Noob ask help to Mudboox owners. - Polyloop

Affuso · 10th February 2007, 18:07

Hi, my demo copy of Mudbox is expired before I can test it .

Now I made this with Hexagon ( I am a noob) .
I need that some nice forum member may open it with Mudbox, then apply some details ( for istance, a reptile skin or some) and send me the model and the displacement map.
The idea is to do models with Hezagon , see if I can adds details with Mudbox and use the displacement map with Carrara.
at 299 bucks , MB is very expensive for me but I can't afford the 500 of zbrush.

I notice also that when I apply the smoothing level in Hexagon , at 40 000 faces , the program freeze and I can't use the bump, displacement brushes.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/f2zeq7 humanoid mesh

jbshorty · 11th February 2007, 03:38

Hi. I'm not a Mudbox user. But generally speaking the answer is yes. You can take a displacement map created from any sculpting program, and then apply to your mesh in Carrara. Remember that a displacement map is just a greyscale texture image. It's no different than a texture, what's different is how it's used in the render process. But i am not sure what the limitations are in Carrara. Mudbox can work on very high-poly meshes (assuming your RAM is large enough). And I am pretty sure that Carrara isn't ready to cope with that. I tried out some displacement stuff in C5 Pro a while back and everything slowed to a crawl. And i was not using any huge amount of smoothing for the displacement... About Hexagon freezing up, high-poly sculpting requires HUGE amounts of RAM and a pretty fast CPU. I have 2Gb RAM, with 512Mb on my graphics driver, on a 3.6GHz P4, and have gotten Hex to sculpt to around 400,000 polygons. Post your system specs, maybe you are underpowered for real-time sculpting in Hexagon. Mudbox however is boasting much larger poly-counts (14,000,000 was the highest i've heard). So on a lower powered machine you still might get decent results with Mudbox than you do with Hexagon. But i'm only guessing about that...

Affuso · 11th February 2007, 10:49

I have not program can create a displacement map: Sharpconstruct don't do this and Hexagon freeze when I try to use the brushes, I have a PIV2800 , 1 giga of ram and a GT6800 with a 256 og ram.
For add details with the DP and Bump brushes of Hexagon I have to tesselate a lot the first cube (but I can't model well a cube with all those faces) and also so , the details process is not smooth and I can 't real control it.

jbshorty · 11th February 2007, 19:12

Just my opinion, and a bit off-topic. But in Silo 2 i can easily take a cube and smooth to around 1,200,000 polys and sculpt in real-time with no major issues. And the resulting sculpt is very smooth. In Hex the sculpt caps out at around 600,000 polys and results are incredibly choppy. So i don't bother with it at all. IMO the sculpt tools in Hex are not a good benchmark of sculpting quality... Keep in mind also that you may be able to sculpt a low-poly cube into a very 3-dimensional form. But if you tried to render a displacment on that low-poly cube the displacement will be very different from what you expect. The rendered displacement acts only along the normal vectors of the faces, it's not capable of extreme multi-directional branching. So scutlping a ball into a fully formed model has very little practical results unless you just need to deform a ball. It's better to model a real base mesh and then sculpt local area details... One more thing to consider is that it's easier to sculpt on a 400,000 poly mesh of "real faces" than it is to sculpt on a smoothed version of same quality. Because smoothed objects are more CPU-demanding than real meshes. So you might get better results of sculpting if you collapse the model with a few steps of smoothing applied...

Affuso · 11th February 2007, 20:47

For judging I should test Silo 2 for my self; Sharpcontruct does has some good tools also but I can't export nothing with him and the final mesh is too heavy for Hexagon.

Affuso · 11th February 2007, 23:04

Can Silo does export displacement\normal maps usable in Carrara?

jbshorty · 11th February 2007, 23:39

I haven't kept up with each beta, as far as sculpting goes. It's is a low-priority tool fror me really. But the Silo developers said recently that the next beta should have it, and i think it's to be released early this coming week. The displacement maps will be OK to use in Carrara, or any other rendering engine which supports displacement...

Affuso · 12th February 2007, 00:37

In your opinion the sculpting feature are better in Silo than in Hexagon.
In regards at your previous post..at real mesh with hundrend of thousand of faces is not animable or usable in a game. Perhaps a normal map? I can obtain a normal map using Nvidia Melody.

jbshorty · 12th February 2007, 05:35

For base sculpting, Silo 2 is a real killer. But it's not capable to do very fine details like Mudbox and it has no layers (but it does store the displacement individually on each smoothing level similar to Hexagon).

I have zero experience with modeling for games. But it sounds like normal mapping is the way to go if games are your target. Modo 202 can bake a normal map from a sculpted high-poly mesh onto the UV's of a low-poly mesh. In fact, the high-res mesh doesn't need to have UV's at all

!!!You only need Uv's on the low-poly target. Watch this video here called "Object Baking" to see what i mean... Layered sculpting is going to be a feature of Modo in the near future. So if you're not in a rush to buy Mudbox, then you may wait a bit to see how Modo develops.
http://www.luxology.com/whatismodo/model.aspx

I believe Mudbox can also bake normal maps in a similar way, but not 100% sure about that. You should post on the Mudbox forums. Or start a new thread here at Polyloop with that specific topic. Maybe you will get the answer you need.

Also, to render normal maps in Carrara, you have to buy the "Deeper" plug-in from Inagoni. It can be found here:
http://www.inagoni.com/content.php?content.2

i hope this helps in some way...
shorty

jbshorty · 12th February 2007, 06:27

sorry i forgot to mention - Silo will be able to export both displacement and normal maps...

Affuso · 12th February 2007, 12:41

Thanks, Modo is beyond my budget now, as well as Zbrush.at 299 bucks Mudbox could be still affordable .I'll wait for the final release of Silo 2.

jbshorty · 12th February 2007, 13:52

Object-Object baking is not available in Silo yet, but has been often requested. I think it will appear eventually... My advise is not to wait if you're interested in Silo. The price right now is $109 (with free upgrade to 2.0 when released). But the real price of 2.0 will be $159. And it's expected to be pretty close to final beta. I think it will ship within next 2 months. so you should start demo'ing V1.4 right now, and if you buy it then you can start playing with beta of V2 sculpting tools as well...

shorty

Affuso · 12th February 2007, 15:09

I have to know if I can use it for my purpuses.
Silo is a little better modeller that Hexagon ( for me) but I need a tool for details at this point.
So I prefer to spend 50 bucks more that risk to spend 100 now , find that I don't need it and spend another 299 for Mudbox later.

10th February 2007, 18:07	#1 (permalink)
Affuso Extrusion Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 172	Noob ask help to Mudboox owners. Hi, my demo copy of Mudbox is expired before I can test it . Now I made this with Hexagon ( I am a noob) . I need that some nice forum member may open it with Mudbox, then apply some details ( for istance, a reptile skin or some) and send me the model and the displacement map. The idea is to do models with Hezagon , see if I can adds details with Mudbox and use the displacement map with Carrara. at 299 bucks , MB is very expensive for me but I can't afford the 500 of zbrush. I notice also that when I apply the smoothing level in Hexagon , at 40 000 faces , the program freeze and I can't use the bump, displacement brushes. http://www.sendspace.com/file/f2zeq7 humanoid mesh

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11th February 2007, 03:38	#2 (permalink)
jbshorty proud to be a nurb Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: only in your mind Posts: 1,362	Hi. I'm not a Mudbox user. But generally speaking the answer is yes. You can take a displacement map created from any sculpting program, and then apply to your mesh in Carrara. Remember that a displacement map is just a greyscale texture image. It's no different than a texture, what's different is how it's used in the render process. But i am not sure what the limitations are in Carrara. Mudbox can work on very high-poly meshes (assuming your RAM is large enough). And I am pretty sure that Carrara isn't ready to cope with that. I tried out some displacement stuff in C5 Pro a while back and everything slowed to a crawl. And i was not using any huge amount of smoothing for the displacement... About Hexagon freezing up, high-poly sculpting requires HUGE amounts of RAM and a pretty fast CPU. I have 2Gb RAM, with 512Mb on my graphics driver, on a 3.6GHz P4, and have gotten Hex to sculpt to around 400,000 polygons. Post your system specs, maybe you are underpowered for real-time sculpting in Hexagon. Mudbox however is boasting much larger poly-counts (14,000,000 was the highest i've heard). So on a lower powered machine you still might get decent results with Mudbox than you do with Hexagon. But i'm only guessing about that...

11th February 2007, 10:49	#3 (permalink)
Affuso Extrusion Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 172	I have not program can create a displacement map: Sharpconstruct don't do this and Hexagon freeze when I try to use the brushes, I have a PIV2800 , 1 giga of ram and a GT6800 with a 256 og ram. For add details with the DP and Bump brushes of Hexagon I have to tesselate a lot the first cube (but I can't model well a cube with all those faces) and also so , the details process is not smooth and I can 't real control it.

11th February 2007, 19:12	#4 (permalink)
jbshorty proud to be a nurb Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: only in your mind Posts: 1,362	Just my opinion, and a bit off-topic. But in Silo 2 i can easily take a cube and smooth to around 1,200,000 polys and sculpt in real-time with no major issues. And the resulting sculpt is very smooth. In Hex the sculpt caps out at around 600,000 polys and results are incredibly choppy. So i don't bother with it at all. IMO the sculpt tools in Hex are not a good benchmark of sculpting quality... Keep in mind also that you may be able to sculpt a low-poly cube into a very 3-dimensional form. But if you tried to render a displacment on that low-poly cube the displacement will be very different from what you expect. The rendered displacement acts only along the normal vectors of the faces, it's not capable of extreme multi-directional branching. So scutlping a ball into a fully formed model has very little practical results unless you just need to deform a ball. It's better to model a real base mesh and then sculpt local area details... One more thing to consider is that it's easier to sculpt on a 400,000 poly mesh of "real faces" than it is to sculpt on a smoothed version of same quality. Because smoothed objects are more CPU-demanding than real meshes. So you might get better results of sculpting if you collapse the model with a few steps of smoothing applied...

11th February 2007, 20:47	#5 (permalink)
Affuso Extrusion Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 172	For judging I should test Silo 2 for my self; Sharpcontruct does has some good tools also but I can't export nothing with him and the final mesh is too heavy for Hexagon.

11th February 2007, 23:04	#6 (permalink)
Affuso Extrusion Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 172	Can Silo does export displacement\normal maps usable in Carrara?

11th February 2007, 23:39	#7 (permalink)
jbshorty proud to be a nurb Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: only in your mind Posts: 1,362	I haven't kept up with each beta, as far as sculpting goes. It's is a low-priority tool fror me really. But the Silo developers said recently that the next beta should have it, and i think it's to be released early this coming week. The displacement maps will be OK to use in Carrara, or any other rendering engine which supports displacement...

12th February 2007, 00:37	#8 (permalink)
Affuso Extrusion Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 172	In your opinion the sculpting feature are better in Silo than in Hexagon. In regards at your previous post..at real mesh with hundrend of thousand of faces is not animable or usable in a game. Perhaps a normal map? I can obtain a normal map using Nvidia Melody.

12th February 2007, 05:35	#9 (permalink)
jbshorty proud to be a nurb Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: only in your mind Posts: 1,362	For base sculpting, Silo 2 is a real killer. But it's not capable to do very fine details like Mudbox and it has no layers (but it does store the displacement individually on each smoothing level similar to Hexagon). I have zero experience with modeling for games. But it sounds like normal mapping is the way to go if games are your target. Modo 202 can bake a normal map from a sculpted high-poly mesh onto the UV's of a low-poly mesh. In fact, the high-res mesh doesn't need to have UV's at all !!!You only need Uv's on the low-poly target. Watch this video here called "Object Baking" to see what i mean... Layered sculpting is going to be a feature of Modo in the near future. So if you're not in a rush to buy Mudbox, then you may wait a bit to see how Modo develops. http://www.luxology.com/whatismodo/model.aspx I believe Mudbox can also bake normal maps in a similar way, but not 100% sure about that. You should post on the Mudbox forums. Or start a new thread here at Polyloop with that specific topic. Maybe you will get the answer you need. Also, to render normal maps in Carrara, you have to buy the "Deeper" plug-in from Inagoni. It can be found here: http://www.inagoni.com/content.php?content.2 i hope this helps in some way... shorty

12th February 2007, 06:27	#10 (permalink)
jbshorty proud to be a nurb Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: only in your mind Posts: 1,362	sorry i forgot to mention - Silo will be able to export both displacement and normal maps...

12th February 2007, 12:41	#11 (permalink)
Affuso Extrusion Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 172	Thanks, Modo is beyond my budget now, as well as Zbrush.at 299 bucks Mudbox could be still affordable .I'll wait for the final release of Silo 2.

12th February 2007, 13:52	#12 (permalink)
jbshorty proud to be a nurb Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: only in your mind Posts: 1,362	Object-Object baking is not available in Silo yet, but has been often requested. I think it will appear eventually... My advise is not to wait if you're interested in Silo. The price right now is $109 (with free upgrade to 2.0 when released). But the real price of 2.0 will be $159. And it's expected to be pretty close to final beta. I think it will ship within next 2 months. so you should start demo'ing V1.4 right now, and if you buy it then you can start playing with beta of V2 sculpting tools as well... shorty

12th February 2007, 15:09	#13 (permalink)
Affuso Extrusion Join Date: Sep 2006 Posts: 172	I have to know if I can use it for my purpuses. Silo is a little better modeller that Hexagon ( for me) but I need a tool for details at this point. So I prefer to spend 50 bucks more that risk to spend 100 now , find that I don't need it and spend another 299 for Mudbox later.