I just started messing with multi-res and I have a couple questions. I’m going to sculp a dinosaur. I modeled what I consider a low poly base mesh by hand, and just started sculpting in multi-res.
So when texture time comes, I just unwrap the low poly version, right?
And do I need to apply the mutli-res before rigging it?
Anything obviously wrong with the topology?
Any other mutli-res “gotcha” style tips I can use/avoid?
I’m not an expert with multires (as i prefer dyntopo for sculpting) but from my adventures in multires land, i can say :
1 - Yes, you unwrap the base model (multires level 0) in Edit Mode and texture it , the texture will still be displayed through all the superior levels of multires
2 - You don’t need to apply the multires before rigging (and the kind of vertice count it would create i’m not sure Blender would not crash if rigging), you can rig the level 0 of the multires, and same as texture the higher level of multires will follow whatever pose you’re going to give to the level 0 model
3 - I don’t see anything wrong with the topology, though you may want to add a loop cut at the junction between the upper leg/arms and the lower leg/arms part to help a bit when you’ll bend them with the rig.
4 - If your goal is to animate as in making some kind of short walking animations etc… and not only posing, i suggest you look into baking normals/ao/etc… from the higher level of your multires on to your lower level as the modifier allows that with the Bake function (though if i remember it can’t work with the level0 of the modifier, it will bake only for some reason on the level1, provided you unwrapped and assigned 1 texture to bake on)
I don’t think making an animation with the higher level of the multires (that can quickly get high and very high poly) would not result in Blender eating too many ressources and crashing.
Great, thank you sanctuary. My goal on this one is to create a simple animation. I’m not realy going for anything epic, just trying to get a feel for the sculpting workflow. It’s been a lot of fun so far, and has more of a artistic painting feel to it, rather than orthogonal vert pushing. Thanks for the tips, if I get anything worthwhile I’ll probably start a WIP.
Just to add a little to what Sanctuary already pointed out: you don’t want stretched faces for your base mesh, try to aim for square faces whenever possible (think e.g. neck, torso and tail areas). Square as in “square”, not simply “quad”. It may not be that apparent on low multires levels, but as you go higher it will become clear that the distortion the stretching introduces is a huge hindrance.
Nice. Thank you.
