week13

Game ready Mesh -> Unity

Import multiple objs with one click:
ZPlugin-> MultiAppend->select all at once &open

Retopo

Fist step is to retopologize all the High Res details into the simplest version you possibly can... You can achieve that in couple different ways....

http://www.topogun.com/

a retopologize program

-or-

https://draster.com/nex-1.5/

a plugin in Maya for retopo

-or-

http://artcenterzbrush-advclassnotes.blogspot.com/2016/02/week6_28.html

http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/topology/zsphere-topology/appended-zspheres/

in ZBrush you can retopo with ZSphere topology...

UV

https://www.uvlayout.com/
for if UVMaster is not doing what you want

UV before sending to XNormal...

XN

http://www.xnormal.net/

to generate maps 

High Defenition Mesh -> Add Meshes..         you'd export the highest res Subdiv of every Subtool . ( ZBrush exports objs with polypaint). And bring it in here.

Low Defenition-> Add Mesh.... ( the one you retopologysed)

Baking Options...

NORMAL_

Click on the ...  to generate the Normal map. choose Tangent to create the Tangent Normal Map.

the settings for better results:

AO_



(where the light doesn't get)...as Shadows are too consistent => so AO works together with shadows

settings for better results:

HIGH POLYGON VERTEX COLORS_

Do this Map by itself. Separately from any other map. Because to make this one, go to the High definition Mesh and uncheck the "ignore vertex color".

Unity

https://unity3d.com/

Scene- where you move around and edit

Game window- what you will see in the game ( through the camera).

Assets - all meshes and maps

Right Click-> Create folder for model, for texture map, for normal map,....

In Models folder, import a new asset, select the LowPoly mesh
Now you can click on it and drag into the Scene.

To navigate:

ALT + right click - zoom

         + middle  - move

         + left - rotate

Material

Apply Maps to the Material

Maps-> click on the folder you've made,  Import Asset...\

Then select the Map you've imported, in the right menu choose the kind of the map you have just added.  Texture type->......
add all maps...

then go to the Material, select it and in the material menu on the right click on each kind of the map and choose from the quick menu

Camera

You can rotate and change Light, / Camera,/ etc

to operate camera:

Q- move
E - rotate
R - scale

Asset Store - the backplates in Camera Settings-> Skybox

focal length- zbrush comparison

http://sortadone.blogspot.com/p/zbrush-focal-angle-tutorial.html

An interesting comparison of real camera focal length and Zbrush viewport

week 12- 2

Rendering p 2

-ZBrush
-Photoshop

-ZBrush- 

Turn floor on.

1- Set up main Light

2- Look at your shadows.

Sharp? you want to blur it a bit?
Control the blur through Rays and Angles
Kill the darkness a bit.

Export Shadows as its own pass. ( just like everything else)

3- Different lights ( save them separately)

4- AO, SSS, Depth, etc

Open menu     - Render Passes- 

hit on each of the tabs to save.

After you saved Shadows, you can tern them off and rerender the Shaded pass without any shadows. Render AO, save
Render SSS.
Change lights- different sides(2 sides), rimm light,....

Assign a reflection material to render a Reflection pass. ( a lot of people assign black material and play with spec, then save it from the Shader pass)




Store views for in case you mess it up.

 Movie-> Timeline-> Make a dot
this way you snap a camera to one spot. ( and make as many of those as you want)

you can also save a Custom view in ZAppLink

- Photoshop-

Load all passes as Layers, manually load the grey scale passes such as AO, Shadows, SSS, Mask.

You can add Color to certain layers. Like to Shadows, Red->to SSS,...
You can assign different color to Shadows. Put them on Screen and play with Layers

*Purple to AO
Use with masking

Depth of field- for Blur

Document Size- the Size of the render, Make the object fill the Doc, the quality of render is regulated by the SPix in top right corner under BPR button. This is the only time you should use the document zoom buttons, cause as you resize the Doc to make it bigger, make sure to zoom out.

Rendering passes on Zbrush: RAPHAEL GRASSETI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxtBwcRXawE

week 12

Rendering

-Keyshot

When you send to Keyshot, make sure all subtools have different names. Otherwise it might not seee it.
Render-> External render->  KeyShot

Group by Material - doesnt group as subtools, but as pieces with different materials. (All subtools of one material will be all grouped together as one in Keyshot.

Shift +P - Pause render in Keyshot

then when you click on Render (BPR// Shift+R) , it will send the render job to Keyshot.

Whatever number of polygons you have in ZBrush, it doubles it in Keyshot. For fibers- it quadruples it ( converts to triangles-doubles the number + in BPR menu in render settings it says Subdiv at 2- double the number by 2 again, sides- adds on again...etc) dynamic- applies the dynamic to actual mesh and sends over.
This may cause problems...if your computer or Keyshot cant handle stuff....

When you send stuff to keyshot, open the Library menu and Project menu
Library- where you go, choose and apply thing to your scene
Project- where you edit all the stuff from Library that you have applied to model

If you dont want something to be sent, turn  the eyeball off of that subtool.You can go back and forth from ZBrush to Keyshot.
Better dont put the CPU usage to 100% unless you are ready to like go to sleep and not use any other programs.

Axelata Paint- the actual car paint, that would be exactly to real life.

Its all a click and drag system- you can apply it to individual subtools in the viewport or to the whole project all at once by dragging the material to the Project name ZBrush  in the Scene menu of the project.

Every time you move within Keyshot, it rerenders it real time.

Material

Right click on the subtool, copy material from one subtool, paste into new one. If you want to come back to the original ZBrush material, make a new Scene in Keyshot and resend the file from ZBrush.

When you apply a material and want to save the polypaint, hold ALT when applying the Keyshot material. (though it doestn work with materials like Glass, Liquid...and transparent materials alike that)


Roghness- more like blur

Refraction index- the tightness of spec.

The two materials below are the same except the material on the left has a refraction index of 2.0. The material on the right has a refraction index of 1.2. The higher refraction index distorts light more and makes the material itself more reflective than the lower refraction index on the right.

https://www.keyshot.com/keyshot3/manual/material_types/refraction_index_parameter.html

https://www.keyshot.com/keyshot3/manual/material_types/advanced.html

material settings in KeyShot

You can upload textures. and move, position the Label on the material. You can make it a different material ( in KeyShot 6).
Save the img as PNG

Lighting

Click and drag.
Environments can be moved/ rotated/ adjust brightness etc. On the right- Project-Environment. It updates the lighting.
You can pick a different color or Backdrop as a bg instead of the lighting environment.  A different Environment can be used as a back plate as well- drag the Environment to the Backdrop tab.

You can use actual geometry as Lighting. -> Edit-> Add Geometry....
Or you can create the mesh in ZBrush, resend to Keyshot. Now you can use that as lighting by assigning a Light Material to it.  You can move the piece inside Keyshot- right click, move part.
To move everything- move all.
Material-> Light   *Emissive light material for soft adjustments. Area Light- to really use it As Light.

You can now edit it *color, intencity, visibility to camera, shadows,...


For Final Render - > Render settings
Passes * Clown Pass, Geo Pass, render region...etc


Edit HDRIs
you can regulate brightness, contrast,.....
add more lights by adding Pins

Cameras

you can lock it
Depth of field
....
etc

Passes

Normal pass, clown, depth and reflection passes.

-----
How to make letters
-
- Make a square b&w img,
load the Texture
- apply it on to a plane, load texture as a texture map. Then mask by intensity and Extract
Or
- make it an Alpha, ->Alpha pallette -> Make 3d
- draw it right on mesh with Alpha

----


how some people do it:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc-user-gallery.php?uid=377628&p=2

week11

Keying and 3d Printing

the bottom part that rests on the bed is called Raft. the little triangles are meant for easier process of lifting it off from the bed.

*sometimes putting a model on a printing bed is better at an angle rather than flat. Like a Form Labs printer.

http://makezine.com

https://ultimaker.com

-good FDM printer with an open source CURA software

Key

Female needs to be a little bigger than the male. By using inflate on deformation palette you can scale it precisely. 

Turn your mesh into a dynamesh. Choose the resolution that would maintain your sculpt and not weld. 

How is one piece would connect to another? Like an arm to a body? If you are doing articulation points, you can not just slice it. You can just go for the slicing if you don't need it to move, but you do that just for the safe of printing.

Make sure its water tight and there are no holes after you redynamesh. 

Use a Cube from the Train IMM as a key. Draw it out perfectly straight, holding the Shift key when drawing out the Transpose line before inserting the Cube.

Put the Cube to sit partially inside the body. Mask off everything expt for the face sticking out, have the Transpose sticking out from the center of that face-> use Scale to scale down the top plane. Add a sphere, so half of it sticks out of the scaled down small top point. ( Instead of inserting a sphere, you can use ZModeler brush and create half a sphere right out of the cube and it will be all one mesh and one group right away. Make sure the sphere is created dead center->insert Multiple Edges, set to 1)  It will help create tension so it won't fall out.

Then Redynamesh the Male part with the part its supposed to go with.

To create the Female part:

Copy the Male piece, place it under the subtool of the Body ( in case when you want to stick the Head into the Torso)

Inflate this Copy a little bit:cDeformation-> Inflate *3 

Turn on transparency to see how it will stick together and how much of a gap there is. Keep in mind the size of your print: 

Have the Torso and the Female Part visible. ( Name it!). Make the Female part a Subtractive boolean. 

 

Merge-> Merge Down. The merged part will appear white.  Then Redynamesh.

If it doesnt work-> Have only the Female Part visible-> go to Polygroups-> PG as a Dynamesh Sub and redynamesh. 

Once you done, check how pieces fit together with Transparency on. If you have geometry overlaping, like in holes that dynamesh redynameshed in a way you don't want to-> Duplicate the Head, move it below the Torso, turn on the boolean on the head and merge down-> it will use the Head to cut the shape you need in the torso. 

Knowing that you will keep using the Key through ought the Sculpt, go to the Key, pg it into one polygroup, right there make the female version by duplicating it and then inflating the top, regroup the Female. So now you have the Male PG and Female PG.  Make it an Insert Brush.

Lollipop Joint

Every Primitive has an initialize state. Pick the Cylinder, make it flat. On one side make a little bevel, crease PG. 

on the other side make an insert edge-> QMesh a small inner circle into a tube that sticks out. 

Make the Lollipop with the Cut

Turn into Dynamesh.

When you draw out an Insert Brush, you can make it a Negative by drawing out the IM and hold Alt. 

To make it sitting dead center-> duplicate the male part then go click Mesh to Brush. Make the squre the shape you need, Make the Booleen operation by merging down.

Make the Female part by inflating the original cylinder without the cut.

The piece you want to keep has to be a dynamesh, the piece you will cut with does not have to be Dynamesh. 

Now the Male will snap inside. Works well with MDF printer. With Object printers- you nee to look into materials.

Shoulder joint

A Sphere with a pin. A sphere goes to the hand. 

A Sphere with a lollipop inside and a pin going through both. 

You need to have a nice rounded portion for full articulation. 

* Get a Hand, insert a cylinder for the shoulder to get a nice clean line for the shoulder cut to be nice and rounded. Push in all the stuff of the cylinder inside the arm, the part that sticks out of the shoulder in the portion you don't need. The part you need is the edge, where the shoulder touches the body. Insert then the shoulder joint ( the pin sticks out towards the front, holds all parts together) . The pin will be used as a hole cutter, the Sphere- connects to the arm, the inner lollipop part- to the body. 

Duplicate the Joint.

Merge the sphere w Hole and the Arm, then use the inner lollipop cylinder as a cut out. Now you want to use the pin as a negative and cut the shape out of the arm.

Now going to the body. Dynamesh the body and use all this joint as a negative. To clean up in case all these little parts are separate and case some ugly stuff happening - make the sphere into a closed sphere to clean up.

App Crunch

Cut at where the apps are, Make the lower part of the torso a bit smaller, so the top can bend a bit. The pin goes in profile through the side. 

ZProject Brush

If you don't want to ruin your nice geometry, but want to cut out the female part. Posion the female part the way you want and have it as a separate subtool. The projection brush will project the mesh into whats underneath it. Select only the part you want to push in

in the last minutes of the video:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc-user-gallery.php?uid=66757

To print Hollow:

·       * Use Dynamesh.

·        * On dynamesh palette, press create shell.

·         *You can add thickness on the thickness slider.

Decimation Master

You can not send 10mil to print. 

-> Decimation Master.

Preprosess current - for ZBrush to look at the mesh and calculate. Once its done, hit Decimation Master. 

There will be no different visually. Well,shouldn't be.

Before you PreProcess:

Masking- will look at masked area and give it more triangles.

% of decimation - the amount of polygons that will go through. Decimater allows to go up and down during the session. The lower you can go without loosing the quality, the better. 

Freeze Borders- if you have some cuts, that you want to appear as welded. It will look like it is connected

Keep UVs - if you have UVs, it will keep it. Like what they do for gaming.

Use and Keep Polypaint - looks at where there is polypaint on model and will try keep as many triangles at those spots. (especially good if you will print with paint)

*You can use it for render and avoid all UVs/ Maps stuff. You can cut the dog in pieces, decimate the pieces with Keep Borders on. And you can Render it in like Renderman.

week10

Maps making

Texture Map ( aka Diffuse)-  holds color information

Displacement Map- holds sculptural details in a grayscale map. - Actually applies the sculpt to mesh. White- pushes out, pure white is the farthest, black pushes in. 50%grey- nothing.

Vector Displacement- am RGB map, that hosts sculpt information. The red is nothing. It looks at what way the things are shifting to. Holds millions of colors- a lot more info hosted than regular displacement. Vector Disp also holds undercuts, unlike regular Vector Disp.

-Tangent VD-  just USE THIS

-World VD-

Normal Map- hosts sculpt, uses RGB as well, but relies more on the lighting. -Does not change form, only fakes to make sculpt  appear as smth close to what you need. It wont change the silhouette. Normal map is good to host  like small details- pores, cracks etc. Use both maps, Normal And Displacement- to save time.

the types of normal maps:

-Tangent (can be done in zbrush) - most popular- just use THIS ONE

-World (can be done in zbrush)- environments-

-Object - environments-

In Games they use

- Texture map

- Normal Map

- Ambient occlusion (AO)

- Cavity Map

- Spec Map (Can be done out of Texture Map/ Cavity Map and painted by hand)

//Lavel of Detail (LoD) - when the game renders the environments beforehand and gives more detail to things, close to player and less to things farther in distance. Then as you move within a game, it swaps the resolution of things.

In Films

- all the above+
- Shadow Map

- SSS Map

etc.....

turn Adaptive on

Smooth on

Morph Target

- 1 per subtool

- stores only at one subdiv level

You can store the original before you devide. Before you make any maps and changes. This way you can always bring it back.
Make sure when you generate the maps, you STORE the morph target.
If you are at low level-> Store Morph target, Import the original.

Make the maps from the state, everybody has in the pipeline. To do that, after you have sculpted all the details, go to the lowest level, switch to the original that you have stored beforehand, generate maps from The Original by switching to it.

Morph target remembers the state.

*Rendering outside*

In Render settings in Maya-> Window-> Hypershade-> Add tessellation.

You need to add "geometry" to the render, that displacement map gives you for the result to match what you see in ZBrush.



week9

Surface noise

in Tool Pallette-> Surface -> Noise Pallette


Scale Noise, that's using the grapth.

It gives you a preview until you apply it to Mesh. Before you applied the noise, you can Edit it at any time.

a Preview is different than what you will see in Render. Render to see how it really applies.
1// Basic Noise


You can use masking with Surface, wherever you don't want to see the noise.  You can also apply a different kind of mode on the same noise for the masked area.
Sterngth of the Mask-  how much does it affect the Masked area
Magnify by Mask - for a different size in the Masked area.


CTRL+H - to hide mask

PGs are IMPORTANT- helps you to keep it clean nice and fast.


You can add Color to area with noise and without noise.
Color Blend to 0 or pick the white color in the grapth to turn the coloring effect off


2// NoisePlug


a separate plugin.

You can combine the 2 Noises and tell it how to Mix it.
Mix Basic Noise to 0 - to only have the Noise from Plugin


Mixing Modes:


Mix
Multiplier
Difference
Minimum- going to peaks
Maximum - only going to cavities

NoisePlug- Edit- to edit the noiseplug noise itself.



the sliders in the Bottom-= Angle, Axis and Scale are usable ONLY for the NoisePlug.






* Use Them Separate
* Use them with Masking


3// Making your own noise

Bring in the tillable img, alpha.
You can not use all 3 at the same time. Use only 2 types of Noise together. * The Alpha img + Basic Noise or Alpha img + Noise Plug or Basic Noise + Noise Plug

Alpha on/off-  import the Alpha
tweak scale if you don't see the img, tweak Strength.




DONT use Jpegs. PSD are better as they don't have as much noise with them as JPEGS do. USE them B&W.




using    -   3D ( the mesh itself) //    UVs ( if you previousely created it)






* When you tweak the Noise and want to rerender, tweak the model a bit so the render doesn't apply the old shadows. If you see mess, that means you still have the old shadows applied.

Array Mesh

fake repeates the mesh. If you shange the original Mesh, the change happens to all of the repeated once.
Turn on Array Mesh
Repeat steps-  how many you want


Rotate* - 360 for a circle. Move the yellow circle  ( Transpose on-show transpose)


Append New- takes everything from the previous one and duplicates it. You can rotate and position it differently.
Append New again- takes previous 2  duplicates them...etc

NanoMesh

Create Insert MeshBrush-> Create NanoMesh

NanoMesh in toolbox for adjustments




To convert All to Mesh-> Geometry -> convert BPR to Geo
To convert one by one-> Nanomesh-> Inventory-> One to Mesh

UVs

Tool-> UV Map


UV Regions
UV Islands


NEVER
CROSS REGIONS. even with a point, do not lay Regions on top of each other (unless its on purpose.......some weird purpose)

You Make the UVs from THE LOWEST /as low as possible mesh. The mesh you would put then in the engins...

On top of that ( like following the template) , go maps like

Texture Map (paint information)

Displacement (sculpt information and silluete)

Bump (sculpt)

Normal(keeps surface flat but shows the volume)

LOD: level of detail.

Maps Sizes-

Biggest ZBrush Map- 8K




4K - 4096x4096 ----hosts   abt 16,...mil polygons
2K - 2048x2048 ----hosts   abt 4,5 mil
1K - 1024x1024-----hosts   abt 2,1 mil
etc...




FE,  a 4mil mesh will minimum need a 4K map, a 7mil mesh-> 4K...etc
Keep in mind, all the empty spaces between the islands waists the pixels of the map.


The Bigger the Map, the longer the Renders....

UV Map

types of UV you can do in zbrush

- computergenerated:

AUVTiles -ripps off all polygons and lays them all side by side, making a grid
GUVTiles- group UV, does AUV and groups polygons, that are close to each other into islands
PUV- pack UV- a combination of both. Keeps groups and occupies the most of the Region


-a plugin, UV Master


ZPlugin->  UV Master

CREATE UVS LEVEL ONE

WORK ON CLONE- always!!!!!!!!!!!!

UnWrap - creates the UV
Flatten- to see how your UV looks like flat
UnFlatten- if you flatten, please unflatten it!
CheckSeems- to see where the seems are on the model. You always want to Hide the Seems!
Polygroups- Makes each PG into an island

*Apply a checker pattern to make sure nothing is stretching too much.


Control the seams by:

Enable Control Painting- (symmetry on, only RGB on)


Protect- red- area to protect from seem cut,
Attract-blue- attracts the seem to cut,
Erase - if you made the mistake and need to erase areas


Copy UVs   from this clone       ->     Paste Uvs to your good model (it should be on the lowest level)



UV Map -> Morth UV to see it flatten the model
UVMap Size- pick the one you need.




Texture Map ( create from the highest level, the best quality of your point)   ->  New from Polypaint ( creates the Map with your polypaint)


New from UV Check- shows what your UVs look like on the model

Always turn on Antialiased

3dtotal uvs-paint tutorial

GoZ to Maya



R - the programs you can GoZ to

Renderings for Film

- RenderMan

-VRay

-Arnold

-Maxwell

-3Delight

Renderings for Game

- Unreal (by Epic Games)

- Unity

- Cry Engine ( by Crisis)

- Snowdrop

Simple Renders

KeyShot +Photoshop

Hypershot

Navigating in Maya:

ALT+ left click - rotate

ALT+ right click - zoom

ALT+ middle click- move

1 - 1st level

2- 2nd level in zbrush

3- highest level

4- wireframe

5- shading view

6- textured from zbrush

F- framing

in the tool bar-> UV Editor



Maxence Fleurete