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tweetiepah

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  1. Rahkis Andel wrote: So, yeah. I didn't mean that you shouldn't make an avatar, just that you should think twice about it being fully mesh all in one piece. I gotcha. In that case I just might just chop the avatar up and sell the pieces. Should I budget differently for this, or just make my full charachter ~10k and let the chips fall where they may when it's all chopped up? I personally tend to use most of my budget on the top portion of a charachter (head, arms, chest, etc...). Should I change this, and if so, what should be optimal budget for a head? It's a shame if there are not likely goign to be no more improcements to Dyntopo, but your workflow does sound like a good one. I'll give it a shot next time. It's similar to what I used to do in 3dCoat, although I usually put the HF details on the voxel model before retopo and baking. Here I am at mid-sculpt (actually more like just started): I also haven't yet purchased Avastar. What's your opinion on that? Is it worth it, or will I be able to do the same things without it? I'm particulary interested in using attachement points as extra bones. Is that a nightmare without Avastar?
  2. Rahkis Andel wrote: The entire cg industry moved away from vert pushing to a sculpting based workflow all in the course of like one year -- probably starting around when you stopped a few years back. There is a reason for that -- the old way was slow and unnatural. I suggest you throw everything you know out the window, download 2.68 and start catching up with the times (CGCookie is a good place to start). In the end, your work will greatly benefit from doing so. You don't need a tablet to sculpt. I'm totally comfortable with a sculpting workflow and have a tablet (though i'm probably rusty). It's just I'm used to getting my topology and edge loops in place (usually I sketch a rough mesh on photos of a subject), and then use that as a basis to sculpt. With my avatar here, i just haven't gotten to the sculpting stage. I realize that I could work with something less than optimal and then retopo that once it's sculpted, but then I'd likely have to build two meshes instead of one (one to sculpt on, one for the retopo). It's just the way i'm used to. That being said, I used to have a lot of fun with 3d coat's voxel sculpting where you didn't have to worry about topology at all. The app also had some really well done retopo tools and the normal map baking was at the time better than Blender. Like blender, however, I haven't used it in years so I couldn't tell you how good it is anymore. In the future I may very well use a pure high to low workflow. The new Dynamic Topology sculpting in Blender seems very cool. Once it matures some more I look forward to using it but right now i'm not sure how I feel about the "detail size" being defined in screen space. I'd rather it use world/object space so no matter what zoom i'm at, it's creating the same level of detail. That's closer to how 3d coat's voxels worked, although it's not entirely comparable. RIght now it seems it would be very easy to accidentally zoom out, make a modification, and erase any carefully sculpted high frequency detail. Have you used this feature? Rahkis Andel wrote: I would also reconsider starting out with a commercial full mesh avatar, furry or otherwise. There is a reason why there are so few on the market and it's not due to lack of talent. It's due to lack of interest. Interesting. What would be the most popular/profitable types of items in second life, then? I'll probably continue making a full mesh avatar just because I like a challenge, but if that's not where the money is, i'll definately keep in mind other stuff in the future. Ps: I don't at all take offense from your suggestions. Even if we disagree on workflow or whatever, I still appreciate your input and you've been very helpful.
  3. Unlike adults (where I'd probably do as you suggested) newborn babies have bulbous belly buttons which are rather visible from the side. Interesting. I never knew that. Never go back and alter a previous level. Going back and playing with earlier levels will often cause artifacts in your higher levels that cannot be fixed without ruining all of your details. I haven't used multires since Nick Bishop first first added the feature (years ago). Since then i've been on somewhat of a break from 3d until me husband mentioned I could make some extra cash making and selling avatars and such to furries. I used to know Blender (and much of Maya) backwards and forwards but when you don't use a skill after a few years, stuff changes and you get lost. Getting used to the 2.5 interface change has been unsettling to say the least. I'm sure it'll grow on me, but right now, i'm still used to 2.4x. As such, I am somewhat rusty and really really appreciate your input. I understand since the time I last used multires that Nick Bishop has mofified the codebase of multires so that displacements are now done relative to the normal in tangent space, rather than absolute XYZ displacements that break when deformed. At least before, I was under the impression modifications could be made non-destrictively to lower levels of the subdivisision so long as the topology doesn't change. Is that no longer the case? If so, i'll avoid using multires and just subdivide manually and un-subdivide as you suggested.
  4. Edit: It sounds like you're using a bottom up paradigm, where as I use top-down. That is, I start with the highest level of detail and decimate the model for each lower LOD. I see no reason why your way shouldn't work, but personally I would find it slower and less intuitive. Blender can do a lot of the reductions for you. Also, as you pointed out, there is no half-subdivision. Sort of. I was planning on going in both directions actually, as multires lets you do that. I was planning on going high to low for the sculpted detail. I was planning on using either the base mesh or a mid-res mesh as a basis for baking the normal map. Where I wanted to go from low to high was with the UV maps and the weight painting, as it's a lot easier to do that with fewer vertices. I do thank you very much for your suggestions. I'll experiment with "decimate" but will probably end up removing loops and sliding as you suggest until I hit my target. I do have a question about your model, if you don't mind. Why did leave the belly button on your game mesh rather than have a flat stomach and the belly button in a normal map? Is there a reason I should do this on my model as well for other similar details? Is this for clients who have normal mapping turned off?
  5. Thanks for your reply. The head, after one subdivision, is 1696 tris, and I feel it looks good enough (see below for a rough idea). If i created the full avatar at this detail I would be well within your proposed budget (and like you, I do intend on including normal maps). The problem is that the lowest level of detail (the base mesh) is too low for a medium LOD and I need something in between. Unfortunately there is no such thing as half a subdivision. I'm also wary of trusting any automated poly reducing method. Short of manual reduction by deleting edge loops and such (Blender is nice about this and usually preserves UVs and so forth), what are the suggested methods of accomplishing this that give good results (preserved UVs, no anomalies with rigging, etc)? Does SL's automated method of reduction do a decent job? PS: Your newborn looks great.
  6. I'm working on a full avatar here and i'm wondering what's my poly budget for each level of detail. My head base mesh, including the neck, is 212 faces (424 tris). I plan on uploading that as my lowest lod, and sucessive sculpted subdivisions of that base mesh as the higher levels of detail -- meaning the higest level of detail, subdivided twice, would be 3392 faces (6784 tris). I plan on the full body avatar being around 15k faces (30k tris) at the highest level of detail. I'm new to second life and most of the information i've found seems to be outdated. Is my avatar reasonable, or do I need to lower my budget?
  7. Does anybody know if this method still works? Also, can the attachment point bones be rotated? It could be more useful to animate a jaw if this was the case.
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