jim c Posted February 18, 2016 Share Posted February 18, 2016 I'm sculpting a dragon in Zbrush and I'm almost completely done with the model, with the exception of fine detailing, specifically scales. One way (what seems to the typical way) would be to just sculpt them all. I was experimenting with ZBrush's nanomesh a bit, in order to model the scales (I'm looking at something resembling snake skin, specifically a white python), and I began to wonder, wouldn't this make more sense to do in H? Sure enough with a little bit of fooling around, it's pretty easy, and you obviously have FAR more control. So my question is, anyone have any experience doing scale like this (I'm guessing at a total number around 70-90K scales)? One reason for doing it this way is that it simply looks far better than displacements, the experimenting I did just looked a lot more realistic. If the single scale is just a flat piece of geo (faces in one dir only, no thickness) is that a problem? Is using Instances a better approach than the Copy SOP? What about if you want to animate? Any special considerations? I presume the generation of the copy/instance points would be done once, then the capture weights transferred over to those pointed and then deformed along with the skin? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juraj Posted February 20, 2016 Share Posted February 20, 2016 Hi, I am not a dragon scales expert but few ideas crossed my mind using grooming / fur tools for orienting and sizing of scales painting density and size, scattering points on geometry, sticking them to deforming geometry (using primuv attributes), using coordinate system from Polyframe node (so that scales orient correctly on deforming dragon) hexagonizing quads with Divide (with those settings: convex polys - on, max edges - 3, don't generate silvers - on, avoid small angles - on, compute dual - on) and then extruding them or something If you choose first or second option you can test it with Copy node with few scales and use the same attributes (orient, pscale) for rendertime instancing of many scales. Hope it helped a bit, Juraj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim c Posted February 21, 2016 Author Share Posted February 21, 2016 Thanks, those are great ideas. I was wondering if I could get the grooming tools to work. I suppose you could set up a hair node with just 2 points per strand? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Juraj Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 Hi, I've tried simple setup. You can use Comb SOP to sculpt your normals. You don't need to use whole Fur asset. Check attached file. I am not sure if it is suitable for your needs but maybe with some improvements it could be usable Juraj jt_groom_scales_test.hipnc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
6ril Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 Hi there, I don't have a dragon, yet I opened you hip file, Juraj. It's great, very interesting. Don't know if it's usable for dragon scales, tho.. (penetrations and combing is quite hard). Thanks for sharing anyway Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jim c Posted February 28, 2016 Author Share Posted February 28, 2016 Thanks, those are some cool ideas! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.