relief detail
I have been working reliefs for a long time and been wondering how to keep detail without doing a lot of sculpting . I think I have found a way of doing it fast . here is a 12 mm relief scaled down to 1.2 mm without loosing a lot of detail . Once I have this down I will post a quick tutorial . Pictures are of my zbrush sculpt and the Carveco relief afterwards.
Comments
The Zbrush elephants I sculpt are for big bracelets, so thickness is not a big issue and they cut and finish awesome its just little pieces I do on rings and pendants I have a detail issue ..
Hi Michael, I do this by saving a tif file of the model in question. Open it in PhotoShop. Duplicate the layer. Select all zero depth aspects (black) of the top layer. Invert the selection. Delete the selected area. Hide the selected (top) layer. Select bottom layer. Blur the image until most of the detail is gone. Turn on the top layer. Save the tif file. Open it in Carveco (actually AC in my case as I am still using AC even though I have a Carveco license). Paste it to a new layer in AC/Carveco. Set the layer to negative (minus). Adjust the height of the model to accommodate the shallow depth needed.
Because the top layer (blurred model) is missing the detail in the model when you adjust the layers/models Z you are subtracting from the full model only the bulk of the model, not the detail.
I wrote about this technique years ago on the DelCAM AC forum. I had even done a quick video tutorial which I posted on youtube. I will try to locate it and post the link below. I look forward to seeing your solution to the problem.
Here is the link to the video I mentioned above. Its a bit different from what I described (more steps) but either tech will work. Not sure why I did it the way I did back in the video. Probably I was unaware of the Z height tool. :)
BTW the video was created in 2011.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_pPWSi-YTI
PS: if you are trying to see whats happening in the video double click on it and it will go to full screen. This will make it much easier to understand what I am doing and why.
EDIT: after carefully reviewing the video I see why I kept going back to the PS image. It was to adjust the height of the lowest areas of the model by using the dodge tool. This tool lightens the shadow area of the image thus slightly increasing its Z in AC/Carveco.
Wow Barry I missed this video in the day .this would have saved me a lot of work .lol
I am doing basically the same thing but in Zbrush. I just mask the parts you cant see from that view and delete them .Imagine a dog from the front view snout down towards the tail .you cannot tell the length of the body all you see is the head front legs and the back legs and tail so I remove all the parts you cant see move the back legs and tail just behind the front legs and I am done 12 mm to 1.2 mm but I still have the detail of the face which even if I scale 50% is still better than a whole body scale ..
Thanks for posting the tutorial I will give your method a shot and compare the 2 stay tuned .
I think your approach is quite different from mine as I think you are starting with a 3 D model while I am using a 2.5 D model exclusively. In my case there is no "sections that you cannot see" and "no section to move forward".
I look forward to your findings Michael and if you have any questions about my method ask and I will be happy to clarify. I suggest you start your test with a 2.5 D model from Carveco as most of us are probably not using a 3D program to do our sculpting in (EDIT: actually, simply paste your 3D model into Carveco at full Z, no cutting etc. now, using my method see what happens). I suspect the process would be very different given your description of the dog model above. For what its worth, a few versions of AC after my video Delcam introduced the "Emboss Tool" which does a pretty good job of what I had outlined in the video. I have a bit more control with my process but the emboss tool is much easier to use in terms of workflow/time.
BTW, I got quite the negative response from the crowd on the forum at the time. One person even suggested in quite an angry tone that I create a new forum (not on DelCam forum) and call it "The ArtCAM and PhotoShop Forum" and not bother them any more with this stuff (or something to that effect). I spent a bit more time trying to get folks to see the value but to no avail,,,,,,so I simply went my own way and did not, as requested, bother them anymore.
Trying to understand the issue...Are you saying that your skin texture detail gets washed out when you shrink the Z?
Most of the time you can use the 'Preserve Detail' option of the Scale Relief tool to preserve the texture of the skin and 'project it' back onto the model at the desired height within the same tool.
If you have ZB, my workflow would be to duplicate the model, scale it way down in Z at a lower resolution (flatten it like you would in Pro with Emboss etc using the deformation tab & toggle the Z only), Dynamesh it, jack the resolution back up & project the details from the finely textured original back onto the surface of the now flattened model.Then you should have what you need.
Just be sure to subdivide the new model enough as the original so you get all the details. You can also go the morph target route as well to be able to fix areas that didn't project to your liking...Plenty of YT vids on everything I mention. Joseph Drust & 'Ask ZBrush' is very good.
Now as you know...working in Pro/Carveco rewards out of the box thinking. You could also have your flattened elephant model on one side of the screen and full Z scale on another & using the Transfer sculpting tool, sample the texture of the original and transfer it to the low Z model. You can do this right on the flattened model or do the transfer on another layer so that you could then adjust the Z depth of the texture before you merged it with the flattened model. This would give you some control over the texture depth itself.
Or am I not understanding the issue?
Hi Brady
you understand it it very well .Never thought of using the transfer tool WOW I will give it a bash Thank you ..I have tried the options in ZB as you mentioned and they work very well . I am lazy and always looking for a quick fix lol.
Thank you again for the tips .
Ha! No worries; you're welcome. I'm sure you're well aware of the proverbial fish bowl effect... it's often easier to see a solution when you're not swimming around in it!
Thanks to all of you for this exchange, I learned a few things even though this is very advanced for me
Bill
If any are interested there is a video on this in the training videos just go to this area https://carveco.com/support/training/
And go down to the video "Relief scaling" explains it very well.
mike
Thank you Mike
I am starting to understand this process much better
Mike,
That dragon is rather cool, the thing looks like the one I have been working on, but couldn't for the life of me connect the head to the body correctly.I've had a hard time with it so it'll sit for a while till everything come togeather.
Have a good day.
mike
The dragon above shows the problem with the AC emboss tool nicely. You will note that the texture of the dragons surface is rather grainy, especially clear on the dragons head/face. My technique, while more work, does not at all affect the surface finish of the model. The smooth sections remain smooth and the detail sections remain crisp. You can see this in the video provided above. Just something to note.
Brady using zb I found a way to leave detail intact( Glitch in the program when scaling a model down ) it never was fixed lol thank goodness ..thanks for the heads up
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