The Red Dragon

[kilon]

First of all, props for the nice modelling! My jaw dropped when I saw the head first in a defined shaped version, so you definitely have talent! Later on it seems to lose definition a bit. Just like my first sculpt when I coloured it red. Very nice though! Also the ribs and muscles look good. Definitely inspiring
WOW , thanks a lot for your comments, I would not say that I am talented with modeling , but I like it they way it goes so far.

OK, as far as I have figured until now (I’m using Blender since January), my 2ct:
I also got started on modelling playing around with the Sculpt Mode. It’s fun, it’s pretty and with a Wacom tablet and a fast processor what comes out maybe looks good.
Sculpting is top for organic modeling , It is fast and furious for creating any kind of model you want. You do not need to worry about faces, edges and vertices, it gives you direct access to your geometry with the least of hassle.

Cons from my limited experience:

it creates a tremendous amount of polys and makes things very slow
Sculpt by itself creates nothing , the mutlires is the one that subdivides. Sculpt can be used from the most complex model to the simple cube. Mine model did not used at all mesh editing tools besides the extrude tool, anything was shaped with the sculpt tool.

If you create alot of geometry it will slow your computer down eventually. My CORE DUO 2.0 GHz iMAC handles my 255.000 polygons Dragon with no slow downs at all. In 1.000.000 polygons I experienced some slow downs but not that much.

But if you are after the deatail of Zbrush then it will crash your blender after it has slow down your computer. Hopefully they will improve this side of Blender in the future.

it cannot take strokes faster than a snail crawling once the poly amout gets high, it creates spotty creases
How high are we talking here ?

Spotty crease, what is that ? Have you got any pictrure to show me ? I have not seen any creasings created with my sculpt.

it is hard to control it PROPERLY, especially with a mouse
Yeap Sculpt is harder that mesh editing in the start. It takes some time to get used to , but once you will make you go turbo faster. Iremember when I was started using Zbrush , I was crawling , but now I would not give up sculpting for anything in the world.

I haven’t yet heard of one professional Blender-modeller using it (which doesn’t say too much though)
I think that people do understand the full potential of sculpting. If you go here you will what sculpting is all about.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/featured2col.php

In the Pro world , Sculpting is consider now an extra skill, and people put it in their CV as “sculpter” , there alot of tools out there for sculpting. LOADS of tutorials in youtube. You can watch the Zbrush tutorial because all the basic sculpting tools of Zbrush are identical to Blender sculpting tools.

But tutorials wont tell what do not already know , like with subsurf modeling it is practice , practice and then more practice.

it messes up topology. Especially for animated models I think it’s usability is very limited, as you were talking about animation earlier. You would probably have to retopo your Dragon (I never did that, I just read it).
You should not run to any problems , if you are logical to the way you work. Good sculpter always works with square polygons and never triangles.Also good sculpter , always starts with a good base mesh to make sure that all areas have apropriate amount of polygons for detail sculpting. Retopo is not necessary unless you do it wrong and want to correct the topology.

I am delving into modelling quite deeply now and whichever “tutorial” you see on the sculpt mode, whichever video/turntable model there is, at least as far as I have found any: they all look really bad, almost retarded Except if a lowpoly model has been used as the basis that has been modelled as closely as possible towards the final target result. With traditional tools (subsurf and proper edgeloops). So I’m leaving my fingers off sculpt mode until it’s reworked and until I can model properly WITHOUT it! Believe me, I have been forcefully searching for reasons to use it. Yet I don’t. Details and wrinkles would be great to do in sculpt mode, because certain things, I believe, cannot be done properly with textures/bump maps only.
I guess it is your choice , but as I said you can borrow alot from the zbrush tutorials. I use alot of my Zbrush experience which has been proven very useful.

Seriously - how many GOOD Blender models (especially heads) have you seen out there that have been done using sculpt mode? I only found one that was created poly-modelling in Blender and then reworking the mesh in ZBrush for creases etc.
I was thinking about buying ZBrush for that purpose though - why don’t you if you come from ZBrush anyway? It’s quite affordable!

I have bought Zbrush actually, version 1.5. I am an old Zbrush user. Why not use Zbrush ? Because I want to demolish the myth that Blender has bad sculpting tools. And because there are not so many sculpters in Blender which I find a huge waste.

Consensus: judging from what I have been told (and I’ve been getting on many people’s nerves) I would advise you to first poly-model as precisely as possible and look to having a nice edgeflow. How to best work on with the sculpt mode I do not know, I only read about that stuff - baking normal maps etc. to reduce poly count, but there’s no advice I could give on that, especially given my 2.5 month experience I’m just doing as I’m told and it seems to work fine. I would really like somebody to give me a good reason FOR using sculpt mode though - if only it weren’t so slow…

Starting with a good base mesh is an excellent start for sculpting. Zbrush has Zspheres which are brilliant I replaced them with Blender’s extrude function. Basically I work the same way as I worked in Zbrush all these years.

[Corniger]

Hm, my comp features a 2x3.2GHz Athlon with 4GB Ram, so I don’t know where the slowness is coming from, I don’t wanna blame it on Blender. I tried to find out, but didn’t get any results because I met noone who seriously used the Blender Sculpt mode.

The spotty creases result like when selecting many vertices with “BB” key. Some get left out, so you have “holes” within your crease. At least I have
Yes, the crashing… that’s what kept me from using it after all. Yet I don’t really know how to use it, which must be the core problem, and I highly depend on visual tutorials - I have bad eyes and moving from book to screen and back really doesn’t work And as I said, there’s mostly junk out there.

So, except for the low poly handling capacity (about 30% of ZBrush if I’m not all wrong) you would say that I could trash the ZBrush idea and seriously dive into Blender sculpting?? Would be ONE “standard” package though. I have seen many ZBrush tutorials and it seems pretty easy, although it looks like it often produces triangles. So I’ll stick with Blender, explore the Sculpt mode and then maybe move up to ZBrush. Mudbox is allegedly not as good as ZBrush, though I’m not sure - ZBrush seems to be THE big hype.

I’m curious about what’s gonna come out with your Dragon. It has walked quite some way since it started!

[kilon]

Hm, my comp features a 2x3.2GHz Athlon with 4GB Ram, so I don’t know where the slowness is coming from, I don’t wanna blame it on Blender.

You got better specs than mine. But as I said , it depends on the amount of polygons you are working. If you are experience slow downs in 250.000 -500.000 then this is not normal and you have to ask around why you experience these slow downs.

I tried to find out, but didn’t get any results because I met noone who seriously used the Blender Sculpt mode.

I do , but yeah you are right , sculpting is not as popular as sub surf as it is a very new thing in blender.

The spotty creases result like when selecting many vertices with “BB” key. Some get left out, so you have “holes” within your crease. At least I have

B key , is for box selection. But I do not see why you want to box select anything in sculpt mode , that is not how the sculpting works. You do not need to select anything for sculpting , it is not like the mesh tools that you have to select first in order to perform a function. The sculpt brush applies on areas not vertices , faces and edges . That is why I told you to forget what you have learned with mesh tools and sub surf and come with a clear mind.

Yes, the crashing… that’s what kept me from using it after all. Yet I don’t really know how to use it, which must be the core problem, and I highly depend on visual tutorials - I have bad eyes and moving from book to screen and back really doesn’t work And as I said, there’s mostly junk out there.

I bough a book “the essential blender” it is also to free to download , it has a big juicy and very good chapter on sculpting .

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Books/Essential_Blender/05.1.Multiresolution_Sculpting:_Hands_on

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Books/Essential_Blender/05.2.Multiresolution_Sculpting:_discussion

I crashed once my blender cause I did not knwo about this limit. but I ahve not experienced any crashes from there on.

So, except for the low poly handling capacity (about 30% of ZBrush if I’m not all wrong) you would say that I could trash the ZBrush idea and seriously dive into Blender sculpting?? Would be ONE “standard” package though. I have seen many ZBrush tutorials and it seems pretty easy, although it looks like it often produces triangles. So I’ll stick with Blender, explore the Sculpt mode and then maybe move up to ZBrush. Mudbox is allegedly not as good as ZBrush, though I’m not sure - ZBrush seems to be THE big hype.

Zbrush is probably the best software I used in my lifetime. Actually Blender can handle up to 4.000.000 polygons and Zbrush up to 1.000.000.000 , last time I checked. That is quite a gap. Other than that , it does not offer anything substantially better than Blender.

If you want to sculpt super detailed models then Zbrush is the way to go.

I’m curious about what’s gonna come out with your Dragon. It has walked quite some way since it started!

I am too, I am sure I am going to learn alot of Blender tricks untill I finsh my baby. But I have loads of fun, so it worths the time I spent.

Fro me this Dragon is going to be an oprtunity to learn sculping , texturing, lighting , node editing and animation in Blender. I have started Blender a month ago so it is all new for me. Very excited.

[Corniger]

OK, thanks a lot for the information!! It makes me look into an even brighter Blender future

What I still don’t understand:
If I, for example, take a cube, subdivide it to sphere a few times and then apply sculpt - am I NOT moving vertices? What does the resulting mesh consist of then? The areas you write about have to consist of vertices, don’t they? :spin:

For the “B”-key: I’m not box selecting. If you push “B” twice you get a brush (resize with MW) so you can brush-select vertices - thus the “BB” key That’s when any comp I used with Blender until now (3) started leaving out verts when the mouse was being dragged too fast. Just what I experienced with sculpt, that’s why I suspected the slow sculpting brush was connected to the lack in continuous vertex selection!

[kilon]

What I still don’t understand:
If I, for example, take a cube, subdivide it to sphere a few times and then apply sculpt - am I NOT moving vertices? What does the resulting mesh consist of then?
Yes sure , that is the end result. In a sense you move vertices and edges, and faces. The model works exactly the shame way as all mesh tools.

But the sculpting does not distinguish between vertices, edges or faces. If its in the area of influence of the brush then it will move. So that is why you start to ignore topology and start to think in a diffirent way . For example starting directly with extremely high poly with mesh tools or even sub surf is suicide. The reason is clear even with poprtoniate tool you have to do several selections of either , vertices or edges or faces , then click the transform tool and then we will be able to move. Now multiply this by the amount of detail of the model. Nightmare! While with the a sculpt brush with one move one click creates a detail that it will require several moves and clicks with mesh edit tools. Simpler, better, faster.

For the “B”-key: I’m not box selecting. If you push “B” twice you get a brush (resize with MW) so you can brush-select vertices - thus the “BB” key That’s when any comp I used with Blender until now (3) started leaving out verts when the mouse was being dragged too fast. Just what I experienced with sculpt, that’s why I suspected the slow sculpting brush was connected to the lack in continuous vertex selection!

i see , you are talking about the brush selection . I think you have misunderstood, all these tools are available in mesh edit mode not sculpt mode. Sculpting needs no selection. Please take a look at the link tutorial I gave you. It seems that you have not understand the basic principles of sculpting. Sculpting follows a very diffirent aproach and way of working, you could describe sculpting as mere movement of vertices but there is where the simalirites with mesh edit tools stop, and this only the tip of the iceberg.

If you are serious about sculpting , expect to spend at least a year to get the hang of it. Mesh tools will still be highly useful for mechanical modeling, Sub Surf for low to mid detail organic and mechanic modeling. Sculpting from low to high organic modeling and sometimes even mechanical modeling. It is important to understand where each tool is more appropriate and this is something you will understand from very long practice . You could ignore some of the tools , but then you will handicap your modelling and 3d art.

There is a reason why rarely people do mechanical modelling with Zbrush and other sculpt tools ,while sculpted models seem to have alot more detail and be alot more realistic . Know your tools, use the right tool for the specific task.

[Ace_Dragon]

About polygon count, on WinXP 32 bit. Blender can handle just over 7 million polygons during rendering at the max on a single render layer, this is assuming you render from a fresh boot of Blender. I found this out when doing terrain displacement, Kilon, you should keep this in mind when rendering.

[kilon]

@Cyborg Dragon

About polygon count, on WinXP 32 bit. Blender can handle just over 7 million polygons during rendering at the max on a single render layer, this is assuming you render from a fresh boot of Blender. I found this out when doing terrain displacement, Kilon, you should keep this in mind when rendering.

Thanks for this info Cyborg. Unfortunately my viewport will not tolerate more than 1 million polygon. But I have found a cute solution. I can apply a subusrf modifier to my final sculpt , set subsurf to lowest for viewport and higher for rendering and apply a displacement map for extra details.

Cyborg , 7 million is the total for rendering , or only for the model ? Why this limitation ? afterall rendering is off-line not real time.

[kilon]

ODJIN asked for a low poly model wireframe . This is at level 2 the highest that makes wireframe viewable.

[Corniger]

@kilon: thanks a lot! I’ll get into the tutorials a.s.a.p. - looks like there’s a lot of work to do to make the sculpt tool more popular!!
Still I don’t get the selection thing - I figured, as i had the problems described, that the sculpt mode does nothing else but group select vertices and push them around in a group like with the proportional editing tool, because Blender orients itself by means of vertices. But I’ll find out In the meanwhile I’ll shut up and see what I can do with it!!! very motivated!

[kilon]

@Corniger

@kilon: thanks a lot! I’ll get into the tutorials a.s.a.p. - looks like there’s a lot of work to do to make the sculpt tool more popular!!
Still I don’t get the selection thing - I figured, as i had the problems described, that the sculpt mode does nothing else but group select vertices and push them around in a group like with the proportional editing tool, because Blender orients itself by means of vertices. But I’ll find out In the meanwhile I’ll shut up and see what I can do with it!!! very motivated!

Good video tutorial

Part 1

Blender Sculpting Tutorial -- Sculpting Tools Part 1

Part 2

Blender Sculpting Tutorial Part 2

and a demo

Sculpting in Blender

[Corniger]

Thanks again You’ve spent more time on this thread already than on modelling And now I’m gonna make me my own dragon - at work, so it’ll proceed slowly… But this was too much of an inspiration to ignore!!

[Odjin]

Yep, mesh shows what I expected the problem is. Beck leg is okay until you hit the vertex-bush. This is where the mesh breaks up and looks bad. Too many vertices pushed together into a cluster-fuck.Otherwise it looks okay. Still though no flow from body to leg in the front legs ( hind legs are good ). Still feels tacked on but it’s on the right track.

[Ace_Dragon]

Cyborg , 7 million is the total for rendering , or only for the model ? Why this limitation ? afterall rendering is off-line not real time.

Rendering, because otherwise Blender uses too much RAM unless you have a 64 bit OS.

For 32 bit OS’s, the main devs. will have to code the internal renderer to have more efficient memory handling, I believe you can use renderlayers assigned to different layers to overcome this.

[Corniger]

@Cyborg: I had exactly this problem with quite a simple mesh combined with a bunch of tapered curves. The curves added so many polys I got a black render, so I was advised to use render layers.

If it wouldn’t have taken me less than a full week of total frustration to get Ubuntu NOT to get an IP from the WLAN it connected to, I would probably be running this on 64Bits and would not have to expect such errors?

[Odjin]

64bit helps nothing. On my machine blender crashes if I go beyond 1 or 2M of faces and I’m on a 64-bit Game-Dev Rig under Linux ( where blender sustains more than under Windows ).

[Corniger]

1 or 2 millions? That’s 100% difference

[kilon]

@Odjin

Yep, mesh shows what I expected the problem is. Beck leg is okay until you hit the vertex-bush. This is where the mesh breaks up and looks bad. Too many vertices pushed together into a cluster-fuck.Otherwise it looks okay. Still though no flow from body to leg in the front legs ( hind legs are good ). Still feels tacked on but it’s on the right track.

Yeah topology is far from perfect, fortunately has no effect on sculpting , have not experienced any problems thus far. Even with weird shaped topology like in the back leg, creates no problems if all is quad polygons and not triangles. And if creates a problem it easily fixed with smooth brush. Oh by the way I am huge fan of SMOOTH BRUSH!!!

By the way it makes perfect sense for sculpting to distort topology , that is why it is important to work in the highest level possible. Afterall it treats 3d geometry as digital clay. Clay that stretches and moves all the time.

Triangles on the other hand are a nigtmare to fix, i have a triangle problem from the inside of the front legs. Very nasty. While my model was still low poly I screw up extrude and made a triangle, it actually escaped my attention. But this things happen . Hopefully it wont affect my animation.

I am hearing now Cyborg Dragon saying that I should have been waiting for editable multires in 2.5. LOL , he is probably right , but each time I see a problem , I see also a challange. And thus far , my exprience with Blender sculpting has been smooth as baby’s butt . But next time I will probably go for a better topology just to be on the safe side.

[Odjin]

In fact it is wrong to sculpt all the time in the highest mulres level. A mistake made by many novice ( me included ). That’s the beauty of mulres in blender that you work on only the level required for a given modification on the mesh. Working in the highest mode usually results in these “deformed clay clump” problems where a model looks like clay and not like an organic model.

[kilon]

@Odjin

In fact it is wrong to sculpt all the time in the highest mulres level. A mistake made by many novice ( me included ). That’s the beauty of mulres in blender that you work on only the level required for a given modification on the mesh. Working in the highest mode usually results in these “deformed clay clump” problems where a model looks like clay and not like an organic model.

Well that is what I am saying all along it is not a problem at all.

this is exactly how the early Zbrush versions worked, and worked flawlessly even though they had no multi res. It does not matter once you go past 100,000 polygons, the wireframe becomes so dense that edges and topology becomes meaningless . Topology makes more sense for lower leve models where edges are visable as most deformations happen around edges.

Actually the usufullness of lowever level is more for the smooth brush , as wide smoothing is easier to apply in lower levels.

Also do not forget that Zbrush never had a wireframe mode, actually it has one but it is almost never used. Even with multi res now Zbrush is not used as you migh think , people in zbrush work the same way that I have with my dragon. Use the lower level for the general shape and then bypass the middle levels and go directly to higher levels for 80% of the modelling. Just watch how the Zbrush pros work and this will become immediately apparent.

As a matter of fact , multires is not important to sculpting . Editable multires of course could help alot .

[Soter]

@kilon

As a matter of fact , multires is not important to sculpting . Editable multires of course could help alot .

This is a perfect example of both the depth of your ignorance and the contradictory nature of your thought process. Please, troll someone else’s community. Leave us alone!

I do not normally make such comments. I apologize for my harsh words. Anyone new to Blender, sculpting in Blender, or 3d in general, please disregard what this misguided soul is saying!