hard surface modelling

[rick]

Hi been playing with mudbox a bit more, starting to get a had of it. As I don't have a wacom tablet yet, I thought I would be a good idea to do some hard surface modelling, I created this wall with an arch, played with it a bit and found out that mudbox is really designed to do more organic things, am I right?

I tried turning of smooth when subdividing but this still gave a few abnormality's. Any ideas guys?

[Hulahuga]

Yeah. Subdivision modelling according to me seems more fluent with organic. Though if you densify the models at the supposed hard edges you'll usually get a good result.

[Wayne]

Just turn off smooth under the subdvide options and that wil make life eaiser. Also try setting minimum brush strength to 100. Tibor (one of the orginal 3 skymatter guys who wrote mud) has done everything from a trainer to a concept car...so it can be done its all down to the workflow you use.

Use of steady stroke and curves help a lot as well for hard surface stuff.

Wayne...

[Hulahuga]

Turning off smooth. Coolness, never knew you could do that ;).

[rick]

Cheers guys, was trying to figure out how to do it in tutorials, but didn't get anywhere, so tried to do it my self, (like how many options can they be right!). So pretty much turned off all the smooths everywhere, and found that gave the best result. Wish there was a way to even out the poly count to the size of the face. Coz I also had to harden the edges im Maya too. Which gave crazy poly count where I wanted hard edges. Might be best to divided the larger faces too next time.

[Wayne]

Always try to aim for even quads for any sculpting app.... the way the two subdivision algorithms that are used in both main apps work, make it disadvatagous to use enlongated quads or too many tris.

Wayne...

[steelsky]

Hmm, this question seems to follow on here so ill tag it on - say you have a simple boxy base mesh with good even quads, and you want the edge to be beveled/chamferd (spelling), would you try to do the bevel effect in mud somehow or just bevel it on the basemesh and live with the fact theres gonna be a tone of subdivisions on the beveled bit - just curious for best workflow. This is assuming that there is no smoothing - just tesselation (spelling sheesh).

[Wayne]

Hmm, this question seems to follow on here so ill tag it on - say you have a simple boxy base mesh with good even quads, and you want the edge to be beveled/chamferd (spelling), would you try to do the bevel effect in mud somehow or just bevel it on the basemesh and live with the fact theres gonna be a tone of subdivisions on the beveled bit - just curious for best workflow. This is assuming that there is no smoothing - just tesselation (spelling sheesh).

The way I do it, is to subdivide with smooth off a few times..then turn smooth ON and subd again a few times. You need ot kep an eye o your tesselation and bear in mind how things are going to subdivide as well. It gives a nice edge to it.


Wayne...

[steelsky]

Thats actually a really good tip - id not have thought of doing it like that but thinking about it logically it makes sense - Ive already started something now but ill bare that in mind for the next project - thanks!