STC#5 - December 23 - December 30 - Human Face Texture

[thanoz]

Ok originally I was going to say that maybe this could be sculpted on or something, but after playing with it in Mudbox for a while, no, the nose requires at least one mesh subdivide before the tip can hold a proper nose shape. Also since it's not quads, it's not very normal map friendly in sculpting programs.

BUT - huge plus here. Would this not make a GREAT speed sculpting competition? A one hour ultimate face and/or head sculpt competition! 1000 tri max or something.

[benclark]

I dont know where this 'triangles are the devil' thing comes from when it comes to sculpting programs. I used this head base for my Giant, Soldier and Tau models and have never had any problems in the sculpting or baking stages

Infact my Giant sculpting base had over 100 triangles and never caused any problem. From my own experience its misinformation that gets perpetuated everyday on forums

[thanoz]

Well for the most part it's not a big deal. except for when you use Mudbox and you try to export a mesh with triangles.

Here's the error all Mudbox users get "Cannot perform action on non-quadric meshes".

Even that wouldn't be a big deal in itself, as many people are Zbrush users.....but if you try to sub-divide a fully triangulated mesh in Zbrush or any program, you'll get an idea very quickly why triangles are bad for normal map meshes. Instead of splitting evenly as a quad does, triangles end up multiplying in an odd soccer ball pattern.

Assuming your computer can run a billion faces, even that can be acceptable....BUT you might not be able to use any of the meshes except for the base mesh. All those soccer ball meshes will be very inefficient and uneven in detail level on the parts that were triangulated so that you'll need 2-3 times as many sub-divisions of the mesh before you can sculpt in the same level of detail you'd be able to with an all quad mesh.

And...if all that wasn't enough, on character meshes the use of split-polygon tools and other Edge-loop tools is impossible if you run into a triangle. Need 3 loops at the elbow for deformation....not if there's a triangle present in the region.

Ok and I know there's probably some reasons I'm missing, but the last one is - deleting edge loops when you want to de-rez an area or change the flow of the geometry, you can't select an edge loop if there's a triangle on it.

But with all that said, it's still not a rule, you can still use triangles freely on the base mesh to make it more efficient or make it deform better, but it's just wisest to do that AFTER it's already been exported to Zbrush or Mudbox in full quad form for the normal map.

Here's one of my all-quad dudes in high rez. Portfolios | Character | strongmanrender

[thanoz]

For some reason my post not showing up as most recent post, so it looked like Alch had no reply from me from the main board. This is only way I can fix, delete this message if you like.

[neti]

Hi all
It's my texture human face

[Talon]

Yet another example of why you shouldn't start these things without a clear idea of wtf you're doing beforehand. This one's a bit of a train-wreck.

I thought I'd try a different approach to face painting, today, too - just going in with pretty heavy brushes and smudging it smooth. It's fun and it seems to work ok-ish but I think you need a good vision in your head before you start.

I didn't take the full 180 minutes as I got quite tired of it half-way through and didn't like where it was heading... I've even fallen into the same traps as I pointed out to others, especially with colour variation.

Still, it was partly a fun experience, my first proper run at a texture on my new wacom and it seems awesome.

Download 10x speed video.

240mb, Quicktime (fast server, though - 15mins download time)

In the meantime;

[doylle]

@neti: please, add your texture maps to the post. I can't count it as a valid submission if we can't see the maps. Thanks

@Talon: The comp is almost over, nevertheless, i would still very much like to see the video if possible

[Talon]

Here you go

240mb, Quicktime (fast server, though - 15mins download time)