[MISC] Making Wall Reliefs - model or texture them?

[Marthgun]

Hello,

InsanitySorrow said I may post a tutorial suggestion up in hur. If I may;

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I am building my arena mod for skyrim, I use 3ds max 2012, photoshop cs6 and I'm using a trial of CrazyBump for teh bake.

The first problem I'm having, is creating the face. Now in blender this wasn't so much as issue as long as i had a front and side view I could model it from a simple box. 3ds is far more complicated, and should probably be easier done with splines or their tons of modifiers i dont know half of what do which and who do why.

Alas, this isn't really why I'm here. I am very interested in creating reliefs for my arena walls. The first thing I thought was use a picture, create a deep bump map, slap on wall. But I'm not really sure that would work, so I'm wondering how one would go about making a low poly model look as the above, which parts would need to be modeled and which parts could be texturing.

Here's a few more pics that maybe you all could give your impressions on, or ideas about how to go about (5 & 6 being the two i'm really interested in, however 2,3 and 4 are more likely considering the size and the arena, which will be huge and assuming i need to keep the polygons down to a minimum):

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[grond]

Hi Marthgun, welcome to the Alliance.

I moved your suggestion into its own thread. Let's get some modelers in here to get some answers for you. But first, if you're using Max, but you don't know much about it, my best advice is to learn Max, or go back to Blender.

In Blender I'd make a very low detailed/low poly bump-out on the wall...just roughly define the shape of the relief. I'd make that a separate object, unwrap it singly, then use a texture and bump map to achieve the relief's details. Alternatively you could make a high poly version of the relief and bake its normals to the low poly version...IS has genius tutorials on the Blender baking process.

Let us see what you make! Good luck and Welcome again.

[Marthgun]

oh hai grond,

thanks for that, i didn't know where to put it. Kinda hard to justify going back to blender after dropping 3.5k on it

i got the disposable income so its not a big deal but when i got into blender i figured i might as well learn the best program. and my student version had some problems. so whatevs

anyway, i thought about making two planes, deforming one into the sorta shape, like you said, then texturing a bump map of the diffuse on the other and sliding it over it, attach it, and then UVW Unwrap. but i had no idea that was even possible.

The hardest part is there aren't any good tutorials on making low poly/high detail things like this. It's usually high poly, then more high poly, plus a few subdivision modifiers. but that just aint gonna work considering I'm probably going to have over 100k polys on the arena itself, if not more. So I'm trying to add some fun detail at low cost. And all the tutorial sites were pay to view and didn't have much content or content i couldn't find on youtube.

p.s. i like turtles

[grond]

I didn't explain correctly - don't abandon Max, but for this project, use the tool you know better. The opposite side of that coin is to use this project as a means to learn more of Max. I spent 6 months learning Blender while making a Jackhammer shotgun for FO3, and now I know the buttons and how to do most of the simpler things ( of course then they completely changed my 2.49 into the sleek 2.5+ )

I'm not sure you'll get the details you're looking for unless you go high poly, and bake to low poly. If you know box modeling well enough, you might want to add Retopology to your skillset. Time consuming but you can get a level of detail resembling the high poly model really accurately. Look into it!

Tutorials are everywhere for Blender. I've never looked into any tutorials for Max, but I bet they're out there. Hone your Googling skill!

[WillieSea]

Take a look at the dark brotherhood door, the skull on it.

Its basically a round mound, and all the detail comes from the texture and normal map.

If you make a bunch of high poly meshes, it may slow down older computer systems, especially in an arena that will probably have a bunch of NPC's or monsters as well. The toll could be rather high with more detailed meshes.

[Marthgun]

Lemme know what you think, i made a fairly simple mesh and then used a heavy normal map. I think it looks ok, but i'm wondering if/how to improve it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uhullsuwya9h91z/Lionface.zip

just drop into data folder, open nifskope and navigate to your meshes folder and open lionface.nif

[grond]

It looks good Marthgun. If you're going to have many of these on the walls, and different shapes, and if you wrap them with some kind of uniform border, I think you have the right amount of details as is. You could add a little more depth to the model, particularly by pushing out the brow and nose, and I don't think a couple more polys there will hurt anyone's FPS. I think then you'll have designs that will blend into your arena and still draw the player's eye. Show the thing in game next.

[InsanitySorrow]

As has been mentioned here already, best way to attempt this is to make your model with the rough shape you want to see, UV map this low poly model and prep it for the game, then take a copy of it and turn it into a high poly model and bake your details here into a normal map.

Grond mentioned I wrote a tutorial for Blender, that's one way to go about it, but there is another which is more popular. The second way is to make use of Zbrush, it's a sculpting program, a very powerful one at that. There are plenty of tutorials on line for it too, from basics to advanced

[Marthgun]

so i'd be making a high poly model just to make a normal map? then take that normal and put it on the low poly?

as far as zbrush goes, like mudbox those models need to be super high poly to sculpt, so is that just for the normal?

In this arena there is going to be a lot of npc's, so i'd like to keep it as low poly as possible.

[grond]

Yes, you'd be modeling all the details you want, for all of the maps that you'll bake into the low poly model. Normals, Ambient Occlusion, etc...that's the fun part in my opinion, creating the object that you want, regardless of poly count! Because in the end it'll just go into your portfolio. What goes in game is the low poly, with all the detail baked in. Getting a low poly from the high poly is another question. I favor retopology. If you're not familiar with that, it's building a new mesh directly on the surface of the high poly mesh, but you control the amount of vertices you use. It's like a magic trick. Blender has a Retopo tool, and Max does too. I don't know if ZBrush does... but there's also a tool called which looks really sweet.

Ultimately there's one way to get the level of detail you want I think, and that's to bake textures from a high poly to a low poly. There are just a lot of different ways to achieve it.

[Marthgun]

cool, thanks for the response!

I'm working on some basic texturing right now, but when i get some stuff done i'll post it

[Marthgun]

Here;s an update,

I watched this tutorial here:

http://eat3d.com/free/meshlab

and used meshlabs, to reduce the polycount from 4000 to 450; what is a good number for a static mesh, wall relief?

the result is pretty good imo, but before i realized it, i was working with a 300x300 pixel picture in photoshop so i could really only make it 512x512 w/o looking too bad. I would have made a higher res, but i didn't save the outline before adding a few texture layers. that's something on the bottom of the to do list though lol

the only thing left I need to learn is how to get proper collision. I've followed all the tutorials and currently am in contact with the guy over at nexus who did the 3ds tutorial, apparently something changed from 2010 to 2013; doesn't work. I've been using chunkmerge, it says it successfully adds collision, the ck shows proper collision, but in game i can't click on or activate the object, even though its a static mesh, but i walk right through it. not sure if something isn't ticked right in nifskope or what. I'm assuming chunkmerge takes an existing collision mesh and squashes it down over the new custom mesh. but idk how it works

heres the nif with texture files https://www.dropbox.com/s/35w4ujikbdz7zas/Oroboris.zip

[grond]

It looks great! 450 might be steep though...if you're going to have ten of them scattered around, can you afford 4500 polys?

ChunkMerge works on a copy of the mesh - one that you make. It snaps it onto your original mesh. Take a look at this tutorial:

http://tesalliance.o...nder-to-skyrim/

If you can take that out of Max as an OBJ you can import it into Blender, and work on exporting to Skyrim using IS's tutorial.

[Marthgun]

i know it works for 3ds, but i think i might grab a copy of blender just in case. I've heard its alot easier to get collision on an object in blender. thanks for the link.

a bit more about the poly count, if i broke it down any more it looks pretty terrible, in fact without the normal and diffuse it looks pretty funky. what should I be striving for? The relief you see is about character height, so 6 ft x 6 ft in game. what should me Arena be at maximum? I've been very conservative with my poly count so far, but putting together these reliefs, statues and clutter is going to rack up pretty fast.

[InsanitySorrow]

Anywhere between 500 and 1k will do fine for something like that. A lot of the larger architecture pieces in Skyrim range from about 2 to 5k.

[Marthgun]

well i had planned on using about 50k, the arena was supposed to be extremely large bigger than whiterun's hold. That includes clutter and everything.

but i could always scale it down i guess considering there is going to be a large mansion next to it.

I'm still not quite understanding the high poly to low poly concept, using the meshlabs software, there is just no way i could possibly get this arena down to 5k polys. If i reduce the polys too much it loses its hieght. without enough polys i cant deform the mesh to create real depth like in the center of the snake. without that many polys it loses form. I just watched a youtube tutorial of a guy who baked his own normal maps in 3ds from a uvw map with some basic modeling over the plane. super duper confusing and complicated and it was just a normal map. a really good, clean normal, but that doesn't really help my situation.

I guess im saying im confused. I can make the high poly, but to keep the relatively complex geometry as the snake above its going to be expensive. should i even be trying to model the intricacies?

[InsanitySorrow]

If that 50K is spread over multiple pieces and not a single object then you might be able to get away with it. For a single object like an Architecture piece I'd try and stay below 10k if possible, it might work best to break it up into a few different sections you can put together in the CK.

Automated processes aren't really the best option for something like this, your best bet is to use reptopology like Grond suggested above, that way you can have more control over where the polys go.

[Marthgun]

oh ok, the highest poly single object probably wont be above 1k, phew, I understand now.

I guess I misunderstood what grond was saying about retopology, the tutorials i looked up for 3ds used the tools i was familiar with and after playing around for a bit i still needed to use a ton of polys to get a similar effect, and i really dont want to buy another super expensive program,

do you know any other ways or programs i could use or learn about this retopology? Here's my newest WIP:

This will be relatively high poly after I finish, smooth and shell it. I figured i'd make the model i wanted then by the time i was finished I would have investigated ways to drastically reduce the poly count without losing the general shape and then relying heavily on a normal map.

btw, I'm modeling this from planes, I know I can do it this way but how would you guys go about tackling this project? Thanks!

[grond]

Retopo! It's a lot of fun, at least once you get the grasp of it. After you create your original model, and you have modeled in every bit of detail that you want, all the nooks and crannies, all the scales and wrinkles, you'll think of that model as a template for the model you'll be using in game. The idea of retopology is to begin with a single vertex, drop it onto your ridiculously high-poly model. Using Blender's retopo tool (v. 2.49b ) that vertex sticks to the surface of the template model. From there, you add verts, connecting the dots, as it were, and each vert you add magically sticks to the surface of your high-poly model. You use common sense - "where is the next edge loop going?" - and patience - "vert by vert I rebuild this beautiful thing??" - and eventually you end up with a mesh that's far lower in polys, yet one that retains the major shapes of the original, and is also ready and waiting for you to bake in all the detail from that precious high poly gem

I don't know any tuts for Max, but a casual google brought me to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9WT0Y4KjDM.

For Blender I used these two links - KatsBits and the Blender Manual

Also worth checking out is TopoGun, a standalone retopology tool. A license costs 100 American Bucks....hope this rambling helps.

[Marthgun]

perfect thanks!

isn't there a higher version of blender though? Is there a reason you use the old one?

[grond]

I'm lazy My monitor broke last year, so I was using a television, and couldn't read tiny print (blender buttons..) So I stuck with 2.49 because I'm familiar with it. Now I have a nice monitor, but I'm too lazy and otherwise occupied to get into the sleek new 2.6. That's the new one.