Rhino Iron Jaw Helmet WIP (Update 3: Almost there!)

[TheVigilant]

Hi! I present you my work and also ask for some help.

I just downloaded Zbrush not so long ago and in a week I dive in all the 3D rendering world so, I'm a big noob right now XD.

This is my very first sculpture and is a Alt Helmet for Rhino.

First sculpt:

Spoiler

Update:

Spoiler

 

Working right now on better textures and fixing some topologies and I think it should be done by today in the workshop, yay! :D

 

Thanks for your time! And I'm also very thankful with all who helped me in the process! :D

Edited June 28, 2016 by TheVigilant
Third update

[Senketsu_]

noyce

Edited June 22, 2016 by Senketsu_

[Btabc]

Very interesting!  Reminds me of Doctor Who's Dream Crabs!  Looks very nice, keep it up!

[led2012WF]

you lower it by retopology. I use topogun because it's so fast and easy to use

[TheVigilant]

16 hours ago, led2012WF said:

you lower it by retopology. I use topogun because it's so fast and easy to use

Thanks! I learned very interesting things researching that.

I managed to lower it by using the Decimation Master that Zbrush has. I wasn't able to find how to "get out of demo mode" (if you know what I mean) in topogun so, I cannot use it. Also tried to use the auto retopology tool that Zbrush has and only increased my triangle/poly count and also lower the quality.

Now I have 3928 triangles, does affect too much that the mesh isn't so organized like with retopology??

17 hours ago, Btabc said:

Very interesting!  Reminds me of Doctor Who's Dream Crabs!  Looks very nice, keep it up!

Didn't get the reference so I google it and I can see what you mean, thanks XD.

[Blaqsailens]

I don't know if its just me, but it kind of just looks like Vauban Primes helmet. Specifically the jaw and the top of the head.

[arch111]

Topology is everything.  It is how light bounces and how shadows fall.

Take your time to understand it.

[CrunchbiteNuva]

2 hours ago, TheVigilant said:

Thanks! I learned very interesting things researching that.

I managed to lower it by using the Decimation Master that Zbrush has. I wasn't able to find how to "get out of demo mode" (if you know what I mean) in topogun so, I cannot use it. Also tried to use the auto retopology tool that Zbrush has and only increased my triangle/poly count and also lower the quality.

Now I have 3928 triangles, does affect too much that the mesh isn't so organized like with retopology??

Didn't get the reference so I google it and I can see what you mean, thanks XD.

Which were you using? Dynamesh or Zremesher? Because Zremesher does let you somewhat control the polycount.

[TheVigilant]

42 minutes ago, arch111 said:

Topology is everything.  It is how light bounces and how shadows fall.

Take your time to understand it.

Oks, trying my best to understand it right now.

6 minutes ago, CrunchbiteNuva said:

Which were you using? Dynamesh or Zremesher? Because Zremesher does let you somewhat control the polycount.

Zremesher, tried with 5, 2, 1 and 0.5 target polygon count and didn't make the 5000 triangles or lower and 0.5 lowered the quality too much.

[led2012WF]

if you just used decimation master, your mesh would have ugly triangle areas, and it would affect if the material for that area are shiny. 
If you can't find any other free tool, Blender would work for retopology. 

[fredaven]

i wouldnt recomend zremesher, it can do a passable job if you use the retopobrush and guide everything + polypaint to define density. Even so it creates nasty loops very often and you don't got a massive amount of controll

 

I use blender for retopo. its perfectly good for that and I prefer it over topogun and similar specialized software.

Edit: also that jaw is to big, it will clip with his chest.

Edited June 23, 2016 by fredaven

[Syncrasis]

Okay so I started writing a little about my modeling process and ended up writing a book... Hopefully you can pick and choose some things to research, and maybe read along with the main TennoGen guide here: https://warframe.com/steamworkshop/help/index.php?page=content-creator-art-style-guide

WALL OF TEXT SORRY sorry

Spoiler

 

So when you're working on your high poly model, the topology literally does not matter. Do whatever you feel gives you the best results. You will find tons of opinions on what's best but it's kind of like painting, everyone has their own way.

For me, I start with a very low poly dynamesh object and move it around until I cannot add more detail, then I increase the poly count by moving the Dynamesh slider up slightly and re-dynameshing. Then I sculpt until I cannot add more detail on that level, etc. until I get to a point where I need the final, very superficial/fine marks and I subdivide for that. 

Whenever I have objects that fit tightly together but still have a deep space between them, I find it useful to break it into multiple subtools. I think that would help your "mouth" crease and make it easier for you to get in there and work with it because you can go into solo mode and hide the other parts so they're not in the way. I like to make separate subtools for mechanical pieces too, so I can more easily flatten edges with the trim dynamic and h polish brushes. 

Remember to keep this in mind: Primary forms, secondary forms, tertiary forms. Work from largest to smallest and always make sure you are paying attention to your surface. It's much harder to smooth out or make big changes to a large surface (or a small one, for that matter) after you are working with a high detail mesh. 

Primary forms - The overall silhouette of your piece. Think about positive/negative space, composition, volume.
Secondary forms - Break up your main shape into smaller pieces that are not equal. Don't break it up a ton, but focus on the movement of your pieces, how they fit together, etc. These are large pieces.
Tertiary forms - Your final details. These are things like edge/corner treatment, superficial panel lines, vents, creases, etc. These are added very last and you want to group them in areas that draw the eye to focal points. Make sure to leave open spaces for the eye to rest and resist the urge to add too much detail to every part of the surface. 

Make sure you are polypainting your model to set up your basic tintmask structure. This is only for reference so don't worry if it's messy/weird colors. Use the basic material, not the wax material... you will get the correct color that way and a better idea of how your model is coming along. Polypainting is super easy, it's just a few buttons to learn, good tutorials on Youtube for that. Merge all your pieces together and export as an OBJ. 

_________________

So that's your high poly... next you make a low poly skin over your object, looks like you've already taken a look at topogun, which is my tool of choice. Basically, if you try to decimate/remesh/dynamesh your model to have a lower poly count, you will have an absolute mess for your final in-game model. Use a retopologizing tool like Topogun, learn about edge flow and edge loops, put your higher detail into silhouette-defining shapes and generalize the inner forms that will never breach the silhouette as you rotate around the model. Try to make your low poly model with as many quads as possible, and never use more than 4 sides on a polygon. 3-sided is ok but avoid making really long ones as they create shading errors. Take a look at low poly wireframes and see how other people construct them, it will help!

You'll have to unwrap your UVs now... this is part of where clean edge loops help a lot to speed up the process. You're basically drawing seams down your model and flattening out the pieces, kind of like a clothing pattern, trying to find a balance between as few seams as possible and as little texture stretching/distortion as possible. I usually do this in Maya, but there are tonnnns of other tools out there for UV unwrapping. Export your UV-unwrapped object and save it as your low poly OBJ.

____________________________

You bake your textures after this, and there are many different tools to do this part as well. Probably the easiest is xNormal. If you use xNormal you'll have to learn how to make a "cage", it's basically a slightly larger but identical copy of your low poly object that tells the renderer where and how to shoot light rays at your meshes. Your high poly and low poly mesh basically sit in the same space, the cage envelops both of them, and rays are projected "through" the high poly and onto the low poly object, and is baked onto your UV unwrap as a texture. You want to bake out an ambient occlusion and a normal map at the very least. Also make sure you're baking at double size the final resolution (so bake at 1024x1024 for a final resolution of 512x512 later, which DE will resize).

I like to go into Knald at this point and make a curvature map from my normal map. A curvature map throws a 50% grey on the whole thing, and then shades the crevices dark and highlights edges. Very lovely results. 

You still with me? Ugh sorry this is so long lol. 

__________________

Now you wanna go into a tool like Photoshop and start compositing your textures together. For your "diffuse" texture, put your Ambient Occlusion (AO) map on the bottom layer set to "normal", and then put your curvature map over that set to "multiply". Then you want to add some wear and tear... if you're using this workflow you can put a grunge texture over the top and erase the clean areas with a textured brush, or handpaint some grunge on, or whatever you want. I suggest just finding something and setting it to "multiply" on top of everything and experimenting with different textures, brushes, opacity, etc. You can also make some areas darker or lighter but try not to push the grey values too much or they won't tint well in-game. Resist the urge to make bright white areas, they look flat in-game. This is your basic Diffuse texture.

Now you want to make your tintmask. What I like to do is throw a pure red layer set to "multiply" over everything first. This is "Tint1" and should occupy most of your tintmask anyway, but the reason we actually fill the entire texture with it is because the other tints are layered on TOP of this one. It's weird! If you want any areas to NOT be tintable, erase those areas from this layer. Anything you paint next for the other tints will replace the red so you don't have to think about it. Next you make a new layer for a pure green color over it, this is "Tint2". I set this to "hue" for now, so I can see where I'm painting. This color should occupy the second most amount of space. Next is "Tint3" on top of that, also set to "hue", and it's pure blue. Finally, "Tint4" is an alpha channel... another weird one. I tend to add another layer with color in the usual place, but then hold down ctrl and click on it to grab the opaque pixels and make a new channel in the channels tab, it'll automatically be black, so just fill your selection with white. Tint4 is your accent color so you should have very fine lines/details for this one.

VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure you are constantly comparing your tints/details/style etc. with the in-game body to make sure they will work together, visually and thematically. 

To prep your tintmask for export, make sure you have SuperPNG installed first. Then you'll want to put a black fill layer under your "Tint1" (the red layer) to block out everything under it, set to normal. Set Tint1 layer to normal, set Tint2 and Tint3 to "screen". Make sure you have put at least a single white pixel into your alpha channel or it won't work. Then you "Save as" and choose SuperPNG, and leave the options the same, except change the "alpha channel" to "transparency". Export that guy.

______________________

Emissive is just a black texture with white spots where you want the energy/glow to happen.

Metalness is a black texture with white painted in where you want something to appear as bare metal/metallic. This is paired with a roughness map.

Specular is a black texture with a variety of greys and whites for where there is shine or there isn't shine. You'll want to research this one, it's a bit tricky at first. You don't need to make this if you're making a Metalness map, and vice versa. Roughness is also similar to this, but you'll want to read more to learn the differences. 

Diffuse is the layered texture we talked about before adding the tint colors. It's black and white.

Normal map is that crazy blue/pink texture. Make sure to invert the Y/green channel before you put it into TennoGen.

________________

To test everything together, you can start with the TennoGen tool. Upload your low poly asset, and plug in your textures. Two things to watch out for: You need to take your normal map, go into the "channels", and invert the green/Y channel to make it work in the TennoGen tool. Second: Your tintmask will only work if your alpha channel is set to "transparency" in the SuperPNG export. If you did it wrong, you will see the whole asset being tinted with Tint1. If you didn't layer your tintmask colors like described, you will also see an ugly halo around all your tints.

Once you have everything working, you can upload to the Steam Workshop using TennoGen.

Make sure to post your progress here and stuff :D

 

I hope this helps! If you need any visual examples, I'd be happy to share with you. 

[edit to add] By the way, in order to get the Rhino body to work, you open it up in a program other than Zbrush and export it as an obj. This also puts all the materials into a folder for you. Here is a converted version of the Rhino model https://www.dropbox.com/s/5tu7b88sdmglold/Rhino.obj?dl=0 Just have your old shard-looking body selected in the subtools palette and go up to "import" on the tool menu and grab the new one there and it'll replace it right in the scene.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Syncrasis

[TheVigilant]

20 hours ago, led2012WF said:

if you just used decimation master, your mesh would have ugly triangle areas, and it would affect if the material for that area are shiny. 
If you can't find any other free tool, Blender would work for retopology. 

Yeah currently using Blender for topology, I'm a big noob right now but getting there, ty.

17 hours ago, fredaven said:

i wouldnt recomend zremesher, it can do a passable job if you use the retopobrush and guide everything + polypaint to define density. Even so it creates nasty loops very often and you don't got a massive amount of controll

 

I use blender for retopo. its perfectly good for that and I prefer it over topogun and similar specialized software.

Edit: also that jaw is to big, it will clip with his chest.

Thanks for the advice. And also, at first didn't mind too much the jaw size since even the current rhino helmets jaws clip like nobody business already when looking down but, maybe shrink it a bit if it is too much problem.

13 hours ago, Syncrasis said:

Okay so I started writing a little about my modeling process and ended up writing a book... Hopefully you can pick and choose some things to research, and maybe read along with the main TennoGen guide here: https://warframe.com/steamworkshop/help/index.php?page=content-creator-art-style-guide

WALL OF TEXT SORRY sorry

  Reveal hidden contents

 

So when you're working on your high poly model, the topology literally does not matter. Do whatever you feel gives you the best results. You will find tons of opinions on what's best but it's kind of like painting, everyone has their own way.

For me, I start with a very low poly dynamesh object and move it around until I cannot add more detail, then I increase the poly count by moving the Dynamesh slider up slightly and re-dynameshing. Then I sculpt until I cannot add more detail on that level, etc. until I get to a point where I need the final, very superficial/fine marks and I subdivide for that. 

Whenever I have objects that fit tightly together but still have a deep space between them, I find it useful to break it into multiple subtools. I think that would help your "mouth" crease and make it easier for you to get in there and work with it because you can go into solo mode and hide the other parts so they're not in the way. I like to make separate subtools for mechanical pieces too, so I can more easily flatten edges with the trim dynamic and h polish brushes. 

Remember to keep this in mind: Primary forms, secondary forms, tertiary forms. Work from largest to smallest and always make sure you are paying attention to your surface. It's much harder to smooth out or make big changes to a large surface (or a small one, for that matter) after you are working with a high detail mesh. 

Primary forms - The overall silhouette of your piece. Think about positive/negative space, composition, volume.
Secondary forms - Break up your main shape into smaller pieces that are not equal. Don't break it up a ton, but focus on the movement of your pieces, how they fit together, etc. These are large pieces.
Tertiary forms - Your final details. These are things like edge/corner treatment, superficial panel lines, vents, creases, etc. These are added very last and you want to group them in areas that draw the eye to focal points. Make sure to leave open spaces for the eye to rest and resist the urge to add too much detail to every part of the surface. 

Make sure you are polypainting your model to set up your basic tintmask structure. This is only for reference so don't worry if it's messy/weird colors. Use the basic material, not the wax material... you will get the correct color that way and a better idea of how your model is coming along. Polypainting is super easy, it's just a few buttons to learn, good tutorials on Youtube for that. Merge all your pieces together and export as an OBJ. 

_________________

So that's your high poly... next you make a low poly skin over your object, looks like you've already taken a look at topogun, which is my tool of choice. Basically, if you try to decimate/remesh/dynamesh your model to have a lower poly count, you will have an absolute mess for your final in-game model. Use a retopologizing tool like Topogun, learn about edge flow and edge loops, put your higher detail into silhouette-defining shapes and generalize the inner forms that will never breach the silhouette as you rotate around the model. Try to make your low poly model with as many quads as possible, and never use more than 4 sides on a polygon. 3-sided is ok but avoid making really long ones as they create shading errors. Take a look at low poly wireframes and see how other people construct them, it will help!

You'll have to unwrap your UVs now... this is part of where clean edge loops help a lot to speed up the process. You're basically drawing seams down your model and flattening out the pieces, kind of like a clothing pattern, trying to find a balance between as few seams as possible and as little texture stretching/distortion as possible. I usually do this in Maya, but there are tonnnns of other tools out there for UV unwrapping. Export your UV-unwrapped object and save it as your low poly OBJ.

____________________________

You bake your textures after this, and there are many different tools to do this part as well. Probably the easiest is xNormal. If you use xNormal you'll have to learn how to make a "cage", it's basically a slightly larger but identical copy of your low poly object that tells the renderer where and how to shoot light rays at your meshes. Your high poly and low poly mesh basically sit in the same space, the cage envelops both of them, and rays are projected "through" the high poly and onto the low poly object, and is baked onto your UV unwrap as a texture. You want to bake out an ambient occlusion and a normal map at the very least. Also make sure you're baking at double size the final resolution (so bake at 1024x1024 for a final resolution of 512x512 later, which DE will resize).

I like to go into Knald at this point and make a curvature map from my normal map. A curvature map throws a 50% grey on the whole thing, and then shades the crevices dark and highlights edges. Very lovely results. 

You still with me? Ugh sorry this is so long lol. 

__________________

Now you wanna go into a tool like Photoshop and start compositing your textures together. For your "diffuse" texture, put your Ambient Occlusion (AO) map on the bottom layer set to "normal", and then put your curvature map over that set to "multiply". Then you want to add some wear and tear... if you're using this workflow you can put a grunge texture over the top and erase the clean areas with a textured brush, or handpaint some grunge on, or whatever you want. I suggest just finding something and setting it to "multiply" on top of everything and experimenting with different textures, brushes, opacity, etc. You can also make some areas darker or lighter but try not to push the grey values too much or they won't tint well in-game. Resist the urge to make bright white areas, they look flat in-game. This is your basic Diffuse texture.

Now you want to make your tintmask. What I like to do is throw a pure red layer set to "multiply" over everything first. This is "Tint1" and should occupy most of your tintmask anyway, but the reason we actually fill the entire texture with it is because the other tints are layered on TOP of this one. It's weird! If you want any areas to NOT be tintable, erase those areas from this layer. Anything you paint next for the other tints will replace the red so you don't have to think about it. Next you make a new layer for a pure green color over it, this is "Tint2". I set this to "hue" for now, so I can see where I'm painting. This color should occupy the second most amount of space. Next is "Tint3" on top of that, also set to "hue", and it's pure blue. Finally, "Tint4" is an alpha channel... another weird one. I tend to add another layer with color in the usual place, but then hold down ctrl and click on it to grab the opaque pixels and make a new channel in the channels tab, it'll automatically be black, so just fill your selection with white. Tint4 is your accent color so you should have very fine lines/details for this one.

VERY IMPORTANT: Make sure you are constantly comparing your tints/details/style etc. with the in-game body to make sure they will work together, visually and thematically. 

To prep your tintmask for export, make sure you have SuperPNG installed first. Then you'll want to put a black fill layer under your "Tint1" (the red layer) to block out everything under it, set to normal. Set Tint1 layer to normal, set Tint2 and Tint3 to "screen". Make sure you have put at least a single white pixel into your alpha channel or it won't work. Then you "Save as" and choose SuperPNG, and leave the options the same, except change the "alpha channel" to "transparency". Export that guy.

______________________

Emissive is just a black texture with white spots where you want the energy/glow to happen.

Metalness is a black texture with white painted in where you want something to appear as bare metal/metallic. This is paired with a roughness map.

Specular is a black texture with a variety of greys and whites for where there is shine or there isn't shine. You'll want to research this one, it's a bit tricky at first. You don't need to make this if you're making a Metalness map, and vice versa. Roughness is also similar to this, but you'll want to read more to learn the differences. 

Diffuse is the layered texture we talked about before adding the tint colors. It's black and white.

Normal map is that crazy blue/pink texture. Make sure to invert the Y/green channel before you put it into TennoGen.

________________

To test everything together, you can start with the TennoGen tool. Upload your low poly asset, and plug in your textures. Two things to watch out for: You need to take your normal map, go into the "channels", and invert the green/Y channel to make it work in the TennoGen tool. Second: Your tintmask will only work if your alpha channel is set to "transparency" in the SuperPNG export. If you did it wrong, you will see the whole asset being tinted with Tint1. If you didn't layer your tintmask colors like described, you will also see an ugly halo around all your tints.

Once you have everything working, you can upload to the Steam Workshop using TennoGen.

Make sure to post your progress here and stuff :D

 

I hope this helps! If you need any visual examples, I'd be happy to share with you. 

[edit to add] By the way, in order to get the Rhino body to work, you open it up in a program other than Zbrush and export it as an obj. This also puts all the materials into a folder for you. Here is a converted version of the Rhino model https://www.dropbox.com/s/5tu7b88sdmglold/Rhino.obj?dl=0 Just have your old shard-looking body selected in the subtools palette and go up to "import" on the tool menu and grab the new one there and it'll replace it right in the scene.

Whoa! Didn't expect that, thanks a lot it will very useful and probably I'll read it again and again and again every time I get lost XD. 

And thanks for the model but I figured out (randomly XD) that if I delete the default helmet from the body in maya it get fixed when I imported back it to Zbrush.

Thanks to all for helping this big noob in modeling. Seriously, I did not expect that the gap between 2D/Illustration/vector to 3D modeling would be that hard but getting there, ty!

[Larcerus]

Very nice helmet would totally buy that ^,..,^

[TheVigilant]

Second update on the helmet; so close and yet so far. If I manage to get out of this problem I'll probably finish it in no time.

[raydog]

Its the smoothing groups on your low poly mesh that's causing the issue.

[Quarinah]

Also keep in mind that in ZBrush you are using quads, and for the game engine you need triangles, so try to get the quad topology to be half the recommended value.

It says in the guideline "Triangle budget :: 5000" so you will need to go down to 2500 quads max in ZBrush.

[TheVigilant]

13 hours ago, raydog said:

Its the smoothing groups on your low poly mesh that's causing the issue.

Thanks, that did the job! Now to work in the new iteration, hopefully I'll finish it today :D.

 

12 hours ago, Quarinah said:

Also keep in mind that in ZBrush you are using quads, and for the game engine you need triangles, so try to get the quad topology to be half the recommended value.

It says in the guideline "Triangle budget :: 5000" so you will need to go down to 2500 quads max in ZBrush.

Don't worry about it, currently I'm sitting at 4288 triangles, the TennoGen tool display that many triangles because I have Rhino model loaded in.

[AurumandArgentum]

First thing I thought of when I saw this.

[TheVigilant]

2 hours ago, AurumandArgentum said:

Spoiler

 

First thing I thought of when I saw this.

 

 

Lol, haven't made that connection, I was thinking something more crab-like but that works too.

Edited June 27, 2016 by TheVigilant

[TheVigilant]

Third update: model with quick textures.