I’ve been following tutorials, reading some forum posts, and found lots of really fragile, long-winded solutions to the issue of FK-to-IK matching:
This usually happens when taking the naive approach of taking the target object’s world-space position, and tacking it onto the IK control. It doesn’t account well for frozen transforms, root-control translations/rotations, etc.
Most resources I’ve come across use several strategies, all of which have their disadvantages.
adding/removing a point constraint
adding extra locators to mark the “default” position and use some math to derive the new target translate values
try and derive it from the world-space + local-space rotation pivot position
The issue with all of these is that they’re not following a clean path from query to result. Adding constraints can create DAG cycles (fragile), extra locators muddy up the hierarchy and are another piece that can fall out of alignment (fragile, hard-to-maintain), and deriving it from world-space + local-space pivots doesn’t account for root transforms, and the code itself will be extremely long-winded (fragile).
These all require roughly 3-5+ lines of code for each control too, which really sucks. But I found one method that uses 2 for each control, and seems like the optimal path from query -> result, with no verbose math or weird derivations:
To get the world space position of an object, from its pivot point, most guides correctly point to the above xform command arguments. But xform doesn’t support plugging the pivot position directly into the translate field on objects with frozen transforms, hence all the other solutions. BUT, move has the wonderful rotatePivotRelative flag, which is for this very purpose. It essentially lets you “move” an object, taking into account local pivot offsets from any frozen transformations or manual pivot position changes.
The great thing is that this works (so far for me) in all circumstances of controls, and takes root transforms into account.
Low poly’d the model and textured it in substance. No rigging, and the fbx isn’t setup for game use, but just wanted to see what it’d look like after being cut down. Went from ~2m to ~100k polys with ZRemesher, bet it could be cut down to like ~20k polys with manual retopo (or am I naively optimistic).
Last thing I plan to do is ID map everything so I can pack it down to a few texture sets and see what it looks like in unreal. Right now its 142 individual textures (´・ω・｀)
If I already knew how, it’d also be fun to rig it up, put some blend shapes on the face, and throw mocap animation on it.
Just wanna do sketchy quick stuff after all this :’)
Been working on this model for my ZBrush class and wanted to pose it and play with the new NPR filters. Kind of fiddly but really fun. Posed geometry is terrible and I just unioned everything together. Had random floating bits too but can’t see it after the render, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Material/polypainting and posing def feel like just a for-fun thing. Think the efficient way would be to do overpaint in photoshop, and then just bring it into substance once the model is ready.
Going to tackle a more “realistic” character as the class reaches an end, because I feel like a lot of the crazy techniques that were taught are better suited for generating detail and making stuff look cool. I probably only used like 5% of ZBrush for the bulk of this since its such a manual process.
lol, not sure what it is but trying to work on my hard surface skills in Modo. Still intending to execute my plan for ZBrush, but its taken a bit of a back seat since I signed up for a ZBrush course, and Modo + Hard surface has been a bit of an elephant in the room.
Current Goal:
ZBrush: (no change) Be able to reach ~80% high-poly state in 2-3 hours
MODO: Complete detailed hard surface props in 3-4 hours (up to SP export)
Reflection:
3-4 hours
The model is pretty simple, and it still took a while. Definitely had to learn a bunch of tricks, and ended up undoing/redoing a lot of the work, only to realize it was fine, and I was supposed to run some operation: mesh cleanup, flip a normal, toggle a setting, etc. Went in with no designs, but that’s fine for now because machinery is something I like to noodle as I go, and doubt I’d need pre-made designs until the scope increases.
There were some normal bake errors too, but I wasn’t sure what caused them. I’d get weird spottiness on seams that had no neighboring geometry to cause projection issues, and then another seam with more stuff around it would bake perfectly. Can’t really see in the end, and that’s one of the things I realized to do too, no one is going to look at a hinge in a game. So I shouldn’t get caught up in it.
Learned a lot of cool stuff overall: making springs, MOP boolean management, packing UVs, and rounded edge shader + normal baking!
Going Forward:
Need to make something cooler. Maybe a weapon, or a prop (like a health drop). Also need to figure out how to make the round edge shader ignore intersecting geometry.
Trying to increase the complexity of designs in ZBrush and keep it fast. Had some normal bake errors on the hands/finger things, but I’m not gonna get hung up on that. Rendered in Substance Painter.
Gonna start using these posts as brain dumps, so I can reflect on what I just did and to continue working at it with very deliberate processes.
Current Goal:
Be able to reach ~80% high-poly state in 2-3 hours
Reflection:
9-10 hours :(
Should’ve kept the designing in the drawing phase. Bits of the design that I left for later ended up being the biggest time sink. Workshopping designs in ZBrush might’ve taken me 4-5 (potentially more) of the total hours, whereas I could’ve iterated through many more ideas on paper in like 30 minutes.
I need to pick designs that I’ve drawn which are on the cusp of what I already know in Zbrush. Just as designing in ZBrush is very suboptimal for me, bringing in too many design elements that require new concepts in ZBrush will limit what I can apply in X hours, and ultimately slows down the learning. Here, it was the overabundance of repeating mechanical shapes, and hard surfaces. Even if I learned ZModeler and creasing beforehand, I would’ve knocked several hours off, on top of reaching a better level of polish.
On the plus side, I tried to apply a low->high poly approach for blocking in the shapes, and I think that did work out somewhat this time. Need to keep tightening that process, keep things looser and use clay buildup, snakehook, and move brush while just setting in big shapes.
Going Forward:
I need to draw more. I’ve given myself the excuse that I just need to focus on 3D, but I should be utilizing what I already know to make it efficient. I need to up my concepting skills on paper, and just draw a bunch more, with no regard to actual implementation. There are plenty of times in the day where I can draw, even focus on designing, but not ZBrush.
Once I get a steady flow of designs, I can start evaluating them as potential ZBrush projects, and what kind of tooling they’ll probably involve. I want to decouple the thought of ZBrush from drawing, or else I will end up designing within my current shitty abilities.
While I don’t have designs “in that cusp” to work off of, I need to start dedicating time to play with ZBrush tools in a sandbox environment. No large scope designs or applications in mind, just figuring out how to use the tools effectively. ZModeler, Creasing, and the Dynamesh -> ZRemesher + SubD workflow are all things I need to start looking at. They will ease hard surface creation, as well as clean organic forms, so they should be the first thing I invest in. Maybe projecting primitives and learning VDM brushes afterwards?
Grind at this until I hit the next milestone, which is getting to 100% high-poly state, and starting the retopo and UV process.
stormborns
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