Hey guys, after a BWC I had to rest a bit. But it couldn’t stay to long, so I got bored resting and started to work
This is the LOTR Cave Troll, I know that there are plenty of them out there. But I always wanted to have one, my own Cave Troll. Actually since I saw the movie (the first part) I had fell in love from the first sight with this creature, so later always wanted to recreated it on my PC. I have already tried once but it was only head and was bad! So after I while doing some other stuff decided to give it another chance. But this time its gonna be whole creature with texture, armature and… moving Very challenging for me but just cant resist to try it and be able to move by myself this monstrous creature. Lets see how its gonna work out. Wish me good luck
The shape is nice, I think the upper torso should be more muscular, and the lower body fattier. I guess you made the head and body separate, join them and this’ll look pretty good. Then you can go in and make more wrinkles+flab of fat! (yay)
And don’t make me suffer any longer, giv’em a loin cloth =]
maybe it’s like this in the film as well, dunno, I tried my hardests not to catch any of it back then, but it seems as if he has no bone structure underneath his eyes, and therefore has no eye sockets. Which would be very hard on his eyes I suppose.
First of all thanks for all you comments. Though, I have to say do that I did’t quite understand what you meant about the eyes, FreakyDude.
Ok, anyway I have started to rig him. And along the way couple problems have appeared. First of all I started to build the rig like the one on Nathan`s video tutorial but I got stuck with the weight painting. On his tutorial seemed to but quite easy since the object mesh is rather simple. Unfortunately with my model, which is kind of fat, I´ve started to get some problems while painting, The reason is that whenever I manage to set up some good deformation for one pose I was getting some strange ones with some other poses. After a while of trying to arrange it I realized that with time I had made too much mess and its better to start over again.
I have tried the other way around I used the heat painting option which gave me, for start, some decent weights. Obviously they were not perfect so I had to tweak them and again,after a while, started to get some messy results. Therefore I realized that maybe the problem is that I don’t understand really how the weights work. For example, I don’t know If they should overlap each other and If so in which degree and where. Another thing I had doubts was that which of the parts of the mesh should have deformation strength 1, which one 0, and finally which one in between. Also I started to wounder If actually my armature is correct and maybe I should add some extra bones for the chest area for example.
And in the end I was wondering why some parts of the mesh while deformed were shrinking. For example finger tips. Whenever I was moving them downward the were getting squeezed.
I would really appreciate any help with this issues. Maybe you know some tutorial about weight painting?
It seems to me that your topology is OK as well as basic armature concept. Concerning weight painting my own experience is to start with really low influence and when painting for particular bone to switch also to neighbouring ones (one before and one following in the bones chain.
But musk advice seems maby as a best solution. I have experienced just little with deform modifier and it seems to be really great attitude and tool.
musk: no I haven´t try that but is it comfortable to animate like this? And… yep the stack is in the correct order.
It seems like after a while of adjustments I manage to end up with some fairly acceptable results. In meanwhile I´ve started to make some sculpting in Zbrush. I am getting worried about getting back to Blender with displ and normal maps since I dont really know the the correct pipeline. Do you know any tutorial about how to correctly bake displ map in Zbrush for correct display in Blender?
Weight painting, or rigging a beefier character, can be a bit of a pain. I couldn’t really figure out the mesh deform modifier, but it seems like a good thing to use. If I remember correctly, I painted the bones full strength at the middle, and used mix mode at the joints. some worked out well, some I used fan bones. When you weight paint, I advise using the clean weights script for each bone, because even though some may be blue, they don’t get erased from the vertex groups, which causes some weirdness. If you get the mesh deform thing figured out let me know!
edit: I just looked at this: http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-246/mesh-deform/
at the bottom of the page is a demo file, check it out. I think I figured it out, if you need a hand with it let me know.
Nice start on the sculpt. I’ve just been working with Zbrush - Blender, so far I’ve found that using the Cinema 4D settings for 32 bit RGB http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=49608 work quite well in Blender. Just need to copy and paste that code into the Displacement Exporter settings. Trick is you need to convert the .tif file to a .exr file before you can use it. Photoshop can do that as simple as ‘Save As’, Gimp I haven’t tried yet.
Hey, thanks for feedback. I have tried mesh deform but it was deforming head as well squeezing it and stretching and since the last time I manage to set up some acceptable results with weight painting. Which doesn’t mean that later on I am not gonna change it. Now I have focused more on the texturing, which is almost finished. Thanks BenDansie for the link, I will definitely try it. But I made some test before and got some ugly seems on the arms area that didn’t know how to solve it. When I will come to crating displ map I will post the results.
Woah, I’m absolutely impressed. This is very ambitious, but you’re making it happen. I love all the little intricate wrinkles in his skin. The only comment I’ll offer is that his buttocks seem a bit flat. However, that might just be the angle the camera’s at and you may end up covering it with a loincloth later anyway.
Very nice! The details on the face get a little lost, but I guess it is supposed to be a little smoother there.
http://www.concreted.com/Concrete.jpg (There are better examples out there…) I reckon that simple photos of concrete can help with doing the colour map. Easy to get them, splotchy, etc. Depends on the look you are after.
Please don’t think of the following as a thread hijack, but I did a bit of a writeup on my Zbrush workflow for displacement last night that you might find helpful. 3rd post down from the top - it’s a biggin’, can’t miss it. http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=117247&page=11
The seams are probably to do with subdividing the UV’s. Blender and Zbrush do that a little different. Generally the same, but enough to give seam issues here and there.
Thanks Anayo! They seem, actually, a bit flat bit as you´ve said the are gonna be cover by the “underpants” so I think is not a big deal. Anyway if I need to, I will make some changes inside Blender with the base mesh later on (since its about some major mesh shape).
Hey BenDansie, thank you so much for the post, I have fund it very useful. The pipline between Zbrush and Blender in your WIP and the idea of the texture I could use. Actually, it seems to me like a great idea, since I wanted to paint the whole texture manually (which would be pain in the ass) but now I will try to use some textures like a base colors later to be painted over for bigger details.
I have already finished sculpting but sadly to say I am getting still the seams issue wich appears already inside Zbrush when I apply BumpViewer material. Do you have any idea how to repair it? The settings I used to create the Displ Map are the same as you have described in your WIP, later I tried with SmoothUV toggle off but it didn´t work out either.
Another problem I am getting is when I export 32 bit displacement map I cant view it later neither modify it. I dont know if its not because I use it on Ubuntu with wine, and it doesnt export the 32 bit tiff properly or is it the Ubuntu that doesnt support 32 bit maps??
So after I while doing some other stuff decided to give it another chance. But this time its gonna be whole creature with texture, armature and… moving 
I am waiting for the texturing 
