I’m trying to find a good workflow for creating a posed base mesh to be used in sculpt mode and was wondering if armatures could be leveraged for this.
Is there any way to begin with an armature and then to convert to simple connected vertices that could be used with the skin modifier?
I know the original intent is for the armature to be introduced after a mesh is created for the purposes of animation but this is a different use case. If something was to be sculpted with real clay then the armature would be created first. It makes sense to me to begin with an armature and then to use this as a base to add the clay in sculpt mode.
Begin with a basic mesh - like a cylinder - then move vertices, add edge loops, scale vertices, rotate vertices, extrude vertices, insert islands and extrude them, etc. would be an acceptable workflow. You cannot really start with an Armature, since it is not a mesh. But to make a complex aeroplane model I always start with a cylinder and work from there upwards.
thanks, although I’d really like to replace pushing vertices around (which I find to be arduous and getting in the way of creating that initial gesture) with the functionality that armature/bones offer for posing (which I think offers more specialised functionality for the task).
…so is there a ‘convert bone to vertices’ option or is it something that could be done with a script?
although I’d really like to replace pushing vertices around
A bone is basically the same as an edge (two ends), therefore instead of using a bone as a bone, use an edge as a bone. Moving a single vertex is hardly “pushing vertices around”. That is how the skin modifier is to be used for making base meshes, using armature bones is really just making it more complicated that is really necessary and is also more limiting in the type of mesh you can create
Thanks for that link Richard. I’ll play around with the skin modifier more. It will likely be good enough for now. What really prompted me to ask about this was ZSpheres in ZBrush which seems to work like a quasi armature.
