[Help Request] Blender - Sculpting And Normal Maps

[Larsurus]

Hello!

 

If anyone has the time, I would love some help with Blender, sculpting and baking normal maps.

 

First of all, I am very much a noob, but I am a wizard when it comes to learning new things.

 

What I need help learning in Blender are the following things:

 

1. Making a lowpoly model into a highpoly model in order to sculpt it properly.

I've managed to increase the number of polygons, but the result when sculpting is a broken mirror effect of sad and angry polygons. Is there a proper way to do this in order to get a smooth sculpting experience? I'm thinking it has to do with the polygons being triangles because I've seen people working with square ones. Am I on the right track so far?

 

2. Sculpting tips. I can probably learn through trial and error and tutorials, but I'd love to hear how to sculpt smart. I'm not aiming for a total remodel, I just want to know how to make nice grooves and minor details. What brushes/tools to use and things to think of that make it easier for a beginner and/or pro.

 

3. Making/baking a normal map. Should I pre-heat my oven? :)

 

I am certain there are a lot of tutorials for Blender and all the above on YouTube etc. But I honestly don't even know where to start. By all means, feel free to slap me on the fingers if you happen to know where to find videos/guides that relate to the above. But I'd love hear it from the people here who work directly with Warframe related models and skins.

 

You don't have to answer all the questions, but if you can answer one or two then I'd be equally happy

 

Thank you! 

[JefPlays]

1. In general, having lots of tris does tend to make thing more difficult. Subsurf modifiers tend to work better with quads as opposed to tris.

 

2. Can't really comment on this, since I kinda suck at the sculpting tools in Blender.

 

3. Baking's a fairly simple process, it's more a matter of getting everything set up correctly.

 

It's a bit lengthy to write out, but I just googled and found a tutorial vid:

 

Have fun!

[Larsurus]

1. In general, having lots of tris does tend to make thing more difficult. Subsurf modifiers tend to work better with quads as opposed to tris.

 

 

Could you expand on how to turn the tris back into quads? If even possible?

[JefPlays]

Could you expand on how to turn the tris back into quads? If even possible?

 

There's a 'Tris to Quads' at the bottom left of the 3D View under Mesh -> Faces while in Edit mode.

 

Alternatively, select two tris and hit F. Repeat for all tris.

[evergreenmind]

 

2. Sculpting tips. I can probably learn through trial and error and tutorials, but I'd love to hear how to sculpt smart. I'm not aiming for a total remodel, I just want to know how to make nice grooves and minor details. What brushes/tools to use and things to think of that make it easier for a beginner and/or pro.

 

Have you considered using Sculptris? it's free and easy to use. And you can export the sculpt into Blender when ready.

 

Can't help with Blender tho', my sculpting mode in it doesn't seem to work properly ...

Edited October 25, 2015 by evergreenmind

[Galtego]

Thanks for making this topic, the info in it has helped me :)

[MavenCoreX]

Hello, I used blender for my model I am working on. (Excal Elite thread). I'm far from an expert in blender sculpting but here are some tips what I did.

 

1.) Import the mesh FBX DE provides into blender. You may want to import it with an increase scale. This is fine since you can't use the actual mesh for submitting skins. I personally imported it as a scale of 1 but would recommend upping the scale some.

 

2.) Using the mesh to sculpt. Once you import the mesh into blender, do NOT change the mesh geometry. Doing so may give inaccuracies when baking or even completely ruin your skin. What I did, was add a multi resolution modifier from the modifiers tab. This is what is essential to sculpting in blender. From there you would just go into sculpt mode and start sub dividing until you have enough verts.

 

3.) Sculpting the mesh is about the same as if you doing it other programs. Start with minor detail and then subdivide (with multi res) the mesh to get finer detail. Increasing the subdivisions  will strain you computer more. Also should mention, the mesh has plenty of triangles. Only thing I can say about this, is to deal with it. Shouldn't be hard to work around but will cause pinching in some areas. Last thing I noticed about the warframe meshes, is that it lacks topology in many areas.

 

4.) Baking in blender is possible. You actually have few options BUT I found it still better to use an external program like xnormal to bake textures. If you do tend to bake in blender, I would suggest using blenders cycle and make a cage. I actually found it to work best but unable to bake multiple meshes with out joining them. Also, you will most likely need to import the base mesh at a higher scale for better baking results as mentioned above.

 

5.) Export the mesh to another program. Again the mesh itself can NOT be used for making skins. This process is only used for baking in an external program. You will need to export the high resolution mesh and the low resolution base mesh with the same scale values. TIP,  Blenders scale units are very small by default. You would most likely need to scale the mesh by 100 to achieve better results. You can do this by exporting your mesh as an obj file and set the scale to 100 near the bottom.

 

6.) TennoGen, once you bake your textures, use tennogen to view them. Import only the mesh provided by DE and then apply the skins in the appropriate slots. 

 

Again, I'm not an expert with sculpting. These are just some things you probably should take in consideration.

Here's a link to my thread: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/551314-excal-elite-skin-wip/

Edited October 27, 2015 by MavenCoreX