believe I made that thing. quote:bring back old gbs fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Jul 27, 2012 |
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Jul 27, 2012 22:24
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For the zbrush gurus out there, what is your preferred matcap when sculpting and where can I download it?
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Jul 28, 2012 23:40
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Anything made by ZBro. His poo poo is dope. He's got some mudbox matcaps that I use all the time in ZBrush http://luckilytip.blogspot.com/
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Jul 29, 2012 03:49
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keyframe posted:For the zbrush gurus out there, what is your preferred matcap when sculpting and where can I download it? Nothing too crazy, just something that doesn't completely hide all of your possible mistakes with too much lighting/shadow info. Basic Material is never a bad choice, even though it can get boring after awhile. The Ralf Stumpf set of matcaps are my favorite for both sculpting and presentation, though. You might be able to find a few of them floating around in his ZBC posts, but he has paid sets available on Gnomon I think. What's the best way to post .rars on here? I can upload some of the best sculpt mats I've acquired over the years of scouring ZBC if it means people will stop using Red Wax and other materials that form bad habits.
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Jul 29, 2012 03:57
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SVU Fan posted:The Ralf Stumpf set of matcaps are my favorite for both sculpting and presentation, though. You might be able to find a few of them floating around in his ZBC posts, but he has paid sets available on Gnomon I think. Highly recommend his matcaps. Only ones I use.
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Jul 29, 2012 03:59
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SVU Fan posted:Nothing too crazy, just something that doesn't completely hide all of your possible mistakes with too much lighting/shadow info. Basic Material is never a bad choice, even though it can get boring after awhile. The Ralf Stumpf set of matcaps are my favorite for both sculpting and presentation, though. You might be able to find a few of them floating around in his ZBC posts, but he has paid sets available on Gnomon I think. Yes please this! At the very least PM me some good ones, I didn't know they could be bad for technique. 
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Jul 29, 2012 06:03
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Well I mostly just mean that a few matcaps like Red Wax have really high cavity detection which might look cool in a cheap way, but look completely different than pretty much any other material or shader, so your forms are going to look weird if you exclusively sculpt in the red wax matcap then try to switch to any normal material in Zbrush or other packages. Either way, I seem to switch materials a LOT during the process of one sculpt just to see my forms in different lighting, or with different spec etc just to see if everything is working. I don't have PMs but if anybody knows a good place I could put up a .rar that I can link here, I'll put a few of my favorites up here for ya.
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Jul 29, 2012 06:17
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I find the white matcaps or the standard materials are good for sculpting. The others are kinda weird. I also wish they'd revamp their materials menu too. Having to overwrite materials is kind of silly, as is coping the double/tri/quad shaders then having to paste in the shader slots, rather than just being to activate/deactivate the shader slots.
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Jul 29, 2012 06:35
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If it's not frowned upon, I collected a lot of matcaps from Zbrushcentral and the Zbrush forums and could post a .zip to my public dropbox. Not sure if it violates any rules though to re-package matcaps- everything was freely available when I grabbed it.
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Jul 29, 2012 08:29
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SVU Fan posted:These days it's easier and easier to start and finish models in Zbrush. Zbrush 4r4 just came out yesterday, and it tweaked the hell out of their retopology tools to essentially bridge the gap between it's old weak retopo tools and 3d Coats really awesome guided retopo. How is 3D Coat compared to Topogun? I'm looking for a retopology package and tried out Topogun 2 last night. When I imported a 700k reference mesh the program chugs just from moving in the viewport.
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Jul 29, 2012 23:06
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Hahahah, the new default brush set in ZB4R4 is kind of ridiculous. Bricks is kind of nice, but I cant really see getting a ton of use out of 'dragon bones' or 'spaceship' apart from demonstrations.
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Jul 31, 2012 02:02
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If you hit M while you have one of those selected you get a bunch of crazy insert brushes. It might be pretty handy but for myself I feel like im cheating myself if I use some part of a helicopter that I haven't made.
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Aug 2, 2012 00:18
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schmuckfeatures posted:Well, at long last, the film I've been posting about in this thread since 2009 (!) is well and truly on its festival run. It's playing next month at White Sands International Film Festival, and was a finalist in the Australian Effects & Animation Festival this week. I've cut a trailer for it here: That looks interesting, but it's not a trailer. God it's barely a teaser. I wanna see it! Only critique I have is the flatness of the sand blasts.
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Aug 2, 2012 04:51
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I thought this was pretty funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5l-nnR4Bx0
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Aug 3, 2012 03:36
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^^^That's some great advertising right there. Funny enough to make me actually google their site and see what they're about. The site is pretty great too, they've got a lot of creative stuff going on. I haven't posted work here in forever, but here goes! This is my take on the Yeti legend. I love having a solid workflow these days that doesn't include having to jump around to 2 or 3 or 4 different packages to get stuff done. This is 100% Zbrush, except compositing render passes and some post in Photoshop. There's a lot in my render that needs to be fixed, but oh well. 
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Aug 5, 2012 00:49
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Fantastic work. For modeling, it is really hard to beat zbrush. Especially the newest version. How did you make the feathers / fur? Fibremesh, (with billboars) I assume.
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Aug 5, 2012 10:18
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Anyone going to Siggraph this week?
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Aug 6, 2012 09:05
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EoinCannon posted:Good work getting it finished. The only small thing that jumps out at me is the sand explosions look a bit stuck on and maybe slightly uniform in particle size. BonoMan posted:That looks interesting, but it's not a trailer. God it's barely a teaser. I wanna see it! Thanks! And you're both absolutely right... in retrospect I might have gotten more mileage out of making particle-based debris hits or some other solution, rather than just going for compositing pre-keyed elements. In other news, I recently learned about these wonderful things called "normal maps". I have no idea how I'd never found out about them before. 
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Aug 6, 2012 14:48
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sigma 6 posted:Fantastic work. For modeling, it is really hard to beat zbrush. Especially the newest version. Thanks man! Zbrush still has a few things it could improve I think, but the speed that they are updating this thing (for free no less) and revolutionizing the way things are handled is pretty amazing to me. The hair is not using fibremesh at all actually. I haven't had a chance to mess with that yet. I'm sure it can look great, but I was given some really wise advice by somebody I admire, and it goes "just loving sculpt it." The hair is all sculpted in Zbrush, then some painting in photoshop to fray the ends/make things fit in with the environment more/show finer hairs. SVU Fan fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Aug 6, 2012 |
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Aug 6, 2012 19:23
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SVU Fan posted:^^^That's some great advertising right there. Funny enough to make me actually google their site and see what they're about. The site is pretty great too, they've got a lot of creative stuff going on. I cannot believe you sculpted that hair. That is amazing and I am in awe! Love the horns too.
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Aug 6, 2012 23:05
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Another year, another Siggraph.. free pass, free party tickets... gently caress siggraph, this movie isn't going to finish itself... Besides I'll be teased with poo poo that doesn't ever work in production. 
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Aug 7, 2012 02:11
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Geared Hub posted:Another year, another Siggraph.. free pass, free party tickets... Hahahah - somebody sounds a little bitter. I just got done with the Autodesk education meeting. Ran into a guy from R&H and he said that VFX studios haven't used UVs in a while and they don't use envelope weighting anymore either. I said: Well, I guess most schools are teaching methods that are 5-10 years old then. He said: Yeah, most good stuff at studios is proprietary anyways. Voodoo, Ice etc.etc. (mental note: Learn PTEX!) Just kind of funny. I have been going off and on to SIGGRAPH since 2001 and although it is still like "Toys R Us" for 3d nerds, I completely understand what you mean. I have an overdue contract and just finished the SA game dev competition. The last thing I should be doing is hobnobbing with industry folks and drooling over new software / hardware. Having said that, it is great for networking and well . . . drooling over cutting edge stuff. I recommend everyone here go at least once. It is overall pretty inspirational. SVU Fan: That is nuts that you sculpted every bit of that. Do you have any WIP of that? Or any particular workflow you followed? That seems tedious as hell, especially if you didn't use fibremesh at all. Alan Smithee: PM me. I will be there again on Wednesday.
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Aug 7, 2012 08:15
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Hey guys, new to this thread, here's something I'm working on. I've realised the track is off, and I'll amend that in a future version.
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Aug 7, 2012 12:42
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sigma 6 posted:(mental note: Learn PTEX!) How many non-proprietary packages support PTEX?
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Aug 7, 2012 19:31
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No Siggy tickets for me this year. No big party either Listerine posted:How many non-proprietary packages support PTEX? 3delight, Vray, MR, Renderman, Houdini+Mantra (via:Max/Maya/Blender), Mudbox, Mari, 3d-coat, etc.
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Aug 7, 2012 19:41
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tuna posted:3delight, Vray, MR, Renderman, Houdini+Mantra (via:Max/Maya/Blender), Mudbox, Mari, 3d-coat, etc. MR support inside Maya, Max, and Softimage doesn't work for ptex yet though, right?
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Aug 7, 2012 20:14
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Listerine posted:MR support inside Maya, Max, and Softimage doesn't work for ptex yet though, right? It is supported in Maya, but MR in max/xsi doesn't.
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Aug 7, 2012 20:30
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Forgive me if this is the wrong thread but I'm trying to learn the basics of curves in Maya and am running across an issue. I have two curves that I want to attach as one. I flipped one on the Z axis so that everything is symmetrical.  I select both curves, then Edit Curves->Attach Curves, setting it to Blend and not Keep Originals. The result appears to be one curve, but when I attempt to move this curve I get this:  Any insight as to what I'm doing wrong and possibly a link to a good resource on learning NURBS modeling/working with curves in Maya? All the information I'm finding currently doesn't give me any insight into symmetrical modeling, which is fairly important for what I need to do.
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Aug 8, 2012 03:47
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Why even bother creating a symmetrical curve? I mean, it might be good to learn the solution to that problem just in case, but IMO it's easier to just have the half curve create half of the model, then do all your poly work and then mirror your geometry at the very end and weld that or create a proxy or whatever Maya calls it.
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Aug 8, 2012 11:18
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Maybe he wants to loft or extrude it or whatever along a path? Try deleting history before attaching them.
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Aug 8, 2012 15:34
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Geared Hub posted:
Or stuff that never comes out. I talked to a guy from Nvidia last year who was demoing a cool GPU accelerated particle plugin for Maya. Haven't seen anything about it since. Not that I have looked for it or anything Best thing about Siggraph is going to the emergent tech area and seeing ridiculous Japanese prototype hologram displays that might be a product 30 years from now.
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Aug 8, 2012 21:40
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