Mudbox displacement maps in T2

[efflux]

But Efflux, I would love to see you give the kind of attention to this subject as you have a few others recently. One thing I would point out, is that Z-brush and Mud are really different. Maybe the soft you have is more like mud than Z? So maybe you should look at how mud works too?

I think people who use mud for this will have an easier time than Z. But I'm just guessing. Mud is easier in all respects I feel, though not as popular it seems.

Please go at it!

Ohh, Cant you make a vector in blender? Wouldn't that be another way to use your know how there, in Terragen, too?

This has huge possible potential. I say possible because there could be some glitches.

I'm working totally in 3D Coat at the moment so this ties in. Blender can't do vector displacement maps. Blender has only just got experimental proper displacements at render time in Cycles so vector displacement is low on the list of priorities which is completely understandable. As Dune mentioned, it might be possible to make the sculpt in Blender and somehow turn it into vector displacment in another app. 3D Coat probably will be able to do all this. I'm still in learning phase though. Yes, 3D Coat is much more like Mudbox than ZBrush. What I can say is that 3D Coat 4 is awesome. This is a serious breakthrough. Some parts of it were a bit slow in previous versions. Now it all rockets. I've had a few glitches with it but it's looking like this is Linux end and possibly my fault. I won't get into the full details but it seems to be connected with the way I was configuring the Cintiq. Obviously the Cintiq and 3D Coat is heaven.  If it was possible to do the terrain in Blender then vector displace that would be very cool. Blender is not in the same league as 3D Coat, Mudbox or ZBrush in terms of resolution (or at least in real time as you work) but it's fractals and dynamic topology just work adsolutely great for terrains. That's not to say great results couldn't be got from other sculpting apps it's just that almost by fluke Blender is perfect. What we want is to get much more of those kinds of forms into the vector map rather than just a general shape because although that's still cool, the big advantage would be to be able to get all sorts of forms that are way apart from just displacing by graph stuff in Terragen.

[efflux]

Some people are actually saying that 3D Coat 4 is now faster than Mudbox. I think I'll be upgrading. The paint tools are faster than most 2D painting apps. It's literally on another planet compared to when I first got my old licence. It does everything. Voxels which now have some very cool features to do with dynamically remeshing or not as you wish. Retopologising tools are excellent. UVing seems OK but I've never used them. Mesh tweaking and any form of painting. Painting tools were weak before from a speed perspective.

It may take some time before I work out this vector displacment. I can do it but I need to bring it far beyond what standard displacment maps do. I've watched how it's done in Mudbox. That looks pretty straightforward but the 3D Coat workflow is different even if the sculpting tools and UI are similar.

[efflux]

Michael, this is not related to this thread in technique but have you seen this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40glxZCyPeY

You could do this in any of these apps, Mudbox, 3D Coat and Zbrush. So what I'm thinking is that chunks of Blender terrains could be used for this. World Machine is great but Blender is free and quite unique in the way it can create fractal terrains.

I'd be inclined to Choose Mudbox over ZBrush as well. ZBrush has some advantages but I think the ZBrush UI is a total disaster area. I'm biased towards 3D Coat because it's cheap and Linux.

I'm beginning to think that sculpting terrains, whether purely from scratch or mixing in component terrains from ther apps is in fact the best way to create terrains because you have full control to build in complexity of form that pure procedurals can't do. You can blend it up very naturally. For example World Machines erosions are really beautiful in form but actually too perfect and immediately recognisiable as World Machine.

[efflux]

Now watch this video but relate it to the last one i.e. you build up a terrain with overhangs suitable for vector output and sculpts from Blender etc could be used.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJJQaQDRkG8

[efflux]

It would be most interesting to have a free app that could easily make some nice soft sculpt AND make a VDISP map out of it. It can be done in PS, but needs careful thinking.

Are Vector maps capable of doing total overhangs in terms of bridges like in that image you posted or is that just overhanging to extreme that ends up looking like a bridge? It doesn't seem logical that it could do that. In 3D Coat voxels you can create holes anbd overhangs and obviously in Blender as well because the underlying achitecture is just like standard mesh.

[Dune]

It's just extreme overhang, it won't be possible to make a real bridge from the planet's skin. But you can get quite a way with bridges and tunnels.

[j meyer]

I've done some more tests,but nothing postworthy so far.
There is one thing though I'd like to mention: be aware that you can't use maps
on VDisp terrains,unless you sculpted a really flat terrain.They won't line up correctly,
because it is not a model,but a displaced image and that doesn't have the required
UV coordinates.Also tried to project a simple mask that was captured orthographically,
on a terrain without extreme overhangs,but no joy either.
Didn't realize it earlier although it seems quite obvious now.

[efflux]

Well that's still useful. I'm just wondering how much detail we can get. Obviously it's still a stretching of a flat map. I'm going to have to more less work my way right through 3D Coat before I can get anywhere with this. The info is available on how to to it with Mudbox so if you use Mudbox it's easy. It looks to me like hardly anyone is really pushing this tech to full, just using it to get slightly nicer displacements.

[AP]

Apologies is this link was poster already.

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/mudbox_vdm_stamps/mudbox_vdm_stamps.htm

[TheBadger]

@ChrisC
No that was not posted here yet. Thank you. Its a nice thing to download and save for reverence. sometime I forget basic stuff, and searching through video tuts to find answers can take a lot of time. Thats one reason I love having written materials like you posted too.

@efflux

This has huge possible potential. I say possible because there could be some glitches

Yes indeed!!! But lets figure it all out!
Im actually happy to participate in this one, because I actually understand the basics of it. I dont get to contribute in the technical devopment threads vey much (other than trying to be possitive and suportive) But here I think, in time, I will be able to share some nice bits, and files too. So that makes me pretty happy.
I did see both those links you posted. I have a DT membership now. But the other one I did not watch all the through until you posted here. I have a few vid links that may be helpful as well, and I'll post them when I have a few hours to go through my tut folder in my browser.

I do love Mud over Z. The only thing though, is to use Mud, you have to have another app: Maya, max, soft, modo, and so on. Z can stand alone. But if you have Mud and maya, or one of the others, Z is not really equal to the combo. I don't want to start a fight about "best" soft. Im just speaking from the perspective of someone who hates having to fight to understand software. Mud does not fight with me.
The best advantage to using Z is lots of people use it. So finding help is easier, much easier. On Digital Tutors for example, there are like 1800 tuts for Z, but no where near that many for Mud.

@Dune

It's just extreme overhang, it won't be possible to make a real bridge from the planet's skin. But you can get quite a way with bridges and tunnels.

Im confused on which part of this you guys are talking about. You are not talking about Vdip are you? Because up until right now, I thought that was one of the clearest uses for this (vector displacement). For example this image I posted in open, a while back (or one just like it):
http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/34000000/oz-oz-the-great-and-powerful-34001095-1920-1200.jpg
http://www.all-hd-wallpapers.com/wallpapers/abstract/329067.jpg
http://digital-art-gallery.com/oid/13/640x366_4149_Bridge_2d_fantasy_landscape_bridge_picture_image_digital_art.jpg
http://www.peregrius.cz/ukazky2/melerin/mostek01.jpg

I think I understand the distincion you and efflux are drawing, but please clarify it. "it won't be possible to make a real bridge from the planet's skin. But you can get quite a way with bridges and tunnels." After you apply the map to the planet, then whats the difference exactly? Because as I work, I imagine that once you connect the nodes, than its all terragen.
Like I said, I think I am just missing the distinction your making here.

Never mind! I took a nap and read it again. You were saying that you can't do it in TG without the maps, right? That you can only have overhangs, yes? But with the maps you can doit. Sorry

@J
Please keep at it. Im sure you will make more great advances. Finding limitations is also very very important! And thank you for sharing them! You will save others a ton of time, to try other things. I would never get anywhere if I had to stumble through all the same mistakes as you guys who tried first.
Really! thank you!

@T-U
Ha! It is the end of the world! I never thought I would be in a position to help you with anything. I know you say you don't have much experience with other 3D apps. But I doubt you would have much trouble. Anyway, if I can do anything, I will be glad to help out. It would be nice not to feel like the luddite in the group, for once. 


The download file at the bottom here is blank. So don't bother. I tried to delete it, but it would not come off the post. Just ignore it.

[AP]

No problem.   

[efflux]

Yeah, that link for Mudbox makes it easy. Unfortunately 3D Coat suffers from bad tutorials. There are lots of them but they deal with obvious stuff. It pains me to watch this stuff. An incredibly powerful app and people seem to be treating it like some kind of third rate toy. Doing junk stuff and putting up uninformative videos. 3D Coat is now a hugely underated app. V4 is incredible. One problem it always had was that the voxel sculpting was fantastic and the retopo tools were great but the painting tools were crap because they weren't even multi threaded. Now the painting is awesome. Also, on Linux there is one huge boon. It can talk directly with Krita and applink with Modo and Blender. Krita can also handle high bit depth images unlike Gimp. Krita is a fantastic painting app so this is all working really well. I'll be at this for ages though so don't expect any tests in this direction any time soon. I'll come across how to do it hopefully. Not much point in testing vector displacment in Terragen until I get a truly effective map with overhangs.

[efflux]

By the way. That concept picture from the Oz The Great And Powerful. I saw a book of the concept art from that movie and it was really great. Even the pictures on the net don't do justice. The movie is supposed to be crap though. However, the artwork demonstrate the limits of Terragen for this type of stuff. The bridges for example. There are elements that are very Terragen but to me Terragen on it's own in it's present form isn't enough.

[efflux]

Just another point about Mudbox. It's Linux. This is worth considering for the future even if you don't currently use Linux. I'm not a fan of Autodesk but I did try Mudbox ages ago and I thought it was good.

[TheBadger]

I saw Oz. I liked it. I had heard it was bad, so my expectations were low. So when I saw it, I liked it a good bit.

I hear you about T2 not being enough on its own. But in fairness, I cant do anything I want to do with any one app. Not even Maya. I need Terragen, Maya, Mudbox, Photoshop, After Effects, autopano, photomatix, premiere/final, geoControl, uvLayout, and host of stuff I don't want to take the time to name including plug-ins.
I have seen films and art projects made with a single soft, most of em' suck. The few real good ones were made by experts in their field, and still not exactly earth shattering.

One soft to rule them all? Maybe one day, but not today.

Yeah, mud is one of the cleaner autodesk apps. I mean it functions well, is stable, and also user friendly. And don't buy into it if you hear someone say you cant save out a map larger than 4k! You can save 35k maps if you want to! The option is just hidden.

Keep at it Efflux!