Arma3 Models and Mudbox

[gavc 28]

Anyone using Mudbox to get extra detail on models? I've noticed that the majority of the meshes i try to import are a bit of a disaster, lots of errors etc etc. Anyone know of a decent cleanup tool?

Gav

[PuFu 4600]

most are using zbrush for organics, but some are using either blender sculpt tool or mudbox. But i don't get the question? Cleanup tool for what? The mesh you are building in *insert sculpt tool* is usually retopo on top of a level 1 or 2 subdivision mesh from *insert sculpt tool*. You best bet is to use max/maya native retopo tools, they work wonders.

[LCpl Aaron 11]

zbrush has a good re-topology tool but nothing beats the good old poly tools in max(as PuFu said im just reiterating), idk if mudbox has decent retop tools because autodesk makes most of their apps to kinda "rely" on each other. if you cant get get a student version of max, maya lt is way more affordable , or modo they have pretty good retop tools from what i have seen could even say superior to max in some ways a little more pricey then maya LT though.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

AFAIK it's mainly that you want to get rid of triangles in the game mesh and retopo it to a nice even quad mesh before putting it in to sculpting software.

I found when I was preparing the Arma 3 "underwear" sample mesh for zBrush (preparing it in Maya because I wanted more control over where some specific edges were, than using zBrush's dynamesh/retopo would allow), that it helped if I split the mesh up into separate parts first; along a good, logical edge-loops for the different parts of the uniform I was going to try and sculpt.

I.e. separate the feet from the legs so I can sculpt them in to boots (separated above the ankle to get a decent high-top boot shape), separate the hands from the arms so I can sculpt them in to gloves, then separate the torso from the legs at the waist to make separate base meshes for the trousers and shirt - then retopolo each of those parts individually and add some subdivs once the shape I wanted to sculpt with was there to check how it might subdivide in zBrush when going up in detail levels.

Otherwise, running Maya's various quadrangulate and retopo modifiers to clean uo the original model all in one piece was creating some spiralling topology of the quads along the arms/legs/trunk rather than nice regular rows, and losing too much of the shape that I wanted to keep in the base mesh in some of the more complex parts of the mesh like the hands and groin. The spiralling made it a pain in the arse to mask the ends of sleeves/legs into nice, even shapes for sculpting in zBrush so it was important for me that these parts terminated on a full, even edge loop.

I left the head untouched since I'm not going to use that for sculpting at all (it's just going to be there as a reference) and it'll be a separate proxy on the low-poly model anyway.

Edited March 25, 2015 by da12thMonkey

[gavc 28]

thanks for the replies folks,

I've ended up manually making a new mesh, a cleaner quad based one, working from there. Yet to export to mudbox but should have time over the next week or so. I had deleted the boots and hands, and was going to work without them, I was thinking that maybe i could just use ones from the base models, (not sure if that's allowed) if not i'm model them separately.

Gav