How can I achieve the same result in Blender? I know it is sculpted, but I don’t want to sculpt the scales as this gives me way too many polygons, I’d rather use a bump-map and simulate the depth, rather than a real depth.
Any ideas?
I especially want to know how to make the scales, uniformly and nice and even at the edge between the teeth and the rest of the head, like a crocodile or any other reptile has.
You can paint a bump map in the texture paint mode if you’re capable of sculpting high detail. You can use a b+W texture to use for painting the scales
Just paint them as a grey scale texture map, then apply that image as a bump map in your material’s normal’s slot. You can also use the grey scale bump map as the basis for your color and spec maps.
That’s the way it was normally traditionally done in the past before the Zbrush sculpting workflow caught on widely. But there have always been multiple ways to accomplish a certain result. Especially in creating CGI imagery.
A lot of it is actually simply down to just old fashioned artistry. There is no make cool scales button anywhere in any software.
If you go the macro detail sculpting route then the finer scale patterns and modeling will just be converted to a bump map anyway. It’s just another way to reach the same end result.
If you are working in ZBrush then you would most likely be using alphas for this. These are greyscale images used for sculpting high frequency detail. You would be using these grey scale images to sculpt micro texture details into the mesh then capturing them as normal maps or grey scale bump maps.
So the end result is basically the same anyway. It’s just mostly seen as a more intuitive workflow these days to sculpt this stuff in ZBrush as it can handle the detail so easily. You get to see the work in process as a 3d object/render. But its certainly not the only way and sometimes not the best or most logical way in the time. Also most in CGI ( including me ) managed without the ZBrush workflow for many years and were to able to do good professional work as well.
Blender is capable now of getting to some of these ZBrush high detail levels with sculpting with a high spec machine. But it is not going to be as fluid and fast as working with ZBrush at the same high level. But then again nothing else out there currently is. ZBrush is still very much it’s own unique thing.
The examples you posted are also rendered with color and spec maps. They are great work. But I see very little in the raw micro bump mapping detail that couldn’t be achieved with careful and skillful grey scale bump map painting. Basically the art practice or skill’s involved in both are going to be the same.
Also if you are doing T rex. Think about the feathers too. It is almost beyond doubt now that T Rex must had had quite extensive feathers.
