1. #1
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    Default My first ever sculpted rock

    My first rock ever sculpted well at least that looks like a rock I'm so proud of it ! Anyway it's entirely done in sculptris although I hope I can get it into UDK but it's probably too high poly any ideas on what I can do to make it lower poly? would that option in sculptris that lowers the polycount work? or would I have to retopologize in Blender?




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    You have to be proud, it looks good.
    Some thoughts, not crits. Rocks are good friends of hard surfaces sometimes. Some massive direct cuts or anything. Just saying.
    Some rocks looks smoother though. It's up to you.

    Now, low poly version. You need to retopo this. So to be able to UV it to paint it. To paint high frequency details as bumps-displacements-normal maps.

    Rocks aren't animated, right? (in some cases and sick minds they may are LOL)
    So a quassi retopo method is acceptable. Export your work as obj, decimate it in sculptris as possible (you may use the manual tool to go under 1000 tris). Go for painting and auto UVs in sculptris. Export all these.
    Now, in a decent app like blender, use a projection technic (a snapping method where a low def cage can be subdivided and snapped around the hi def original mesh) - in blender is called shrinkwrap modifier - in zbrush, reproject all .

    You have then a multi resolution mesh, you can choose the lower subdivision and ask for baking the higher as normal or displacement map.

    This is the basic idea. I hope it was helpful. Feel free to ask for more detailed help.

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    Fantastic mate! That is definitely a reply and advice I needed thanks so much yes I knew about retopologizing exactly how you said so but I wasn't quite clear how I would do it so you've made it clear thank you!

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    No this wasn't clear, you gonna need some more detailed help, some tuts, depending on the other apps you use.

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    No worries I will follow a tutorial just to make sure! But I have done it before but not on a rock but on simple objects like planes or cubes but definitely haven't mastered baking or retopologizing but I didn't know the shrink modifier could do what you said it could. There is an addon that allows you to retopologize but I'm against using addons for now. So if i'll test the shrinkwrap modifier and see if it works to retopologize. As before I had to do it by eye which obviously didn't work too well. Just to note I have been using Blender for 4-5 years so I do know a bit but not too much as I have quite a lot to learn and always will but since I am self taught my progress is slower than others who are attending 3D courses.... lucky them.


    As an example I modelled a pillar the other day and made "grooves" or dents if you know what I mean into the pillar using the subsurf modifier by the way and then made a lower poly version of it. UV unwrapped etc and then added the normal map and it looked great but I haven't tried it on a sculpted model yet and that's where this rock comes in.
    Last edited by Dagon19; 09-20-11 at 02:18 PM.

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    Export both hi def and the decimated as possible cage to blender (same possition). Choose the cage, enable multi resolution modifier. Subdivide as much you need. Enable shrinkwrap, choose the hi def mesh there as target. That's it. Apply shrinkwrap. Go to multi res mod and click "apply base". That's all. You have a quasi retopo multi res mesh. Do UVs and bake.

    For simple rocks it's always easy to manually retopo in blender. It takes ten minutes, maybe faster and better than the quasi method. Resulting in very low poly baked meshes. For more complicated static models like statues it's more time consuming.

    BTW just noticed that you painted the rock with bumps already. Meaning auto UVs in sculptris. This on a ~90K mesh. Not very wise.
    What about painting rocky bumps and colors on a 1-2 K mesh? And just import to blender for rendering? What about a simple box modeling and painting bumps and color in blender internally?
    Many ways to skin a cat.
    Last edited by michalis; 09-20-11 at 02:51 PM.

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    I was just trying out the paint option that is available in Sculptris. I am not aware of blender having the ability to paint textures onto your model. The best way to do it would be using UV's and texturing in photoshop.

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