"Questions that don't deserve their own thread" thread

[Anonymous No.445812]

"Questions that don't deserve their own thread" thread

Everytime I try to open maya i get a bunch of bifrost errors and this window popping up, which leads to a crash when i close it. Anyone else ever encountered this?

[Anonymous No.445813]

reinstall it

[Anonymous No.445816]

In Maya, is there a way to adjust the falloff of soft select while having a transform tool active? For example, while moving a vertex around, can you adjust the radius of soft select?

In Blender you can just scroll the mouse wheel up and down while moving things around and the radius of soft select is changed actively, but I haven't found a way to do this in Maya yet.

This isn't intended as a jab at Maya--I think Maya's soft select has a lot of features Blender's desperately needs, in fact(like surface mode), but as someone who learned Blender first I've gotten a little used to being able to adjust soft select on the fly, so any help is appreciated. I've searched myself but haven't found an answer yet.

[Anonymous No.445823]

>>445816
For soft-select and any brushes you're using in Maya, you simply hold down "b" and then click and drag to adjust the size. A circle will appear showing you the radius as you drag.

[Anonymous No.445825]

>>445813
same result after reinstalling

[Anonymous No.445826]

>>445823
Don't you have to click and drag in order to use the transform tools? It seems like you can't adjust falloff while transforming a component. Sorry if I'm being unclear.

Ex:
W(move)>click+drag to move>
Can you adjust soft select at this point in Maya? Since you're already holding the mouse button(not to mention dragging) to transform, I'm not sure how B>drag would work.

[Anonymous No.445829]

>>445826
You click and drag somewhere else on the screen while holding B, not on the transformation tool. It doesn't matter if the tool is active.

[Anonymous No.445830]

>>445826
If you're already holding down your click on the transform manipulator, trying to move something, then no, you can't adjust the radius at the same time you're moving the vertices... Why would you ever want to do that anyways?

[Anonymous No.445832]

>>445825
Stop using a torrented version. You can download the student version for free.

[Anonymous No.445833]

>>445832
what's the difference between the two?

[Anonymous No.445834]

>>445833
Nothing apart from a watermark in the file that says "Student Version". This watermark can be removed in a text editor if you save the file as Maya ASCII instead of binary (which you should be doing to avoid any potential lost scenes from file corruption)

[Anonymous No.445836]

>>445834
so i'd just open "student version" file in notepad and resave it as Maya ASCII?

[Anonymous No.445838]

>>445834
well that didn't work. i had my addons disabled, and my firewall too, and i gave it admin rights. so i don't know why this didn't work.

[Anonymous No.445841]

>>445836
You'd save it out of Maya as a .MA file like normal, and simply open that file in a text editor and remove the line that has "student edition", near the top and resave, that's it.

You only need to do that if you want to get rid of the "This scene was made in Educational Version" message when people open it.

[Anonymous No.445842]

>>445833
Apart from the non-commercial license, literally nothing.

>>445834
The watermark this person is talking about is something deep within the code that's not visible on the outside. Just FYI.

[Anonymous No.445846]

>>445841
>You'd save it out of Maya as a .MA file like norma

you lost me. what am i saving exactly?

[Anonymous No.445848]

>>445842
>he watermark this person is talking about is something deep within the code that's not visible on the outside.
Within the code of your student version sure. Not the files you save out though. It's one line to remove from your scene files so that when OTHER people open it, it doesn't say "This was created in a Student version, don't use this for commercial purposes, bitch".

>>445846
...You save what you're working on, as a scene file so you can open it again. You can save a whole scene as either Maya Binary (compressed) or Maya ASCII (text form). I was just sharing a trick for if you want to remove the student version watermark from your Maya scene files when giving them to other people or uploading them online.

[Anonymous No.445861]

>>445848
ah ok. thanks dude.

[Anonymous No.445909]

I want to make a thing that has two complications: a slightly curved face, and a face that loops around to itself. Think the hard part of a bow and a bracelet or ring.

My plan is to model them and the detail out as flat surfaces and then bend the first and wrap the second into a cylindrical shape. Is there a simple way to do this programmatically in Zbrush or Maya? I imagine trying to get them to bend evenly by hand would be neigh impossible.

[Anonymous No.445911]

>>445909
Yes. In ZBrush, there's a Bend slider in your Deformation panel.
In Maya, It's in the Animation menu, under Deformers>Non-Linear>Bend.

[Anonymous No.445913]

>>445911

Well damn.

Excellent; thank you!

[Anonymous No.445924]

>>445848
>Within the code of your student version sure. Not the files you save out though.

That's not correct, man. Save a file as .ma from a student version and you'll be able to read it in notepad. There's a flag in there that says what version of the license you have.

[Anonymous No.446240]

How do I control custom brushes in Zbrush?

I want to make a brush which draws a continuous pyramid shape as its stroke, but the documentation I'm digging up isn't helping very much.

[Anonymous No.446263]

in Google Sketchup, what would be the best preset to work with, if I want to design my own PC case?

[Anonymous No.446301]

>>446240
Just change the Alpha on your brush... right click, Alpha is right there. You can modify how it's drawn out in the "Stroke" and "Brush" menus.

[Anonymous No.446304]

Maya 2014 x64
I imported the model, it's fucking huge
Change the far clip plane and focus
The model turns semi-transparent and clipping issues everywhere
Doesn't happen if I scale the model down and zoom in
Deleted Prefs, restarted, changed units from centimeters to meters. Doesn't fix it
Help.

[Anonymous No.446318]

>>446304
export as obj then reimprt

[Anonymous No.446321]

>>446304
Don't change just the far-clip plane... change the near-clip as well, raise the near-clip plane value to a much higher value, likely 10 or even 100 depending on how big the object is. Or just scale the object down so it's proper scene scale...

[Anonymous No.446323]

Best site for Maya beginner tutorials? I don't know how to into 3D.

[Anonymous No.446324]

>>446323
UToob.

[Anonymous No.446326]

Is there a way to properly "rotate" an object using shapekeys in Blender?

In the example webm I posted, you see that the cube is "morphing" into the 90° rotation that I designated. I don't want it to morph into the rotation, I want it to just rotate.

I can't simply use rotation constraints because I want to rotate one part of a multi-part mesh. I don't want to use armature bones either because the results I've had with them have been horrendous.

If I could just get a clean rotation using shapekeys, my life would be super easy. This is all I need and all of my animations will skyrocket in quality.

[Anonymous No.446330]

>>446321

I changed the near clip plane, problem fixed, thank you, you saved my ass.

[Anonymous No.446356]

I kind of screwed up my "planning ahead" phase by making a buttoned shirt like this.

Basically, parts of the model are overlapping the ones behind it, and I'd like it very much to close any openings.

Especially the neck/head area. I'd like it for the head and shirt to be just one mesh, as the last time I had it separated, a few edges or faces would stick out if I try and move the Neck a little too much.

Any help /3/?

[Anonymous No.446371]

3ds Max 2014 has been crashing on launch ever since I switched my workspace layout from "Default" to "Advanced". What do?

[Anonymous No.446398]

>>446326
post what you need to rotate. different techniques are used in different situations

[Anonymous No.446400]

>>446356
if you are on maya with the modelling toolkit the shrinkwrap tool will do this for you. either that or you can scale the faces out via face normals.

[Anonymous No.446406]

I'm working on a project with a friend who has generously helped create some meshes which now I'm tasked with adding texture to. This is supposed to be a based on a real life park but I'm having difficulty figuring out how to go about adding them, this is only the 2nd so it's ramped up pretty high.


Moving from left to right the various elements in the picture are:

The entire park
The terrain mesh
The walking path mesh
The lake mesh

They were created in Maya and are .OBJ files (they also came with a .MTL file but I don't know what that is), and I'm using Unity to create the level.

Here's what I'm trying to do:

-For the terrain I want to add in a base "grass" texture and then from there go in an paint things like patches of dirt, yellow grass, add weeds and other elements to give it less of a uniform look.

-For the walking path, I need to be able to add different textures to different sections of the path (dirt, asphalt, sand, coarse gravel) and then be able to make sure that as the player moves across them the sound changes. Do I have to have him break up the path into different sections or can I keep at one bit loop.

I could really use you help /3/ because this project is due next week and I don't want to let people down. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to go about this?

[Anonymous No.446407]

>>446398

Right now, all I want is a perfectly round sphere to be rotated using shapekeys. As simple as that may sound, even a sphere gets twisted up as it morphs into the rotation.

[Anonymous No.446413]

>>446406
Painting on the texture might be difficult without a 3d modelling package... But you could try painting vertex colours with a tool like: assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/2463 and then write a surface shader to apply and blend the textures based on the colour.

Getting the path to make different footstep sounds would also work with this, because you could cast a ray down from the players feet, check the colour of the vertex it hits, and then play the sound based on that. (I can't remember if unity can check vertex colours with rays, but I think it can)

Anyway this is probably over-complicated but it's how I'd do it.

[Anonymous No.446414]

>>446413
Oh I forgot, the models have to be uv mapped for this to work, but they're flat so you could just use plannar projection.

[Anonymous No.446419]

>>446326
place more keys and the morphing will become less and less noticeable.

[Anonymous No.446425]

>>446407
just keyframe it since it's a simple sphere.

[Anonymous No.446426]

>>446425

I can't, you fucking smartass. I can't rotate the sphere without rolling the entire character model in a keyframe because the sphere is joined to the entire character mesh.

[Anonymous No.446428]

>>446426
then it's not a perfect fucking sphere is it?
>hey guys how do i do this
>but i won't tell you what i'm doing xxxDDDxD

[Anonymous No.446429]

>>446326
>how do i do something simple in blender
lmao
you don't

[Anonymous No.446433]

>>446406
You want the simplest way or the fastest way?

Simplest way would be to take the mesh into 3dsMax and draw on it. Probably not as much what you're looking for though.

Fastest way would be to generate a heightmap from the mesh and import it into unity as a terrain, then paint on that with the terrain tools.

[Anonymous No.446434]

>>446426
>how do I deform a mesh without deforming the mesh, or using constraints, or applying it to an armature

You retarded or something?

[Anonymous No.446436]

>>446428

If you had read my previous comment, you would understand exactly what I want to happen. That I simply want a shapekey that rotates.

I'll show you exactly what I'm trying to achieve. I have slapped together another example for you.

In this webm, each set of eyes on this cube are made up of two spheres. One sphere for the eyeball itself and another sphere slightly in front of it that is half-skintone and half-transparent to be the eyelid. To "close the eyes," so to speak, all that needs to happen is for the eyelid sphere to rotate over the eye as the skin envelopes the eyeball.

However, you see in the webm that since the eyelids "morph" into the rotated position, I get a horrendously bad result of the eyelids morphing inside of the eyes and then popping out of them into position.

This is just a single mesh, the eye spheres were added to the mesh in edit mode. The only way to manipulate the eyeballs in this scenario is to use shapekeys or armature bones. Armature bones are horrible for this, I've tried.

[Anonymous No.446438]

>>446436
create inbetweens

[Anonymous No.446439]

>>446419
>>446438

Right. I've actually been trying this out. Making multiple shapekeys. I know I can make 50 shapekeys for each frame and toggling them on and off each keyframe in succession, but that sounds horribly tedious.

[Anonymous No.446440]

>>446439
you suck at cg, read the sticky dumbass

[Anonymous No.446441]

>>446439
you probably only need about 4 for those eyes. your top secret nsa animation project may need more though. who knows?

[Anonymous No.446442]

>>446441

I do want to keep it a secret, because if you saw the character models it would spoil the surprise.

[Anonymous No.446443]

>>446442
is it a birthday present for me?

[Anonymous No.446460]

>>446433
How do yo generate a heightmap? This is all pretty new territory to me.

[Anonymous No.446462]

In Maya, If I am painting weights and want to add new bones: Would unbinding the skin remove weights?

Do I need to get everything bone before I started weighting?

[Anonymous No.446463]

Using 3dsmax, how would I animate a flag but using bones? Also an animation that loops well.

I know there is cloth sim, but have no idea how to transfer that motion to bones skinned to the flag, nor how to actually arrange such bones in what pattern and how to properly loop it.

[Anonymous No.446464]

>>446462

Additionally what is the best workflow when rigging a head and face?

I currently have the head skeleton boned with a gorget that bends with the neck. I Now want to be able to manipulate the eyes and mouth.

[Anonymous No.446470]

>>446464
parent the eyes to the head joint and create a jaw bone to manipulate the mouth

[Anonymous No.446472]

>>446470

Thnx

Also I figured out these controller setups people use. Would it be wise to bind these controller menus to follow the character, or just have them sitting to the side in the void?

[Anonymous No.446486]

My current dilemma is binding these controllers to the joints. If I try simply parenting them, the controllers parenting supercedes the joints control. For examples, these eyes will be locked while I turn the head after parenting the controller.

I have my joints dropped into two level groups as a tutorial I was following suggested it to indirectly constrain the joints to the joints underneath.

[Anonymous No.446487]

>>446486

S'all good, I had a few issues with my component hierarchies

[Anonymous No.446502]

>>446460
Bunch of different ways, but if you're new, use a tool like mesh2hmap.

[Anonymous No.446556]

>>446502
This one right?
http://mesh2hmap.sourceforge.net/index.shtml

I know I might be pushing my luck here by asking but how do I get this running. Maybe this is an old version of the program or is this something that I would have to plug in to a rendering program like Blender? If so, how do I go about doing that? But thank you so much for helping me out.

[Anonymous No.446697]

>>445812
I get that same error, except whenever I'm exiting Maya
Not that it's an issue, just annoying since the Feedback thing appears

[Anonymous No.446705]

Is there a way to programmatically re-align a subtool to the center of a Zbrush canvas?

My I have a head and body, but the body subtool seems to have gotten shifted offcenter on the x plane at some point. The head is still in the center if that could be of use.

[Anonymous No.446744]

Are "Normal maps" just maps that contain the smoothing group (or hard/soft normals, depending on the software you used to create the mesh) information for a mesh?

[Anonymous No.446745]

How do I get rid of these hard shadows?
volumetric light / spot light

png export
raytrace shadows
light radius 1
shadow rays 40
depth 5

point intp. 100
quality production

[Anonymous No.446746]

>>446744
No, each vertex has a vector, or direction in every day speech, that gives information about where that vertex is pointing.
This direction is called a normal.

Now the three vertices that makes up a triangle gives information to the shader about what angle that surface is facing,
and by now interpolating between the normal of the triangles vertices you can get a smooth curved value across that flat surface so it looks smoothly curved altough it's really flat. This is called gouraud shading.

In a normal map you encode a XYZ vector to a RGB pixel, enabling you to use one normal per texture pixel or 'texel' instead of one normal per vertex.
In effect this means you can make the light hitting a triangle reflect in any angle you want to and thereby making it look really complexly curved even though it's actually flat.

[Anonymous No.446748]

>>446746
>In a normal map you encode a XYZ vector to a RGB pixel, enabling you to use one normal per texture pixel or 'texel' instead of one normal per vertex.
>In effect this means you can make the light hitting a triangle reflect in any angle you want to and thereby making it look really complexly curved even though it's actually flat.

no, the object isn't "actually flat" and there isn't a "object". There's only a data structure which takes the normal map as an input to produce the final shaded pixel using shaders.

[Anonymous No.446753]

>>446748
>MFW
Now listen to lord fuckatron you feebleminded retardocon. A abstract triangle is a object in this context
and the surface of any triangel is always flat regardless of how you position the 3 vertices.

[Anonymous No.446755]

>>446753
>a abstract
>a

[Anonymous No.446756]

>>446755
>lololol you made the syntax flaw
Engrish are my auxiliary function of language. Me spelling like a retard is nowhere as severe as you thinking like one deep inside your brain of brains.

[Anonymous No.446757]

>>446744
No, normal maps are calculated based on the existing surface normals of your object, they build upon them, adding more lighting detail without the need for more geometry. The surface normals are still taken into account each frame, but combined with the detailed surface normal information that's in the normal map.

[Anonymous No.446759]

>>446745
Turn on Final Gathering, and set the "Secondary Diffuse Bounces" to 2 (or 3-5 if you want top notch quality and don't care about render time).

Also, don't use spot lights for realistic rendering. Use area lights, and either plug an IES node into the "light shader" area, with a downloaded IES light profile, or plugin a "portal light" in with a blackbody node plugged into it's "environment". And check "use light shape" on the area light.

[Anonymous No.446766]

>>446746
Jesus my brain. Can you recommend any good lectures or lessons that could help me wrap my head around this? Just reading about normal maps isn't helping. I need some kind of concrete example and explanation.

[Anonymous No.446767]

>>446757
>The surface normals are still taken into account each frame, but combined with the detailed surface normal information that's in the normal map.

Nope. Except for screen space effects, you're going to only use the tangent normals from the normalmap.

[Anonymous No.446768]

>>446766
You don't really need to understand how they work in order to use them, but it's not a very difficult concept to grasp I'll try and demonstrate with a picture... hang on.

[Anonymous No.446769]

>>446767
Lmao. Stop spreading this bullshit misinformation dumbass. Here's how you can go prove yourself wrong, since you clearly won't believe what others say due to being so full of yourself.

1. Take an object with a normal map on it.
2. Alter the surface normals.
3. Gasp in amazement as the surface shading fucking changes, despite having a tangent space normal map.

[Anonymous No.446770]

>>446766
First this image show what a normal is and how it works. You don't need to understand any of the maths behind it as a artist unless you wanna write custom shaders.

[Anonymous No.446771]

>>446770
>>446768
Huh, alrighty, I think I got that much. Eagerly awaiting the next image. Thanks a bunch!

[Anonymous No.446772]

>>446769
You use the normals to calculate "view space" lighting aka the light vector and the view vector in the vertex shading stage of your application but you never use raw normals for calculating output color beyond that - except sometimes in view space effects. You use your tangent map for 99%, unless of course you have some old hillbilly engine. Probably some bloated old shit.

[Anonymous No.446776]

>>446772
*screen space effects, but you can convert your spaces....so kind of moot

[Anonymous No.446783]

>>446770
>>446771

Here's showing normal mapping. Normal mapping does the same as when I rotated that normal but for each pixel on the texture (texel).

[Anonymous No.446784]

what's the best crowd sim for maya?

[Anonymous No.446794]

>>446783
Thanks a bunch for this. It's helping me wrap my head around the concept a lot better. It'll still take me a while to understand it on a practical level, though.

So, if normal maps and smoothing groups are unrelated, how is the information regarding smoothing groups (or soft/hard normals) transferred to the object? Like, where is that information stored?

[Anonymous No.446796]

>>446794
1) they aren't unrelated
2) vertex attribute from the cpu

[Anonymous No.446800]

>>446794
The smoothing groups are stored togheter with your mesh in the model file.
But when you calculate a normal map by baking a texture that bake will take into account the smoothing groups and normals currently on your mesh
and project it ontop of that so it'll fit that model with those smoothing groups.
If you for some reason would change the smoothing groups or normals after you've baked normals you wouldl need to reproject
your normal map otherwise you would have artifacts in the affected areas.

[Anonymous No.446801]

Is there a mode or option in ZBrush which makes it so that your brushes' falloff range is limited to the surface you're targeting and won't reach across space to unwanted surfaces? Kind of like Maya's surface soft selection mode(or whatever it's called).

>>445830
I find it useful to be able to scroll and adjust soft selection before confirming/cancelling the transform. It lets me test how big I want the soft selection falloff to be while doing the transformation without having to go back, change the soft selection size, and redo the transformation.

For example, say you're doing a major scaling adjustment on a major body part(like arms); while you do the scaling transformation you can easily scroll the mouse wheel to determine how much of the mesh you want to be affected without actually making any changes or cancelling the tool. It seems pretty useful, but maybe it's just my lack of experience.

[Anonymous No.446802]

Is there a mode or option in ZBrush which makes it so that your brushes' falloff range is limited to the surface you're targeting and won't reach across space to unwanted surfaces? Kind of like Maya's surface soft selection mode(or whatever it's called).

>>445830
I find it useful to be able to scroll and adjust soft selection before confirming/cancelling the transform. It lets me test how big I want the soft selection falloff to be while doing the transformation without having to go back, change the soft selection size, and redo the transformation.

For example, say you're doing a major scaling adjustment on a major body part(like arms); while you do the scaling transformation you can scroll the mouse wheel to determine how much of the mesh you want to be affected without actually making any changes or cancelling the tool. It seems pretty useful, but maybe it's just my lack of experience.

[Anonymous No.446806]

Why aren't you fucks reverse engineering MDD models to learn how to make amazing animu models

[Anonymous No.446809]

What's the difference between a normal texture (grey) and a bump texture (color)?

[Anonymous No.446810]

Do smoothing groups matter when your model has millions of polygons, or is smoothing groups only for the purpose of faking smooth surface on low-poly geometry?

[Anonymous No.446816]

>>446802
Under your masking menu under Brush, turn on Backface masking.

[Anonymous No.446820]

>>446806
Because the portion of us resourceful enough to do so isn't weeaboo?

[Anonymous No.446823]

>>446809
You've got it backwards. Bump is the Grey one and Normal is colored. The difference is that with a normal map, you have RGB which represent XYZ, so fake surface angles and height can be stored, while a Grey map can only define arbitrary height, leading to somewhat ugly surface shading.

[Anonymous No.446824]

>>446783
So, when drawing in the Red channel, drawing in pure white will rotate the normal 90 degrees to the right, and drawing in pure black will rotate the normal 90 degrees to the left? Same goes for Green channel but for up/down. Something like that?

[Anonymous No.446825]

>>446783
When it says "but when calculating a normal map the software will do this for you", what does that mean, exactly? What would I google to learn how to get Maya to calculate normal maps for me in a lighted scene?

Also, you don't want to bake normal maps like the one in of the teapot onto anything that's going to be seen from multiple angles, right? Because the other side of the teapot would have really odd reflections with a normal map like that, right? Cause it'd only work from that one angle?

[Anonymous No.446826]

>>446825
>>446783
Me again. Rather, could you upload a picture of that grey plane (with the teapot normal map applied) from another angle? The normal map dictates how light bounces off of each pixel, right? So from another angle, the picture of the teapot should be the same, since the lights will still be bouncing off in the same way?

I could be totally wrong though, so I'm wanting to see what actually happens when viewed from another angle.

[Anonymous No.446853]

What's the *most recommended* method of making hair for a Zbrush -> Maya workflow?

Right now I'm leaning towards this method: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wi4-fdeYyM because I'm assuming it would give me the most control over the hair.

[Anonymous No.446856]

>>446759
Thank you I will look into it.

[Anonymous No.446859]

>>446823
I see.

Are bump textures preferred for displacement, more so than normals?

[Anonymous No.446861]

How do I turn off shading in my rendering options in Maya 2015 w/ mental ray?

I basically want to render my full scene in lambert1

[Anonymous No.446865]

>>446861
well, it'll be shaded then still now wont it

[Anonymous No.446880]

I just watched a series of lessons on texture baking using Turtle in Maya LT. I really thought the workflow was simple and easy to understand. But, it turns out Turtle isn't included in standard Maya 2015. Is there a way to get Turtle into standard Maya?

Failing that, what workflow should I google to learn how to texture bake in Maya proper?

[Anonymous No.446903]

>>446859
Yes and no. Generally displacement greyscale textures are calculated slightly different from bump, but a bump can work for displacement somewhat alright. There is vector displacement though (not everything supports it yet, but most do), and it uses an RGB texture as well which moves your points in XYZ, instead of just upwards from the surface, allowing you to create concave folding over shapes. But a vector displacement map isn't calculated differently than a normal map, so you can't just plug in a normal map for it.

>>446861
Lambert still has shading. Is it that you want to render an AO pass? Lambert isn't what you want to use for that. There are AO material for that. But there's also an even simpler way. Go to your Channel Box/Layer Editor at the right, click the "Render" tab at the bottom, and right click your masterLayer, hit "Add new Render Pass", and choose "Ambient Occlusion".

Now when you render, it will render out another file with your main render, that is just an AO pass. There's an option to GPU accelerate it as well, go to your Render Settings, click the passes tab, and double click on "AO" and you'll be able to edit it's settings.

If what you want is just a scene with no shading, then use a SurfaceShader. You can temporarily apply the same shader to the whole scene by right clicking the masterLayer again and going Overrides>Create New Material Override, and choose the shader you want from there. You can remove this override at any time, or make a new render layer with that override on it instead.

>>446880
Use the mentalray bake menu under your Lighting/Shading menu if you want. But Maya 2015 has turtle as well, it's just not loaded by default. Go to Windows>Settings/Prefs>Plugin Manager, and check both boxes beside "Turtle.mll".

[Anonymous No.446916]

>>446825
>When it says "but when calculating a normal map the software will do this for you", what does that mean, exactly?

This would probably require you to have some mathematical understanding of shading to make sense of but it goes like this;
A normal is supposed to be a 'unit vector', that is a vector with the length of exactly 1, so when you add your xyz togheter you need
to account for how much the normal point in the Z direction to give it a value of exatly 1 which will look best in shading.

Example:

mid grey in the Red or Green channel is interpreted as a value of zero, black is mapped to -1, and white is 1.
So RGB (0.5,0.5,1) is a vector with the value of XYZ(0,0,1), if you draw a line like that inside a coordinate system it is exactly 1 unit long.

now we paint white in the green channel and get RGB(0,1,1) so we have a vector of XYZ(0,1,1).
if you draw this as a line in a coordinate system and meassure it you'll notive that you get a diagonal line that is longer than 1 unit long.
To compensate for this you would have to decresase the Z value to 0 by painting black in the blue channel to get back to 1 unit XYZ(0,1,0).

If you go to google image and enter 'normal map' as search term you'll notice that all the results are this soft blue maps with
greens and reds in a very specific range, you never see any fully saturated colors in them.
The reason is that those colors add up to exactly one unit in the given direction, if you saturate or dull them you create vectors
that are either longer or shorter than a lenght of one.

In practice this is not a big deal if one is doing some manual touch up on the normal maps by hand, as long as it looks good it is good,
but from a strict teoretical perspecive you've introduced flaws into the map by doing so.

[Anonymous No.446923]

>>446903
>Use the mentalray bake menu under your Lighting/Shading menu if you want. But Maya 2015 has turtle as well, it's just not loaded by default. Go to Windows>Settings/Prefs>Plugin Manager, and check both boxes beside "Turtle.mll".
You're my hero. Thanks so much!

[Anonymous No.446932]

>>446916
Thanks a bunch for the explanation! I have a pretty good foundation in math and physics (used to major in aerospace engineering), so most of the vector-based stuff isn't too hard to grasp. Most of what I tend to have trouble with is finding out why certain methods are employed over others.

Thanks again!

[Anonymous No.446937]

Would you ever have a reason to do texture baking unless you were going to take a high-detail, high-poly model and change the model to a lower-poly model, but wanted to retain the intricate details from the high poly model via its normal, diffuse, occlusion, etc maps?

Otherwise, your high-poly model already has all its texturing done, and is ready to go for animating/etc. It doesn't need normal maps and such because the detail is already there. So you don't need to bake its textures, right?

[Anonymous No.446938]

>>446937
You bake whenever you want to render something to uv. Projection baking like grabbing normals are only one thing you can do with baking.
Using a auxillary channel and bake it to the unwrapped is a common way of using baking.

Like take a screenshot of your character or whatever in any pose or angle, open it in photoshop modify it as you please,
save this as a image, when done map it back onto your character with a viewaligned planear map, then just bake it down on your unwrapped texture.

Baking lightmaps to save time on costly GI is another common usage for baking regardless of doing high or low poly work.

[Anonymous No.446939]

>>446938
>Baking lightmaps to save time on costly GI is another common usage for baking regardless of doing high or low poly work.
Ah, hrm. What are light maps? I've heard of them in passing, but studied them none yet.

[Anonymous No.446940]

>>446939
Just what it sounds like, the light in the scene baked to a texture map. So you then illuminate your environment by texture instead of actually calculating the light every frame, making it super fast.
Because light can be very lowres and still look good you can just unwrap a whole complex scene and make a flat UV map out of it, and then baking any super expensive global illumination
solution you want to this uv set because you only need to render it once.

This light will however be more static in nature than true GI and not interface with specs and normals unless employing special techniques.

[Anonymous No.446942]

>>446940
Ah. That makes sense. Thanks!

[Anonymous No.446964]

>>446903
>new material override

This is what I meant. Is there any way to exclude certain objects, layers or groups from this override?

[Anonymous No.446971]

>>446964
The override is applied to render layers, so yes.. make a new render layer, select the objects you want in it, and click the button that adds them to the render layer, or right click on the render layer and add selected objects.

[Anonymous No.446973]

>>446971

Awesome, it totally worked like I wanted it to. I have yet to gain a deep understanding of the mechanics of the Maya ui and the way the program does it things.

Thx man

[Anonymous No.447009]

How do I make my rendering environment (pic related, table) look more well lit/professional/whatever

[Anonymous No.447010]

>>447009
hi res textures
spec map
bump map
hdr o reflection map
more light sources
random dirt to break up the texture

i mean jesus fuck, isnt it obvious ?

[Anonymous No.447027]

>>447009
Stop using what looks like the Maya software renderer.
Use the built-in mentalray.
Use mia_material_x shaders, never phong/blinn/lambert, those are not energy conserving, physically accurate materials.
Turn on Final Gathering with Secondary Diffuse bounces to 2 in your render settings.
Use area lights with portal-lights plugged into the light shader, and a blackbody plugged into the portal-light's environment slot.
Use HDRi maps with the image based lighting feature in your render settings.

[Anonymous No.447063]

>>447010
>stupid questions thread

Stupid.

[Anonymous No.447068]

>>447009
>nothing
>it's golden
>11/10

[Anonymous No.447069]

>>447009
Even if you knew 3D inside and out from a technical standpoint you still wouldn't had learned about art.
What makes a picture good or not is a subject you learn outside of the context of '3D'.

Like give a five year old a expensive camera and a photostudio at his disposal,
he'll still take crap pictures even though the 'lighting sim' and 'materials' are perfectly set up right?

You just need your art 101 and lighting 101 so you know not only how to render, but also what to render.
Photography and filmmaking has tons of material on how to light a scene. Painting and sculpting has spent
hundreds of years figuring out what makes a image interesting, there is a lot to draw from there.

[Anonymous No.447082]

I want to bake this colored model to a diffuse map texture (to use as a diffuse mask) so I can texture the model in dDo and nDo2. But I'm not sure how to go about doing that in Maya 2015. I picked up this technique in a 3DS Max/Unreal 4 tutorial, and wanted to try it for my own workflow.

Googling "maya diffuse mask bake" hasn't helped much so far.

[Anonymous No.447083]

>>447082
Tried to convert to file texture by selecting my mesh and shaders in Hypershade, but it says I can only render one shader. So I guess this isn't the option I'm looking for.

[Anonymous No.447086]

>>447083
>>447082
I was able to get something close to what I'm wanting, but it doesn't need all the black and shading in there.

I tried to render it again without Alpha turned on but Maya keeps throwing "// Error: line 0: Cannot add the following items to the set since they would break the exclusivity constraint:" errors. Not sure why. I exported my mesh as an FBX and imported it into a new scene where I re-colored with with Lambert materials again, so the scene file is totally clean.

[Anonymous No.447089]

I use surface normals for edge detection, and for some reason blender exports different ones for the triangles in these two rectangles. Any reason why this would happen only here?

[Anonymous No.447092]

>>447082
Uhh... dDo has a package you install for Maya that gives you the material groups to assign and bake to a map for dDo. You bought or pirated version of dDo should have included the Maya plugin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOwufiEJ1R0

[Anonymous No.447105]

>>447092
Ah, that explains it. The lessons I watched used a 3DS Max workflow instead of Maya, so they didn't touch on that. Thanks a ton!

[Anonymous No.447114]

>>447092
Hm, I got dDo's material manager working fine in Maya just like in the video you linked, but that video cuts off right after he's done preparing for a bake. He doesn't actually show how to bake the materials/colors into texture form.

[Anonymous No.447118]

>>447114
I think I'm misunderstanding something fundamentally about the workflow of creating a static mesh asset.

I want to build the mesh, and then add materials/textures/details in dDo. But I can't open the mesh in dDo unless I already have a diffuse and a normal map. So I've been wracking my brain trying to get a diffuse and a normal map out of this mesh I've already created and assigned materials to. But there doesn't seem to be a way to get a normal map off of this model. Why is this proving so difficult? I have to be missing something.

Any time I google for baking normal maps in maya it is *always* for transferring the normal map to a lower-poly mesh. This is not the case for me. I just want to texture my high-poly mesh and need a diffuse and a normal map so I can add detail in dDo.

Can someone offer me some advice? My workflow has to be messed up somewhere; it can't be as hard as I'm making it.

[Anonymous No.447125]

>>447118
stop using that piece of shit ddo

[Anonymous No.447135]

Is Zbrush acceptable for a new person who just wants to sculpt? I'm not interested in animation or anything like that.

I primarily work in 2D, digital painting, drawing, etc.

[Anonymous No.447140]

>>447118
Simply duplicate your mesh and use the Diffuse option in your Transfer Maps feature of Maya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9ORjjyXGSA

[Anonymous No.447145]

>>447135
what do you mean by acceptable? I know some illustrators who use zbrush but no other 3d programs just cause they sculpt if that's what you mean.

[Anonymous No.447149]

>>447135
Yes, it's great for that. The Pixologic website also has a tonne of free tutorials to get you started.

[Anonymous No.447150]

>>447140
See, in that tutorial he has a high poly mesh that he paints with materials and then transfers those colors to his low poly mesh. Why do I have to create a duplicate mesh at all? Doesn't that seem like a needless intermediate step between the "painting the model with colors for a diffuse mask" and "having a diffuse mask texture to work with" steps of the workflow?

I guess I'm not getting why I can't just click the model, which I've already painted with colors/materials, and say "Okay, now bake those in to a texture file" and go into dDo from there.

[Anonymous No.447155]

>>447150
You don't need to paint the model... Just use that dDo plugin to assign materials quickly to the areas you want different colors. Then hit ctrl+d and use Transfer Maps. Transfer Maps needs 2 meshes, a mesh to take information from, and a mesh to transfer it to. So we need to duplicate to give it an input and output. There's no extra work involved, just a single ctrl+d, it's not complicated and takes a lot less time than painting the UVs.

[Anonymous No.447156]

>>447150
They paint a high-poly because you get a better low-poly texture that way. But in your case, you're already working with a high poly, so you don't need to do that step really.

[Anonymous No.447160]

>>447155
Okay, so I made a duplicate mesh and baked out the normal and diffuse maps to the original mesh. But when I open them with the .OBJ mesh in dDo, the colors don't seem to be working.

Any idea why that is?

[Anonymous No.447162]

>>447160
It's working fine.. click the color in the UV map box there to select an area to work on...

[Anonymous No.447163]

>>447162
Hm, I'm not sure why my model is mostly white, then. I assigned Gun Metal and crossscratches to a large portion of the mode, but it remains white.

I assume I'm missing something simple.

[Anonymous No.447164]

>>447163
Click one of the color zones in the panel there, create a new material for it.

[Anonymous No.447165]

>>447164
Okay, it turns out I was importing my Diffuse map as my Material map. But I thought that was right. Can you explain to me the distinction between diffuse and color maps? They seem to be used almost interchangeably when I'm reading about them.

[Anonymous No.447168]

>>447165
The color map is specific to dDo, it's a way of easily managing different dDo materials on a single texture/object. That's what the tiny preview window on the left is, so you can easily click to work on different materials. It keeps things organized and simpler for you.

Diffuse is what the actual color of your model's surface will be. dDo will create this for you when you make materials.

[Anonymous No.447172]

>>447168
Also, it's used for masking off materials you make so that they only affect the areas you want, without having to go in and paint masks yourself.

[Anonymous No.447184]

I am making some models for an older game engine that only supports one UV coordinate per vertex. How is it possible to make a working UV map to a sphere or a cylinder with those limitations?
It just ends up like the right sphere on the image, I am clueless about what I can do.

[Anonymous No.447186]

>>447184
All you need is a planar projection from the top for that one, and expand the outer UV edgeloop a bit.

[Anonymous No.447187]

>>447186
I am not at a computer right now. Just posted that before I went AFK and didn't expect a reply so fast. So thanks a lot for the solution!
I am very new to UV mapping though so I am not entirely sure how to do what you said.
I guess "planar projection" is done with the UV Map "tool"? (Not unwrap UVW, forgot the name).
When you say edgeloop do you mean the seam/border where the UV ends and starts "repeating" itself?

[Anonymous No.447192]

>>447187
What do your UVs look like?

[Anonymous No.447194]

>>447187
The edge, as in visually on the UV map after you've done the planar projection.

This planar projection is called different things in different software, it basically takes an orthographic view of your mesh and makes the UV map look like that. So if you did it from the top, you'd have a spherical UV, and half way down the sphere, it would split in a sense and mirror the top texture to the bottom, without having to actually split your UV's.

[Anonymous No.447196]

Is it possible to draw on your UV map in blender to label them in some way?

I've got unwrapping down well enough (at least in concept), but then I tend to lose track of the faces when exporting & making a texture. Or should I be somehow doing this all inside of blender?

[Anonymous No.447198]

What should I cover in a super-short showreel that I'm putting (a vimeo link to) on my new 3D modeler resume?

I modeled 2 simple static meshes, UV'd and textured them, and put them in in a simple scene in Unreal Editor 4.5. I shot a brief video of me hovering over the models. I have a good amount of WIP images of them, too.

Should it just be the video of the models with WIP images interspersed throughout the video?

And add some overlaying text that says stuff like "Modeled in Maya 2015 SP3" and "6500 polys", etc?

This "showreel" will probably be ~20-25 seconds long at the absolute most.

[Anonymous No.447201]

>>447198
They don't want their time wasted with WIP shots. Rotate around the model and transition from rendered to wireframe and back, or something like that. Add your texture maps to a corner of the screen.

A minute long reel is fine, you don't want to constrain yourself to 25 seconds, especially for 2 meshes. Though you should have some more impressive than 2 simple static props...

[Anonymous No.447202]

>>447201
Thanks for the advice.

I'm very new to 3D modeling (just started at the beginning of August). I spend more time studying than I do modeling, so I don't have many models to put in the showreel. But I'll add in a few more for the sake of it not being too short, I guess

[Anonymous No.447203]

>>447202
Quality before quantity though, don't just throw models in for the sake of having more content...

And if you just started in August, then you shouldn't be making a showreel yet... give it some more months, put that studying to practice and produce more first. Make something that if you saw someone else post it, you'd think "hey, that's pretty impressive".

[Anonymous No.447208]

>>447203
That's ideally what I'd like to do. But, a buddy of mine who works for a certain company just got an opening on the ground level. Not for asset creation or anything like that, but any experience with 3D modeling and things of that nature is a huge plus.

So I figure it's worth it to show them that I'm familiar enough with 3D modeling and texturing that I can put together some simple static meshes and get them working in UE4.

Since I have no actual qualifications, I'm hoping the showreel and the summary on my resume will let them know that I've got a good foundation accruing as I go.

[Anonymous No.447216]

I don't have the slightest clue how to sculpt. People always suggest to learn anatomy. What the fuck does that mean? Do I need to buy a 500 page book if I just want to sculpt mai waifu or should I just try to copy reference? Suggestion for a book in that case?

[Anonymous No.447220]

>>447216
> I don't have the slightest clue
> People always suggest to learn
> What the fuck does that mean?

It probably means you should try to find a line of work that don't really very much on you using the hardware located between your ears anon.

[Anonymous No.447222]

How does a self-taught student of 3D art (modeling/sculpting/texturing/rigging/animating/lighting/rendering/etc) represent their course of study on a CV?

>Education:
>Studied on my own time really hard for like 3 years. Watched every tutorial, lesson, and lecture from Digital Tutors, Lynda, SimplyMaya, and YouTube I could find.
>Subscribed to lots of 3D art-oriented magazines
>No formal training at all

[Anonymous No.447223]

>>447220
Can you read? I asked if it was better to buy a book or just copy for reference, I asked for a suggestion for a book, and I clearly wrote that I don't want to do 3d as work.

[Anonymous No.447225]

>>447223
Oh I'm sorry I missed all of your actual post for the subtext of how you wanted the secret shortcut method
for making the art without bother learning how make the art.

Yes if you only wanna dick around with your dick living lifu with your waifu you don't need to actually read or learn anything difficult.
Just go to www.iamacluelessnab.com and download 'CGIforWeeabooRetardNumber#9000.pdf'. It'll show you how to pull a polygon
in a certain secret angle that unfolds into a finished modell without you actually knowing the first fuck about what you did and why.

[Anonymous No.447230]

>>447194
Thanks! It worked out with the sphere.
But how is it possible to do this with something that is cylindrical? I tried out the same technique but it didn't work out. (I use Max btw).

[Anonymous No.447236]

>>447225
Look, I don't know if this is bait or not, but either way you are a fucking idiot. Where the fuck am I writing that I want a secret shortcut? I just wanted a sensible explanation for what the process of "learning anatomy" is.

If I were going to give help about something I know decently like programming, I would recommend certain books which I know are from people who know what the fuck they are talking about AND know how to teach, and I'd warn about the hundreds of shit books that don't help you at all (I'd say something like read a programming intro book by Stroustrup, do some stupid toy programs, then read the c++ reference by Stroustrup when you are able to), or that buying a book for python is stupid because the doc is amazing and so on.

I see so many people just losing time because they make shit decisions, and I also saw people doing tutorials on youtube about 3d and still being shit themselves (probably without even realizing it). Yeah, I get it, it's about practice and hard work. But even practicing every day hours a day in the totally wrong way is going to harm your progress.

But you probably don't know shit either.

[Anonymous No.447238]

>>447230
Split the top and bottom pieces edges so they can be on their own UV island. It's already a hard edge, so it doesn't matter. And planar project from the front of the cylinder, and pull out the sides on the UV map like you did the sphere so it's more even distribution. (make all the horizontal lines equal distance for the best quality).

That will only work though if you're ok with your texture repeating for both sides.

How come you can't use vertices with multiple UV coordinates? I noticed the .3ds extension, is this for modding a 3DS game? or? Cause I know the 3DS definitely has such capabilities...

[Anonymous No.447239]

>>447238
I am using the World of Warcraft engine. It doesn't support multiple UV coordinates per vertex probably because it's from 2004. Very outdated!

This UV problem can be solved by detaching all vertices, but then there is no smooth because no polygons are connected (I guess). If I knew some magic trick to keep the smooth even with all verts being detached, that would be awesome. I doubt that is possible though.

So for now I will do out what you said and see if it works out for me.

[Anonymous No.447240]

>>447216
It means what it means, study anatomy. How you go about that is entirely up to you, everyone learns differently, it's about finding out what works for you. As a starter, I'd say to look up "3d human scan" so you can study how a human actually looks when in digital form, instead of artist's interpretations. Pull them up using Spotlight in ZBrush so you have them there on the screen while your practice sculpting. Recognize the rules of the forms on the body and learn to use those rules for whatever imaginary person you are sculpting.

Look up some anatomy videos on youtube.
If you're interested enough in sculpting to sit through a long video (perhaps while multi-tasking), I recommend this video on sculpting the face in clay (the techniques apply to 3D sculpting as well)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pirv3EzznR8
He will teach you a lot about how to keep your proportions looking good and how to build up your forms properly.

[Anonymous No.447241]

>>447222
You just say you "studied online for 3 years". Or not at all, just put what you were actually doing for work during that time. Etierh way, you don't have actual work experience, so it's going to come down to your demo-reel regardless. Having gone to a school for 3D doesn't hold much value to employers, because they know 99% of those schools are shite.

[Anonymous No.447242]

>>447239
Multiple UV coordinates per vertex has been around since nearly the dawn of 3D gaming... long before World of Warcraft. There are tonnes of textures in World of Warcraft that couldn't be achieved without split-uvs.

They show some of the old textures here:
http://clevermusings.net/2013/11/wow-model-update-closer-look/

Those are clearly on UVs that are split for proper unfolding. It sounds more like whatever converter you're using to make it compatible with WoW, wasn't coded to fully support what is needed...

[Anonymous No.447243]

>>447242
>It sounds more like whatever converter you're using to make it compatible with WoW, wasn't coded to fully support what is needed...

Most likely so. It's a shame I have to limit myself but it's not easy to code these tools and not everyone can do it, or have time to do it. So I can't be picky.

[Anonymous No.447244]

>>447243
I went and found the tool you're likely using.. And the answer to your problem was right in the thread:
>Smoothing must be done through "Normals welding" ( and not vertices welding ). This is 3DS Max option, idk about blender.
So you want to physically split your geometry edges where needed so that you can properly unfold/unwrap your model, and use that "normal welding" to get smooth shading around those split edges.

[Anonymous No.447245]

>>447244
I could never understand what "normal welding" was. Do you have any clue what that could be?

[Anonymous No.447246]

>>447245
It basically means to make sure the vertex normals for the two vertices that are sitting on top of eachother (since you split the edge) are aligned the same way. Here's my example, the cylinder is split along the top and once down the middle, the furthest right is how it looks by default with smoothed normals, and beside it's vertex normal directions, you'll notice how on the split, there are two vertex normals point in 2 directions out from that vertical edge. That means the shading at those two edges will not be the same. So to change that, I aligned them to the same direction, as shown to the left of it, the two vertex normals there are pointing in one direction, just like all the single edges are that go around the cylinder. And the end result is on the left, a cylinder with a split-edge on it, yet it has smooth shading.

[Anonymous No.447247]

Is this the board for VFX?

[Anonymous No.447248]

>>447247
Yes... As most VFX involves 3D work to some extent.

[Anonymous No.447249]

>>447246
Thanks a lot for that explanation. I am extremely appreciating that you are sharing your knowledge on this. I will try it out in Max, just got to find the right buttons so it will take me some extra minutes to try out.

[Anonymous No.447250]

>>447236
To understand anatomy for a artist perspecive you need 2 basic things.

1. The ability to hold a shape momentarily in your mind and recreate that shape extremly accuratly. like if you look at a picture of triangle, and you, make that triangle and then meassure it's angles
the angles should be the same to within degrees. if you look at a curved line you should be able to recreate that line and if they're placed ontop of one another they should be the same.

2. A atlas inside your mind of how the human body is structured and connected by developing a mental map of the location of hardpoints (bones), their shape as seen from various angles and
the the muscles and connective tissue that binds them together and give rise to the shapes we observe on the surface.

The first is needed to be able to judge if something is actually correct or off, and without this ability no amount of anatomical knowlege will allow you
to render a form well in any media unless you resort to carefully tracing stuff

The second is needed to allow you to read what you are seeing when observing a human, think of learning anatomy as learning the language of the human form.
Drawing/sculpting humans without knowledge of anatomy is a lot like drawing a sentence written in a alphabete you're unfamilar with, treating each letter a strange swirly shape
instead of recognizing them for what they are and writing them out as plain text.

[Anonymous No.447251]

>>447236
>>447249
These skills can be picked up from pretty much any sources, however the more realistic the easier it is to make connections and understand shapes, but regardless they must be drilled
in by severe amounts of practice in order to be refined into that hard to obtain valuable artistic knowledge.

Quick guide;
Mentored live nude drawing class, and actual medical disections of humans = godtier
Anatomy books like Hogarth and Loomis = decent tier
Comicbook anatomy for animuh = shit tier

Shit tier not because it's anime, but because it's harder to comprehend and hampered by you attempting to see anatomy through someone else's eyes.
Growing up I've done all of the above.

[Anonymous No.447252]

>>447246
Holy fucking shit, I cannot believe it.
It just werks!

Thanks so god damn much. Thanks a fucking million!

I get it that it's basic stuff, to just edit a normal. But it can be quite hard to find the right stuff sometimes when you know too little of it.

[Anonymous No.447253]

>>447251
Thank you. This clears up a lot of confusion.

[Anonymous No.447254]

>>447252
Yeah it's all good, most people actually don't learn about that as these days it's the normal map doing the heavy lifting. But it's handy knowledge to have, as it can help you make even better and more efficient base geometry, for normal map bakes too.

[Anonymous No.447264]

>>447236

Learning anatomy is simple as studying it and putting in the effort to embed it into your memory. How you do so is up to you, as long as you're learning. The poster above didn't outline what the process of "learning anatomy" is because there really isn't one more detailed than "find the information (models, books, a mirror, etc) and do what you feel you need to in order to learn it".

You start with the general idea, and work your way into the detailed, complex shit (akin to how you start with easy languages like VB and C++ before moving into base C, complex Java applications and advanced algorithms). The problem that most people run into with art is that after they've grasped the easy shit (extremely basic forms and logical proportions) they never bother to take their knowledge a step further and end up DA neanderthals or pander whores. Avoid this and you'll be fine.

>and I also saw people doing tutorials on youtube about 3d and still being shit themselves (probably without even realizing it)

Being this judgmental of your peers will also shoot you in the foot, so try to stop before you turn into a prick. The skill of the mentor isn't of keystone importance when the knowledge in the lesson is valuable. You can still learn a fair bit about a program's interface and methodology from watching someone navigate it regardless of what they're actually making. Anyone telling you otherwise has been blinded by an ego.

tl;dr you know what you want to learn, sit down and decide on what you feel would be the best method for YOU to learn it. This isn't like school where you're being forced to learn something by an instructor's path, and you're free to go where you please. So get going.

[Anonymous No.447266]

>>447264
>The skill of the mentor isn't of keystone importance when the knowledge in the lesson is valuable

These are sage words you speak anon. There is so much to learn in life that even when you're an expert on a subject
you'll still be able to pick up something new every once in a while from someone less proficient.

Also, not all good ideas are necessarily born at the top of a field.

[Anonymous No.447269]

>>447264
>easy c++
>complex java

u is trollin

[Anonymous No.447271]

Why is making a game so hard? I've seen a lot of kiddies come on here talking about this awesome game they're making and never even see them get to a stage where they have a character walking around with a gun. The way I see it, getting the basics of a game seem to be;
>Download Unity/UE4/other
>model character+import to engine
>spawn basic first person camera object
>attach to model
>tweak code as needed
>make gun+import
>give it basic gun code found online
>tweak code as needed
>model enviornment
>import
>steal sounds from shit
>import
>rinse
>repeat

I feel like the only hard part with making a game with a prebuilt engine would be story-writing, AI, and menus I guess. But that's apparently not true, what makes them so hard?

[Anonymous No.447273]

>>447269

C++ is easy as shit m8.

Java's not wickedly difficult either but has much higher applicative potential.

>>447271

That's because the way you see it is massively watered down from the real process. That, and most people don't know how to commit to a large project or don't truly understand the scope of it before they embark on the endeavor, and thus are doomed to give up shortly thereafter.

The steps you've listed are similar to saying a wedding cake-baking process is "step 1: get ingredients, step 2: make cake; see that wasn't hard at all".

[Anonymous No.447338]

Why is my model being mirrored when I use ZRemesher?

[Anonymous No.447340]

>>447338

What does it look like before remesh

[Anonymous No.447345]

What is "Physically based texturing" all about?

[Anonymous No.447346]

>>447338
Is "mirror" turned on for your brush settings? Because the mirror feature applies to your ZRemesher as well.

>>447345
It means texturing for the new "physically based rendering" game engines, that use energy conserving materials now, along with real-time reflections. The different material model requires a slightly different texturing methodology. Instead of a diffuse/spec/norm, you do diffuse/roughness/metalness/norm.

[Anonymous No.447366]

I have no idea what a Normal is.

Answers please.

[Anonymous No.447367]

>>447366
It's the digital direction the polygon is facing. And vertex normals define surface direction that is interpolated between each vertex normal and edge.

[Anonymous No.447406]

How should I model cloths for a character?

I've got the latest version of Maya and i've sculpted my character's body and face. Do I model my cloths in another program and combine them to the mesh or do I sculpt them onto the model i've made?

[Anonymous No.447434]

My neck looks fine when I animate the skeleton after painting weights, but if I either unlock the Human IK or create a control rig this happens.

This sort of corruption also seems to happen in the hands, I have deleted all non deformer history, made sure that the influence on all vertices makes logical sense and re painted the neck / hands entirely. Nothing seems to work.

What should I try next?

Pic Related

[Anonymous No.447435]

>>447434
Were you rotating those bones before you bound them?

[Anonymous No.447437]

>>447435

It's possible that I might have done that inadvertently. The bones seem to rotate slightly after unlocking the IK

[Anonymous No.447443]

3DS max.

Sometimes while working the zoom function goes crazy.
It doesn't matter if I scroll normally or hold the alt key down to decrease the increments of the zoom, it will really far in or out.

It seems to happen and go away randomly.

[Anonymous No.447444]

>>447366
To put it simply, a polygon has two sides, the normal is the side you can see, while the other side is see-through.

[Anonymous No.447445]

>>447443
Hit whatever the "focus on" hotkey is in Max, this is a problem in most 3D software, and doing a refocus on the object readjusts all the camera values to a proper range.

[Anonymous No.447463]

>>447366
In terms of mathematics, a normal vector is the vector of a plane that tells you what direction a plane is pointing. A plane can consist of at minimum two vectors, an ordinary vector that is on the plane, and a normal vector which tells you the direction the plane is facing. Of course, this doesn't work in 3D software so we have planes made up of points on the plane instead, and the normal vector is calculated using those points.
Thus, the side on which the normal vector is pointing is called the "front", and the opposite is called the "back".
>>447444 's image on the right shows what happens when you tell a renderer to ignore "backfaces", i.e. the normal vector is pointing away from the camera so don't render it.

[Anonymous No.447466]

>>447463
I forgot to mention that the normal vector is always orthogonal (perpendicular) to the plane.

[Anonymous No.447469]

What kind of render does something like this webm use for the stylization?

[Anonymous No.447470]

I cant use GoZ on a single object going from Maya to ZBrush. Every other thing exports fine, but this one object will just give me an error at the bottom of maya that says "Could not save file".

[Anonymous No.447484]

>>447470
Sounds like it doesn't have write permissions. Try running ZBrush and Maya in administration mode.

[Anonymous No.447485]

>>445812

Because you are using pirated version.

[Anonymous No.447490]

Whenever I need to solidify an object in Cinema 4D, I use cloner, set it to linear, and increase the count up to the maximum.

Is there a better way to do this?

[Anonymous No.447496]

>>447469
Looks cel-shaded. Or "toon" shaded. Most major render engines (mental ray, arnold, vray, etc) all have various methods to accomplish this look. Just gotta look up the specific procedure for your engine.

[Anonymous No.447501]

How do I separate these two animations?

I'm trying to create something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCIpKAIFyo for Uni and I figured I could just make one thing and then duplicate it for each sound.

I press Ctrl+Shift+D which copies the whole thing with the animation but changing one also changes the other.

[Anonymous No.447502]

>>447501
Edit your "Duplicate Special" settings, and set it to "New Group" and "Duplicate Input Connections".

This way it will give you a blank parent to reposition the duplicate, and a duplicated animation set that is tied to the duplicate inside that new group.

[Anonymous No.447503]

>>447501
Use "Duplicate Input Graph" in the duplicate special options, not "Duplicate Input Connections".

[Anonymous No.447504]

>>447503
Cheers babe <3

[Anonymous No.447528]

>>447496
Thanks m8

[Anonymous No.447555]

So I'm making a Volumetric Flask and I wanted to apply the 250ML label as a texture onto the surface which is the Glass shader in cycles that doesn't take a texture.
It took a bit of fiddling around but I finally got it on, but for some reason the texture is repeating all over even though I specified the UV map. Anyone know how to make it not repeat at all? I just want the texture where the 3D cursor is.

[Anonymous No.447580]

Been doing some kind of interior in 3ds max
Previously it was rendering properly, but now it's all pink.
dunno what happened, didn't change anything

[Anonymous No.447661]

>>445816
Shift > or Shift < should be able to increase your selection while you've already got something selected.

[Anonymous No.447677]

Is there a way to turn off this kind of wireframe looking view in Max 2014?
Everytime I select a mesh it 'highlights' the mesh like that and can sometimes be in the way.

[Anonymous No.447678]

>>447677
Found it in the viewport configure settings.

[Anonymous No.447681]

>>447555
Fixed it up. It was caused by a bad UV map, and fixed by using an even worse one.

[Anonymous No.447683]

>>447681
>being unable to UV map a capped cylinder

[Anonymous No.447684]

>>447580
I think your computer got infected with a femenist virus.

[Anonymous No.447715]

>>447683
>He thinks that it's just a capped cylinder

[Anonymous No.447717]

>>447715
It's literally just 2 cylinders, capped at the bottom, sitting inside of eachother, once you split the inside and outside surface. Learn to recognize the major shapes that make up your object, it makes unwrapping a whole lot easier.

[Anonymous No.447718]

why is every single blender tutorial on youtube voiced by the most monotone, boring man in the world and 1h+

[Anonymous No.447721]

>>447718
Because mostly only autistic people stick with Blender. They think because it's open source, they have a duty to use it over other software.

[Anonymous No.447722]

>>447717
Not him, but do you have any literature or lectures you could point someone who's relatively inexperienced at UV unwrapping/mapping?

I can do UV unwrapping, but it tends to take me forever since I, like you said, don't have a lot of experience recognizing major shapes that make up my object very well.

I'll notice blatantly obvious things, but most of the time I'm guessing as to whether planar/cylindrical/spherical unwrapping would work best for a certain area.

[Anonymous No.447724]

>>447717
It's not though, as there's the surface of the liquid and meniscus, All of outside and the inside up to where the liquid starts, and the main part of the liquid itself, all of which are separated mesh strips thanks to Blender's lack of smoothing groups

[Anonymous No.447743]

>>447724
You're making your bottle wrong. The water surface should be a floating piece of geo that intersects the glass, the glass should still be solid going all the way down inside the bottle. You simply add an edge-loop around the water-edge and reverse the normals from that point down.

So unwrap the bottle like 2 cylinders, and a simple unfold on the water surface to lay it out nice.

>>447722
What software are you using? Planar/cylindrical/spherical unwrap methods generally aren't used these days. The unfold function, along with UV pinning, is how it's done more efficiently and neatly. You recognize the major shapes and think about where it would be best to place UV seams so that this object can basically lay flat with the least distortion (imagine it like you were trying to create a rug out of a bear). And the areas you have UV splits, feel free to add hard-edge on your model to get cleaner looking normal map bakes (here's a video related to that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciXTyOOnBZQ )

[Anonymous No.447744]

>>447743
>What software are you using? Planar/cylindrical/spherical unwrap methods generally aren't used these days. The unfold function, along with UV pinning, is how it's done more efficiently and neatly. You recognize the major shapes and think about where it would be best to place UV seams so that this object can basically lay flat with the least distortion (imagine it like you were trying to create a rug out of a bear). And the areas you have UV splits, feel free to add hard-edge on your model to get cleaner looking normal map bakes (here's a video related to that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciXTyOOnBZQ )

Ahh, thanks. I've still been using projection methods since I'm still new to the whole 3D/CGI stuff. I've used unfolding before, but not pinning. Sounds like a good method.

Thanks a bunch!

[Anonymous No.447745]

>>447743
The surface IS a floating mesh, The glass is solid and below the meniscus, the normals are flipped out (just like the liquid tutorial in the sticky), however when I flipped the normals without disconnecting them it gave some weird artefacting.

I think I've got it figured

[Anonymous No.447802]

What's a good free website for a portfolio? I need one for a class to showcase some of my character models

[Anonymous No.447811]

>>447802
https://www.behance.net/
http://portfolio.cgsociety.org/
http://www.artstation.com/

Are the most popular ones for CG right now.

[Anonymous No.447813]

Anyone got any useful tips for rendering normal maps with Mental ray in 3dsmax? I set up my cage, render with scanline and it's fine but as soon as I use mental ray (same cage setup) it goes to shit with horrible blotches. The example is just to show the extra artifacts that appear with MR.

[Anonymous No.448220]

Hey /3/, I want to make an A2 sized print of a recent model I made and I was wondering what resolution would be a good size?

[Anonymous No.448226]

>>445825
Try and save in you documents. Saving in temporal probably raises alarms everywhere.

[Anonymous No.448234]

So I've got an assignment to model an animal out of machine parts. Anyone have any ideas for the horns? As a last resort I could just make them generic, segmented robotic horns, but I was curious if anyone was aware of any sort of actual mechanical motif that resembled them.

[Anonymous No.448268]

>>448234
A broken gear section maybe?

[Anonymous No.448274]

How much relevance has a Zbrush artist in the industry? Is it crucial or is it better to master 3DS?

[Anonymous No.448276]

I just pressed Ctrl + F in Zbrush and now I can't enter edit mode. How do I fix this?

[Anonymous No.448335]

>>448274
ZBrush skill is asked for more than poly modeling packages now, ZBrush is asked as a prerequisite, while Maya/Max are usually put as "a plus". Go around to your favorite studio's websites and look at what they're asking for in their careers sections.

[Anonymous No.448336]

>>448276
You filled your canvas with your current material/color and popped it down to 2.5D mode, so you can't see when you're dragging out a new model on the canvas. Press ctrl+n to clear the canvas so you can see the model you're drawing out and then hit T to go back to edit mode (or use your right click menu)

[Anonymous No.448343]

>>448335
Thanks, I appreciate the answer

[Anonymous No.448466]

Can someone give me the simple explanation for what "Gamma" and "Alpha" are in terms of 3D rendering? I see these terms thrown around a lot in tutorials/lectures, but never really get a simple explanation of what they are or what they mean.

[Anonymous No.448467]

>>448466
Alpha is just the value of transparency/opacity. Just another word basically. Though Alpha usually affects all shading, while Transparency/Opacity simply makes an object see-through, but can still have reflections/refractions, like glass.

Gamma is the curvature of the dark to light value of the whole image.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_correction

[Anonymous No.448509]

>>448234
Look up some of H.R Giger's artwork to get some inspiration for machine type creatures.

[Anonymous No.448659]

So my rotation thing is fucked. How do I unfuck it?

[Anonymous No.448817]

I am certified in auto cad, and solid works.
My question is, why is maya like jamming a unlubed dildo in my nose?

Literally the most unuser friendly shit imaginable.

[Anonymous No.448818]

>>448817
Because you transferred from something you knew into something you didn't know and expected it to behave the same.

If you're say a max user moving to maya, maya will feel very weird, and if you're a maya user moving to max, max will feel very weird.
You need a few weeks in any software to develop a feel for it and learn it's idiosyncrasies.

Zbrush is the exception to this rule, I've used it for years and I still feel the UI was designed by autistic aliens.

[Anonymous No.448827]

>>448818
I'm used ZBrush for years and it's one of my favorite UIs, because I was easily able to drag and drop features where I wanted them, creating a UI that fit my needs. Also, I use a gaphics tablet.

[Anonymous No.448828]

>>448659
That's your gizmo. Reset it. I don't use Maya so I don't know how.

[Anonymous No.448837]

is it possible to bake a matcap? if so, how do you do it?

preferably for blender, but i think i could figure it out with a general flow of what you do in any program.

[Anonymous No.448853]

Decided to try my hand at sculpting, and it's going horribly so far (but bear in mind I can't box model a head either, so...).
A lot of the rough areas on the skull are due to me stupidly sculpting in hair and being unable to ctrl z back and having to end up using decimate to "fix it"

How to I reduce the density in certain areas, such as the shoulder blades? They're not smoothing properly now because they're so dense compared to neighboring areas

[Anonymous No.448855]

Does anyone know what is the best most ideal default starting point with Blender?

I am trying to import .3ds/.max etc files and export them in .fbx for a game but the textures are so fucking finicky in Blender.

For instance, I will import a .3ds model of a ship and it will be missing textures even if they are included in the folder. Or I'll import a model of a ship and there will be no textures while in texture view mode, but there will be in render mode with a proper sun lighting source - something I found out way, way too late.

And furthermore sometimes the textures in texture mode will be fucked up and bright white or black but then look normal in render mode under a lightsource.

What's the best thing to do regarding all this in order to save time and not have to constantly go through this process every time for each model I try to import and export?

Also can someone describe in the most layman way possible the difference between a material and a texture?

I'm guessing material is the gloss/shininess/matte/opaque/transparency of an object and a texture is something further overlayed onto that to give it more detail and is often UV mapped, am I correct?

[Anonymous No.448856]

>>448855
Err to refine my first question more, what is the most ideal preset to have when dealing with importing and exporting models not from Blender but from random 3D model sites that often vary wildly from model to model in how the modeler set it up, and how it was exported, etc?

[Anonymous No.448888]

When I do bakes with Cycles, why does it seem like the baked result is at half brightness? Is there anything I can do about that?

[Anonymous No.448890]

When I do texture baking with Cycles for diffuse maps, why does it seem like the baked result is at half brightness(compared with the render)? Is there anything I can do about that?

[Anonymous No.448895]

>>445812
Working with AutoCAD 2015 here.
I Just wanted to make a little flat object to take to UPS in order to test out their 3d printing services. More specifically, I took this sprite from a game and used it as a reference.

I have 0 3d modelling experience, so it took me a while to feel out a way to do what I wanted to. I ended up creating a 28x70 array of rectangles, deleting the ones in the white space by hand, and then grouping and extruding the remaining rectangles. Now I can't figure out a way to join them together so it's one big, blocky object. Any help?

[Anonymous No.448898]

>>448895
lt's been a while since I used autocad but the command join should work

not sure if booleans will work in autodesk when object meet but dont overlap, but you can also try and booleanunion them one by one. if that doesnt work, find the mid point of every block on the bottom, flat surface, scale but 1.001 or so and then try to booleanunion again

[Anonymous No.448906]

>>448855
>>448856

Blender can't into import/export. You are just going to have to live with setting up files manually. That said, I think using collada is your best bet at this point, from my experience it seems to be the most consistently reliable and easiest to use. FBX is still a work in progress and everything else is shit.

As for your texture issues in the viewport, if you have not done so already, try changing your material mode in the properties panel from Multitexture to GLSL and use "Material" veiwport shading rather than Texture.

[Anonymous No.448922]

>>448898
Thank you! The boolean union command worked right off the bat. Join wouldn't work because something about not being able to use closed objects, and there's a union tool that wouldn't work for some reason that I couldn't figure out.

[Anonymous No.449227]

>>448906
Thanks a bunch, the things you mentioned I wasn't aware of and they helped a ton with being able to view most models that I couldn't before because they were either all black or all white etc.

I think I may just try Collada again.

The game I'm talking about is Outerra by the way. But fun as fuck and frustrating as hell to successfully import a model you want in there.

[Anonymous No.449299]

So I hear a lot that you should try to keep your quads as close to squares as you can ranther than rectangles.

Do the only arguments for this that I've heard is that it looks prettier and professionel.

But is there any actual benefit to doing it? Maybe unwrapping?

For exsample, this pauldron I've made here.
Is there any reason for me to move the edges around on the spherical part to get more even sized quads?

[Anonymous No.449301]

>>449299
Unwrapping and texturing is pretty much the only reason to keep them squared, other than that just keep them as quads and it'll be fine.

[Anonymous No.449303]

in blender I'm fugging around with some model and I used multires->subdivide and sculpted some, but when I went to edit mode it switched back to how the model looked pre sculpted and pre subdivide.
same thing happens when I remove the multires, it undos all the scultping.
any way to fix this?

[Anonymous No.449308]

What is the best source / learning material for learning zbrush?

[Anonymous No.449309]

>>449299
>>449301

In extreme cases, having more evenly sized polygons can improve subdivision in something like zbrush or mudbox. This only applies to models where there is a LOT of space without edges and then areas with densely packed edges though.

Basically, don't model like an idiot, and you're fine. The topology of the pauldron you posted is fine.

[Anonymous No.449324]

>>449299
It doesn't matter if they're square or rectangular as long as they resemble a box.
A lot of people do stupid shit like making quad polygons that are de facto triangles and it ruins deformation algorithms like subdivision and animation.

[Anonymous No.449337]

>>449308
that was beautiful

thanks /3/

[Anonymous No.449348]

>>449337
The tree is total shit but the grass looks amazing.
How do?

[Anonymous No.449352]

>>448828
>I don't know how

Then why did you respond...?

I bet you're one of those people on stack overflow who answers questions with "Gee that sure sounds complicated I've never used that program though so I don't know how it works."

Do you also call the numbers on posters of lost pets, saying "I haven't seen your dog but I lost my turtle one time anyways sorry I can't help"?

[Anonymous No.449353]

>>448855
The "best most ideal starting point with blender" was covered in another thread, the basics are:

1) Uninstall blender

2) Install a pirated version of some better software

3) Revel in how much more straightforward it is to do everything.

[Anonymous No.449414]

how can I replace this so it's in the middle?

[Alioto No.449424]

>>449414

[Anonymous No.449429]

>>449424
Thank you!

[Anonymous No.449558]

I can't figure out why the render here isn't displaying the entire face that I've selected. It seems to cut off rendering the face about halfway through for some reason. I can't figure out why.

It extends to go into the other objects, so its edge shouldn't be visible to the camera.

Rendering in mental ray using just one point light and final gathering.

All materials are mia_material_x.

[Anonymous No.449559]

>>449558

Dude, that's a shadow.

[Anonymous No.449560]

>>449559
I don't think that's a shadow. A shadow wouldn't be so stark/sudden, would it? All the other shadows are very gradual and soft. Like on the other arm.

[Anonymous No.449573]

>>449560
Look above the right eye, same sharp shadow. You can verify this very easily by simply changing the light position and seeing how that dark spot changes.

[Anonymous No.449635]

>>449560
drop in an ambient light and see

[Anonymous No.449643]

What is the most *recommended* workflow for Maya?

I've gotten used to zBrush and now I want to begin teaching myself Maya, but I can't seem to find a straightforward explanation of what the hell the workflow for Maya is. My goals are:

>Import mesh from zBrush.
>Learn how to render a still frame, lighting/etc.
>Learn rigging and animation.

I have managed to import a low-poly version of my model, and do a few basic lighting exercises.

However, I haven't found anything that blatantly explains what the process of hd model -> Maya -> test render is. I'm planning to figure out how to just do regular renders of a still mesh before I start teaching myself rigging.

I have noticed that deleting my zBrush model's lower subdivs to force the HD model into Maya results in a lot of lag so I'm assuming that's not the way to do it.

My current impression is that you import the model at the lowest subdivision, work it as you wish and then during the actual render you set Maya to use the highest in its place. Is this how you do detailed meshes in Maya or am I swimming up the wrong stream here? I've also seen a methodology using a normal map to "fake" the detail on a low-poly model, but then you're left using a low poly model, right? Or is that just what you're supposed to do?

[Anonymous No.449651]

>>449643
Generally, you don't import the multi-million poly meshes into your poly-modeling app. What you do is bake a displacement map out of ZBrush that will displace your low-poly when it's subdivided during render time. In Maya, under Windows>Rendering>mentalray>Approximation Editor, you can apply a subdiv approximation to the mesh that will subdivide and displace it at render-time. Just need to have the displacement map plugged into the root shader node of your material, otherwise known as the "shading group".

[Anonymous No.449865]

I want to texture a model I made using Quixel dDo. But dDo says I have to have a normal map in order to start texturing. My model doesn't have a normal map. What do I do? I know most workflows seem to make a normal map by baking it from the high resolution model to the low resolution model, but I don't have a low resolution model; I just want to texture the model I've already made.

[Anonymous No.449867]

>>449865
dDo is more meant for game asset texturing, not production level. If you want, you can try just baking a normal map from your high to your high and see how that works, but I'm not sure it will work out well, as dDo uses the curvatures in the normal map to do some calculations.

Add some more beveling and smoothing to a duplicate of your current mesh and do a bake from it.

[Anonymous No.449884]

Why is 3ds Max unable to load my usermacro scripts on startup? It knows where they are... but it doesn't load them.

[Anonymous No.449897]

>>449867
So I guess dDo isn't what I'm looking for in a procedural texturing program, then.

Would Crazybump (or some other program) let me texture my model without needing a normal map first?

Rather, I guess my question should be: How do people procedurally texture models that have no normal map?

The only workflow I ever see referenced in lectures/lessons/etc is
Model high-poly -> duplicate -> create low-poly version of high-poly model from duplicate -> bake normal map from high-poly to low-poly model -> booyah everything's candyland now

The workflow I'm trying to use is:
Model high-poly -> texture

How do I accomplish this?

[Anonymous No.449899]

>>449897
Substance Painter is one way. Other than that, you do it the old fashoin way, generate your textures and project them onto the mesh with software like Mari or ZBrush.

[Anonymous No.449908]

>>449899
>Other than that, you do it the old fashoin way, generate your textures and project them onto the mesh with software like Mari or ZBrush.
I'm unfamiliar with this method. What exactly is it called? Or, rather, what would I look up in order to learn more about it?

I'll have to look into Substance Painter; I was just reading in 3D World earlier that it's apparently a pretty great program for texturing.

[Anonymous No.449909]

>>449899
>mari, zbrush, 'old fashioned'

kids these days. I'd tell you about the days of UV unwrapping before there existed any unwrapping tools.

[Anonymous No.449911]

>>449909
That was mighty finicky shit, like trying to shave your balls with a chainsaw, not as dangerous but about as efficent and only about twice as fun.
I remember when pelt mapping was introduced, I almost came in my pants.

[Anonymous No.449917]

Is anybody here familiar with the program 3d Custom Girl? I'm looking for people who know how to create mods and models for the program. Mainly some everyday objects or some unique character outfits.

Any 3d artists here open to commission/requests?

[Anonymous No.449943]

>>449917
Full, original, textured model commissions that are rigged specifically for a game like that, would be mighty pricey... What exactly were you thinking of paying a person?

[Anonymous No.449948]

>>449943
I'm not really familiar with the process but I do realize it'd be a pretty pricey job especially for more detailed mods. I'd have no idea what to offer so I'd just wait for the modders asking price.

I know some people are able to convert models from the similar program Miku Miku Dance so maybe I could save them some time by supplying them with those models. Again, I'm very new to this sort of thing.

[Anonymous No.449954]

>>449948
If you could supply models you wanted, then yes, it would be much cheaper. Depending on the rigging needs and how hard it is to get into the software, I'd probably charge 30-70 USD.

And original model though, would likely range $120+ depending on how detailed.

[Anonymous No.449959]

>>449954
Huh, that's not as bad as I thought it'd be.

How about stationary objects. I know a guy who mentioned making them using plans from 3DWarehouse. Is that possible?

Say for instance this outhouse

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model.html?id=e51cb3725a31140f8da6e13fa92409be

[Anonymous No.449960]

>>449959
Oh damn, they provide Sketchup models of it, nice. Then that would be really quick yeah, either just simple conversion, or a quick remake with better quality if wanted. Conversion job would only be a few bucks, remake probably $10-40 depending on complexity/textures, lot of potential variance there.

[Anonymous No.449962]

>>449960
Hot damn. Wanna make a couple bucks man?

[Anonymous No.449965]

>>449962
Sure.
[e-mail]

[Anonymous No.449966]

>>449965
Awesome. Writing up an email.

[Anonymous No.450030]

Does V-Ray have a Render Element for hair? I just tried compiling everything in Nuke and it seems my hair is missing the transmission.

I have
>Reflection
>Specular
>Diffuse
>GI
>Lighting

What am I missing?

[Anonymous No.450084]

Beginner in Maya. I don't know what I did, but all tools are grayed out in Object mode. What happened?

[Anonymous No.450085]

>>450084
What do you mean your tools are greyed out? Would you mind posting a screenshot?

[Anonymous No.450086]

>>450085
It works again when I leave object mode.

[Anonymous No.450089]

>>450086
Looks like you have the values locked, go to the channel box and highlight the scale/translate/rotate, right click and unlock selected

I think that's it anyway

[Anonymous No.450100]

>>450089
Thanks.

[Anonymous No.450101]

>>450100
no problem.

[Anonymous No.450162]

Anyway to force 3dsmax to render higher than 8192x8192 for the render to texture dialog? Even at this resolution I'm still getting some aliasing and expensive super sampling only does so much. I want to render it higher with little to no super sampling and down sample in Photoshop.

[Anonymous No.450188]

>>450162
This question is all kinds of confusing... Super sampling is the act of rendering at a higher resolution bro. You render higher, and when you downscale, it anti-aliases the image.

[Anonymous No.450195]

I'm wanting to get started learning how to make my models look good. So I'm learning the basics of textures and materails and shaders and such.

Can someone explain to me what "materials" really are? Are materials just the reflection/refraction/surface information that's relevant to how it will interact with light in the scene?

And how does one go between programs with the same material? e.g.: in Maya I assigned a mia_material_x material to my object and gave it a shiny look. If I export this model and bring it into Substance Painter (software I haven't actually used yet, but am planning to learn shortly), will Substance Painter be able to replicate all of those material specifics that I gave the mia_material_x in Maya?

And can one assign more than one material to one mesh? e.g.: my gun model has a metal barrel and a wooden grip. Would I assign two separate materials to each set of faces on the mesh? Or would that be bad practice?

Thanks!

[Anonymous No.450207]

>>450188

It is but it doesn't seem to anti-alias hard edges particularly well when rendering out normal maps and it just seems like a complete waste of time using a high quality super sampler. Upping the texture size with a less intensive super sampler like max star 2.5 and downsizing has produced the best results so far. I've found a work around for it although it's not ideal.

[Anonymous No.450239]

What exactly does "diffuse" mean?

I'm learning the basics of texturing and I see this word thrown around a lot and seems synonymous with "color" sometimes. But what exactly does it mean in context?

[Anonymous No.450341]

>>450239

Diffuse is just a colour map. A true diffuse map would literally be just colour information and nothing else. It's often incorrectly used to describe a simple base texture where a few maps are collapsed together, often with lighting and shadow information.

[Anonymous No.450351]

>>449414
GoZ to 3dsmax. Center the model. GoZ back to zbrush

[Anonymous No.450616]

If I want to use Blender with a low performance computer, let's say ok proc but low ram, like 4 go, will I have trouble working or will the performances only affect the rendering time?

[Anonymous No.450618]

>>450616
Depends on what you're doing in Blender. Are you modelling? Texturing, too? Lighting? Rendering? Animating?

Just about any moderm machine will be fine for modelling at the bare minimum, but if you're making particularly intricate textures with normal maps, height maps, roughness maps, etc, then it can get pretty laggy if your computer isn't on the higher end of the spectrum.

[Anonymous No.450619]

>>450618
To be honnest I'm totally new on 3d, I just draw 2d usually, so I'm not sure how far I'll go. But I'd like to try animation.

The question was actually because I want to get an hybrid laptop PC or tablet to sketch outside my house, so I guess my workflow with Blender could be doing basic things outside and exporting the project (if it works like that) on my home computer to finish them with more details and export.

So yeah, tl;dr, animation with basic forms and no rendering.

(sorry for my english, not my first language)

[Anonymous No.450620]

>>450619
I'm no expert, but it seems like Blender ought to be able to do animation without too much issue based on an okay processor and 4GB of RAM.

You would probably get a better answer by consulting their website's Hardware Requirements Page (if they have one).

[Anonymous No.450696]

Is there an archive for this board? I haven't found one yet.

[Anonymous No.450772]

>>450696
why would you need an archive for a board where threads stay up for months?

[Anonymous No.450810]

>>450772
To read through older threads that weren't any longer up of course.

And to look for questions and their answers and various other resources other people have asked/given before.

[Anonymous No.451135]

Does anyone know any good tutorials for extrusion modeling in Blender?

I have to learn this shit for class.

The fact that the class is teaching blender should tell you how shit it is, I just want to get this over with so I can go take a real class.

[Anonymous No.451194]

>>451135
doesn't have to be for blender specifically. extrusion modelling is the same in every program.

[Anonymous No.451225]

I'm learning how to use Substance Painter to paint my models that I create in Maya.

I'm using a smoothing (OpenSubDiv) workflow in Maya to create the mesh. When I export the .FBX, I checked "include smooth mesh" under Geometry in the preset settings. That is to say, the actual geometry hasn't been smoothed, but I use the smooth preview to see how the model would look if it were to be subdivided.

However, when I open the .FBX in Substance Painter, it shows me the non-smooth mesh. I'm not sure how to go about making the smooth mesh show up in Substance Painter. Is it possible without going back and actually smoothing my meshes?

[Anonymous No.452578]

Why can't I find the motivation to start anything?

[Anonymous No.452609]

In Maya 2015 I get this black artifacting if I zoom out too far. I'm doing 1 unit=1cm because that's how Unity imports it as.

Any way to fix this?