Hello All,
After watching some video tutorials trying to understand what workflow will be the best for me in order to create characters with the option to rig and animate I ran into some confusion…
I got the impression that I should try sculpting with DynTopo and than retopo.
This is what I did:
As a Blender Noob I played around with the Skin Modifier + subdivision surface (level 1) + Mirror (I put it on the top).
I made the basic shape I like than I applied all 3 modifiers, so far so good.
Than I start messing around with some dyntopo but probably what I didn’t notice was… that I may subdivide (pressed ‘w’ on edit mode) before I sculpt and that added more faces which is not a good thing for early stages of sculpting I guess… anyways, it was too late to understand it while I’m enjoying the heck out of sculpting for the first time with the amazing DynTopo…
But than when I wanted to “smooth” the all sculpt it was too late, too heavy to handle with… I tried to add a multiress modifier and on level 1 it’s already fill like too much for the computer, than level 2… it’s already very slow.
I’m not trying to FIX or SAVE this specific model, I enjoyed sculpting it.
more important for me is to understand the correct workflow so I won’t make more mistakes on my next character.
SO…
Can somebody please direct me to a step-by-step video tutorial or help me in a simple way so I can understand:
How do I start modeling + use dyntopo to create a creature so I can smooth it and make retopology and bake (BTW - I’m using Cycles because I like it a lot).
When I supposed to add the multiress modifier, at the very begining BEFORE I start the dyntopo?
I just have no idea what I did wrong but as you can see I can “sculpt” decent compare to first time with dyntopo.
Sorry for the long post, I’m so confused and would LOVE to make a full creature with no “technique” mistakes…
THANKS AHEAD!
Thank you @Sanctuary for explaining me the differences, I think I’m starting to get the idea.
So the multi-res and the dyntopo are not working together (even it’s not allowed while dyntopo now it make more sense why).
The normal sculpting (non-dyntopo) I did try and it’s OK… but don’t have the same freedom of creation.
I also checked out the link to your more detailed thread but I start confused while reading (because of my bad English).
I saw the end result and didn’t understand how you got all the details from the DynTopo, to your low-res base mesh object without even use Normal Maps or maybe you did and I didn’t understand what’s going on (sorry not blaming anybody but myself).
My goal is to create a complete character in DynTopo, than retopo it so it will be good for animation (with all the rings and more rings where joints and other parts need extra faces of course).
But after see how complicated the process is… maybe I better skip sculpting and just try the good old box-modeling.
I know that I can get so much from sculpting with DynTopo as you already saw on my experiment above, it’s easy and fun but the complicated process after the sculpt is still confuses my head a lot, I may try look for more video tutorials and maybe it is not as complicated as I think… I still didn’t find a good one, will be happy if anyone can share a step-by-step video tutorial for the process:
Dyntopo >> Retopo >> Add all the details from the original Dyntopo to the Low-Res base mesh for end result.
I see better what you’re trying to do, so in that case you’re not really needing to use the Multires modifier, just ignore it for now in your learning process it’s only going to complicate things
Now for a tutorial that guide through the full sculpt -> retopo -> bake -> rigging pipeline , you should look for tutorials that go through one step at a time , i mean a video about retopo, one about baking the maps you need and another about rigging/armature, there are so much of them on google/youtube that i don’t know which one to recommend sorry.
Just make sure you’re not watching one about an old version of Blender, as tools change regularly and new useful tools appear to make things easier
Thank you for your reply!
This is what I’m doing since I start learning blender a few months ago. I’m watching the most updated version tutorials on YouTube and also Photox helped me a lot with small videos to point how to do specific things which is awesome.
So I’m learning subjects and try to combine a workflow, I’m pretty sure that hat’s a typical workflow but since I’m a noob things are still not familiar to me.
Good thing is that I learn fast, I already feel “at home” within the Blender UI.
Basically the model I’ve posted is pure DynTopo (no multires) or anything.
But the thing that bothered me before even go and start to ReTopo it was that even when I used the smooth brush after adding more details the model still not looking “clean” and smoothing even with a minor sensitivity ruined the small details.
So I thought if I’ll use multiress it will make everything smoother by multiple the amount of faces but it’s getting HUGE and my machine is not that strong to handle it, everything goes very slow so I know it’s not the solution. (BTW - I used the optimize button more than once while sculpting… I didn’t notice any major difference).
I’m not worry about the rigging pipe because I want to just add a basic armature and fix some skinning problems if there will be any (which I’ve already done before and it wasn’t complicated).
What do you suggest to do in order to make the sculpt a bit more clean without smooth it again and lose small details?
Also, let’s say I’m happy with the sculpt, I do the retopo and successfully make a low-res mesh.
The next step is to somehow bake from the original dyntopo high-res version to the create a normal map or something like that?
or it’s not even the process and I’m totally off… sorry for the mess confusion, I appreciate your patience and supportive spirit!
