Dragonfly Mesh - 2 LI (using sculptris - Zbrush)

[Toysoldier Thor]

This this weekend I thought I would tackle a more complex Mesh project.  I decided to build a dragonfly so that I could sell it in SL as either an artwork or a prop at homes, clubs, sim themes, etc.

For me, building a dragonfly was gonna be a challenge since a dragonfly was going to require the heavy use of Zbrush Sub-Tools, and intense polypaint Texturing, and the use of Zspheres for the legs.  I also wanted step up and try to get the polycount (and as such the LI to as low a number as possible without the dragonfly being too choppy and ugly.

Well It took me two full days to sculpt the main body/tail/eyes/mouth (one mesh shape) and create the wings to be an ultra thin mesh.  Took another day to paint the dragonfly parts.

But I finished.  Aand although the wings look a big jagged, it was worth it as I got the complete dragonfly and its full texture into SL at 2LI for a shape of 3m x 1m x 1.5m.

In order to enhance the colors, I baked one of the first of many materials onto the resulting base texture (using Zbrush's direct interplay with Photoshop that allows normal maps to be baked in and modified and then automatically sendback to Zbrush).

I plan to make a few different colors of dragonflies and change the wing position too.  I think I could improve on the texture sharpness by using the texture zones for the polygroups i created (each of the 4 wings, the body, the eyes, and teh legs).  At 1024x1024, there just isnt enough texture for the dragonfly to look as sharp as it does in zbrush.

Love to hear any other thoughts from the mesh experts.

[Dilbert Dilweg]

Nice Job man, They look awesome. I have toyed around a little with Zbrush. Cool program. It just costs too much lol.

The jagged wings wont be so noticable in Sl and it is a closeup picture. I like it.. good work.

 

I worked all day long yesterday on learning retoploogy. I bet you can ad a few cuts on the quads around the edge to smooth the wings out a bit with minimal impact (unless you already done that). Instead of making full loop kuts across the whole wing. just cut to the nearest edge/vert. Adding one face instead of a bunch of faces across the whole wing but really they arent bad at all.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Thanks Dilbert,

As for why Zbrush for me... I started cutting my teeth learning 3D in 2008 using the free Blender tool.  Sadly that is like learning to drive on a community built supersports car that was purely designed for performance and not on creature comforts and use of use.  Even after 1.5 years of using Blender and having newer versions and changes of my PC OS screw up my exporter to SL and having to know the tricks / inner workings of how to install Python... I got so frustrated with Blender that when a top SL sculpty maker from IBM introduced me to Zbrush - I switched. 

Zbrush is no cakewalk either - let me tell you - but its model designing is much closer fit to how I think - ANALOG / FREEFORM.  Blender is on the other spectrum of being highly mechanical and mathimatical.  It was a HUGE coincidental later event that made me much more happy that I made a commitment to Zbrush.... Pixologic bought and later smoothly integrated SCULPTRIS into Zbrush using their GoZ interface.  I love Sculptris but it needed a program like Zbrush to be useful for SL mesh creations.

 

As for your advise on the wings....  LOL its funny you mentioned retopo tool / function.  Although I have struggled through it in the past with another model to reduce the poly count surgically, I found it extremely painful and frustrating for me  

So when it comes to the dragonflies.... there are no edge cuts / loops used or moreso remaining (as far as I know).  The wings were initially loaded with loops since the initial 3D model used was a cylinder but after I deformed the wing into an extremely flat wing-shaped cylinder, I used ZBrush's "Decimation" plugin.  It uses smart algothyms using input parameters to create the target objective reduction.  Almost ALWAYS the result is a face-by-face placement on the surface.  When I get back on my Zbrush I will take a screen shot to show you how the wing looks like with the polyframes visible.

Actually, a trick I learned on decimation in Zbrush is that initial Sub-Tool (fyi : in Zbrush a "tool" is a single model and a "sub-tool" is a single model that is part of an agregate model) decimation and then subsequent merging of the subtools into a new single tool, the polygons are often NOT distributed very evenly.  A relatively even distribution of polygons is quite important for Zbrush when you get to POLYPAINTING the model - since you are actually applying color information on each polygon's surface.  So if a part of you rmodel has an extremely low poly count (like a large flat surface), there wont be as high a painted resolution there when you scale the polycount to 2 million.

As such, to solve this problem, what I use now when the model is done at low res and is ready to be painted, I use a cool and obscure function of the TOOLS->GEOMETRY palette called "equalize surface area".  For the Dragonfly clicking this button doubled my initial polycount from 2200 to over 5000.  BUT, the polygons were now evenly distributed across the merged model.  THEN I decimated the model again to 30% of its 5000+ count.  This brought my model back down to under 2000 polycount without changing the model much at all.

So basiclly, I didnt spend ANY time at all manually retopologizing my model - I just used the Zbrush automated tools.

And I do agree with you that although the wings up close look a bit sharp edged - the lower LI count is what future customers will like more.  When dragonflies can be 7M long and only be 6 or 7 LI... they will forgive the sharp edged wings.

 

[Toysoldier Thor]

As promised, the attached image is my dragonfly model with its merged sub-tools and polyframe enabled so you can see the frame of the model.  Each color in Zbrush is showing a different polygroup in the model.  When I UV map it and export to SL, these polygroups end up being texture zones.

I might be wrong in what you meant by loops... but as you can see, there is really *NO strongly defined loops on the wings anymore since the Zbrush DECIMATION process comes up with its own automated calculation on how to remove and position the polygons on the surface.

I am sure if I wanted to I could decimate the model even lower with very little impact to the geometry of the dragonfly but my LI for a 3m long dragonfly is already at only 2 and I didnt want to over rationalize the model since Zbrush uses a nice distribution of polygons on the model for its polypainting process.

Your thoughts?

[Drongle McMahon]

I notice there are a few vertices on the very edge of the wing that could be moved inwards slightly to give a better rounded edge.

[Toysoldier Thor]

@drongle

You are correct.  Unfortunately I notice that after I merged it and after I painted it.  To fix it would require me going back to merging the base unmerged model (i.e. adjusting the wing subtools into the body subtool) which means re-painting everything.

I did a work-around to this flaw by making that portion of the base of the wings black - which is naturally what dragonfly wing bases have anyway - to hide the flaw.

This flaw actually taught me another lesson.... to polypaint the subtools BEFORE I merge them to a single model.  That way i can make these corrections and adjustments.  I will be forced to execute this new process on the dragonfly anyway since I want to create many painted designs AND also change the wing positions and leg positions.  I just need time to veg before tackling the re-painting process

[Dilbert Dilweg]

That's the only downside of using decimation. They all leave you with tris instead of quads. Meshlab did a good job of sorting them better that blender thou. I spent all day yesterday learning BSurfaces for blender. Awesome tool. But a little tricky to learn. It is picky about order of process. But once you figure it out . It goes pretty quickly. I decided to tackle a pair of jeans. Below was the outcome. The final jeans Had 11,000 faces. That is only because I used subsurf modifier and divided it 1 time.. Before it was 5,000. The final is only 6 LI after my optimizations, and the other one with less polys was a 3 .. But using Bsurfaces I was able to keep a clean topology. Able to model a high poly sculpt or mesh and retopo it. See below The first image is the final jeans. Minus the belt loops... The second image is the topology before adding a subsurf to it. That was right after using bsurfaces method.. And the third is the topology after adding a subsurf

 

 

 

Number 2) Topology with bsurfaces after the final draw.

 

Number 3 topology after using subsurf.

 

 

Definitely helps for having clean uv maps this way

 

I am sure I could have done it with much less polies. But that was my first rodeo with BSurfces...

[Toysoldier Thor]

The design of the pants looks good but I was going to say what you already suggested... your pantlegs seem to have a lot of loops .... I would think your pant legs could have got away with less than 1/2 of them in the shin and thigh zones (no bends and no major geometric changes that a texture with a normal map could simulate.

Regarding the Quads vs tris... I am not sure how this is a downside to decimation.

In about 1 or 2 minutea of my effort using the Decimation and the Sculptris poly reduction tools on my entire dragonfly, I was able to get my model down to an extremely low poly count... a poly count that LL's mesh LI calculation tool full recognizes and brings my SL mesh in at an extremely low LI value.  And in SL it seems to rez very well and efficient.

I didnt have to waste 10, 30, 90 minutes optimizing my model.

So exactly what is the downside toi my model, me as the creator, or my future customers?

[Dilbert Dilweg]

I am sorry I didn't mean to give you the impression that your method is any way bad or trying to argue your methods.

The downside for me when using the decimate tends to make unwraping clean seams harder when setting up kits for customers. no offense. sorry  lol Ive used decimate many times . nothing wrong with it .. except for limitations I experience.I am sure I have a lot more to learn , Have a good  day

[Toysoldier Thor]

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Dilbert Dilweg wrote:

I am sorry I didn't mean to give you the impression that your method is any way bad or trying to argue your methods.

The downside for me when using the decimate tends to make unwraping clean seams harder when setting up kits for customers. no offense. sorry  lol Ive used decimate many times . nothing wrong with it .. except for limitations I experience.I am sure I have a lot more to learn

, Have a good  day

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You dont have to apologize - I didnt take it wrong.  I really did want to know that the disadvantage was for an automated decimation deciding to use triangles?  Is there a disadvantage that I am missing?

I didnt mean to post to make you think i took your posting as an insult.

[Toysoldier Thor]

excluding the facts that LL doesnt penalize for the use of one type of poly vs another and that neither is any harder to work with than the other....

Is one type of Poly a better poly for efficiency?  I thought Quads on a model were actually two Triangles anyway.  Am I wrong?

[Drongle McMahon]

The uploader converts all quads into triangles before uploading the mesh.

[Toysoldier Thor]

Thanks to the advise, I re-textured my model at the pre-merged Subtool stage (i.e. I textured and baked normals and specularity onto each component of the model prior to merging into one).  This allowed to to adjust the wing to the body and fix the glitch that Drongle noticed.  I am also now able to change the position of the wings at any time.  Another unexpected side benefit of texturing prior to merging the subtools is that I can now bake the normal/specularity maps into the texture at each component which avoids the common overlap distortion that happens with ZapLink.

I also was able to reduce the import of the model into SL a little bit further by reducing the lower and lowest values a tad smaller.  With dragonflies there is no need for any physics so the less the better.

Here is the final version that I will be using to make a few colored designs in hopes of selling a pack of them.  I also totally changed the texture on this version...