This is not a guide! However, you still might be able to learn something from reading this. Also, I'm a beginner when it comes to the creation of assets for Daz Studio or frankly anything regarding 3D modelling and texture making. So don't think of me as someone having all the answers. If anything, I have all the questions.
In my diary, I will share with you my process in creating a recurve bow. At this point, I would call myself an 'advanced beginner'. I watched tutorials. (Paid and free ones) I tried and failed. I tried to understand how shaders work and what PBR means and what SSS and refraction and glossy and all that means and does. And I still don't know all of that, but that's what this thread is for! I'm sure I'm not the only one here, who wants to understand how it all works and from what I learned so far, it's really not that complicated. What's somewhat complicated is, to find information about all that stuff. Well, at least sources, which explain it in a couple of easy sentences instead of complicated technical essays.
So, please! Ask questions! Share your stories! Make suggestions! Criticise my work, if it deserves it! Help me out, if you can! And even if you don't intend to create 3D assets yourself, I hope it's at least entertaining for you to watch me decending into madness while I'm working on this project.
I'm documenting this diary in my google presentation instead of posting everything here. It's just easier for me to maintain.
Thank you for the views and likes! As I said before, if you have any questions or suggestions, I'll take 'em! I'm more than glad to share everything I've learned so far and even more so to learn from you.
I tried to understand how shaders work and what PBR means and what SSS and refraction and glossy and all that means and does. And I still don't know all of that, but that's what this thread is for!
from V3Digitimes. It comes with a skin shading customization script, which is great, but also with 3 tutorials videos that goes in depth with iray shader - and more importantly, how it works. There is also a huge pdf that I still use as a referencial when I'm in doubt.
from V3Digitimes. It comes with a skin shading customization script, which is great, but also with 3 tutorials videos that goes in depth with iray shader - and more importantly, how it works. There is also a huge pdf that I still use as a referencial when I'm in doubt.
I already have it, but didn't find the patience, yet, to go through it. It's 4h of video content and a russian accent, which doesn't make it easier to understand. ("...welcome in this tutorial concerning skin shitting" - very beginning of 'SSEssentials Introduction') Well, now I think I have to. Thanks for the recommendation!
It's a minor issue, but still bugging me:
I added SubD and weighted the edges so that they stay sharp, but I can't get it to work for the inner edge. I don't want to paint it on the bump/normal map, as I use the same maps for different arrowhead shapes. So can someone tell me how to do it?
edit: This is SubD level 1:
The inner edge only appears if I go up to SubD level 3+
Oh, so someone cares! Yay!
Well, I was busy with exams and life in general so I had to pause the project for a month or two, but I'm through with that next week, so expect progress shortly after.
I'm currently working on the bow grip. It startet with the leather shader, but then I decided to redo the whole grip, mainly to improve the UV map. However, Hexagon is always a pain in the ass, when it comes to UV mapping so it's either a lot of work, to get clean UV maps, or it is a shit ton of work. That's really your only 2 options.
"A lot of work" means, to start UV mapping at a very early stage, when the objekt you are then literally "sculpting" is still a very basic one, like a square or cylinder and then only add faces to it in a way, which doesn't require you to redo the UV mapping.
"A shit ton of work" means, to first build the objekt and then do the UV mapping which results in very ugly and often broken UV maps, you then have to clean up vertex by vertex.
maybe I can show some of that in the diary...
Bottom line - As I'm busy this weekend, it will take me a couple days of next week, to get this done.
Ok, well, that took way longer than expected. I expected my source material for the leather textures to be way better than it actually was. Had to draw and "do" a lot of stuff in PS to make it look good and bare in mind, that I'm by no means a professional when it comes to PS. I'm sure that it could've been done way faster.
So now, there is only the string left and because I'm a big dummie, my current string shader for the arrow fletching, doesn't work for the bow string. I have to figure out, how to do the UV's and textures, so it actually works for both strings. So that's up next.
I'm currently working on the bow grip. It startet with the leather shader, but then I decided to redo the whole grip, mainly to improve the UV map. However, Hexagon is always a pain in the ass, when it comes to UV mapping so it's either a lot of work, to get clean UV maps, or it is a shit ton of work. That's really your only 2 options.
"A lot of work" means, to start UV mapping at a very early stage, when the objekt you are then literally "sculpting" is still a very basic one, like a square or cylinder and then only add faces to it in a way, which doesn't require you to redo the UV mapping.
"A shit ton of work" means, to first build the objekt and then do the UV mapping which results in very ugly and often broken UV maps, you then have to clean up vertex by vertex.
maybe I can show some of that in the diary...
Bottom line - As I'm busy this weekend, it will take me a couple days of next week, to get this done.
It didn't really came around to show up in my diary, but as this is an important issue, I will explain here what I meant. Even tho I feel, that I touched this topic several times in the diary, I might not have explained it by the extend it needs to be explained to someone who has no experience with that.
Let's start off with mentioning, that I myself don't know ANY good and free UV mapping tools. Every 3D-modeling software should have a UV mapping tool built-in, but that doesn't mean, that it's also a good one. To show you a bad one, let's take Hexagon's built in UV mapping tool, which is really not good in both of performance as well as quality.
So what I did here was modeling the serving for my bowstring, which
ended up to look like this:
So after I unwraped this object with Hexagon's UV mapping tool AND did presumably about 15-30min postwork polishing, I ended up with this UV map for the serving-object:
The problem is, that if you compare both pictures, you can see, that the faces (rectangles) in my model are basically all the same size, whereas on the UV map, there are vast differences in size as well as shape.
Now it takes some imagination, but in the background of the second picture, you can spot a hair texture I applied to this object/UV map. I think the first picture is actually the result of this UV map with this hair texture, but even if you can not spot the weird inconsistencies and artifact, try to imagine how you would have to draw the texture so that there would be like 5 parallel hair-strings on each rectangle.
Well, that's not really your concern, if you use a tool like substance painter to draw directly onto the object, but if you are using Photoshop (like me) to draw the texture onto the UV map, your are fucked.
Ok so now, there are like 3 solutions for this problem. (I come up with)
1. Get a better UV mapping tool.
My google search right now resulted in finding this site:
- I don't know the first 2 programs, but the 3rd one "UVLayout" came up in some of those modelling tutorials I've watched. Well, even in the cheapest version, it costs 100 bucks/month. Or did, when I searched it a year ago. Yeah, don't have that. And back then, I couldn't find a decent alternative, so I ended up looking for a cracked version of it, and caught some nasty malware in the process. Can't recommend that.
- I don't use Blender, not even Maya, although I have both, because I'm no professional and both tools seem to require some time to get used to. I don't really have the time for that learning process. Same with RizomUV.
Point is, maybe there are some good programms out there, but I don't know and most I've seen are quite expensive. If you know of one, please tell me and the others!
2. Take a lot of time to unravel the mesh on the UV map by hand.
I guess it depends on the complexity of the object, but for my example, it would cost me hours to fix that mess...
3. Do the UV mapping at an early stage
- There some actions (in Hexagon) which will cause a wipe on your UV mapping! Like the "Chamfer"-tool:
- By "early stage" I mean, like when your object is still very basic. In my case with the serving, I created the UV map when it still was a cylinder shaped helix. And after that, I only did changes, which would not wipe my UV map, like bending the mesh. This way, I was able to get a UV map looking like this (with Hexagon itself):
