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Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480041] Sat, 23 March 2013 12:54 Go to next message
Aircraftkiller is currently offline  Aircraftkiller
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I had a thought hit me last night, which I figured I'd share with everyone. Try using a 3D sculpting program to create Renegade terrain. I've got a Wacom Intuos 3 9x12 that I use with Mudbox, so sculpting in the program is pretty straightforward. Here's a ~30 minute quick sculpt from last night:

http://www.3dholmes.com/images/01.jpg

Once the quick sculpt is done, take it into MeshLab for decimation.

http://www.3dholmes.com/images/02.jpg

I had a roughly 68,000 sculpted mesh which I've decimated to 7,000 polygons. Here's the result:

http://www.3dholmes.com/images/03.jpg

With a bit of time and effort, you could easily make terrain that's "heightfield-like" but with a lot more advanced features. I use Mudbox primarily for high-res sculpting (this definitely is not) and texture painting, but it can easily be adapted to creating Renegade terrain. Keep it in mind if you want to simplify your map development workflow and achieve better results. Of course, MeshLab's decimation needs manual cleanup, but you can definitely get some good results from combining a sculpting program with it.

[Updated on: Sat, 23 March 2013 12:55]

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Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480042 is a reply to message #480041] Sat, 23 March 2013 13:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Generalcamo is currently offline  Generalcamo
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Wow, that is nice! Maybe I should try that. I do have a copy of MudBox on here...
Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480057 is a reply to message #480041] Sat, 23 March 2013 23:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
zunnie is currently offline  zunnie
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That looks like shit lol.

https://multiplayerforums.com/uploads/monthly_2018_03/TCW2_Signature.png.6236a0dbc6e1e53472a18fe8cd15e47b.png
Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480060 is a reply to message #480041] Sun, 24 March 2013 03:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Reaver11 is currently offline  Reaver11
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What about texturing with it? Or would that mess up renegade's terrain setting?

I'm wondering do you use subdivision levels on the terrain or is it best to stay away from it since it would create way to many polygons for Renegade?
Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480065 is a reply to message #480041] Sun, 24 March 2013 09:16 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Aircraftkiller is currently offline  Aircraftkiller
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"zunnie": Come back and troll a bit harder when you have some talent.

Reaver: You could work at a high level of polygons if you wanted to, so long as you use MeshLab or some other method of decimation to reduce its polygon count. I used a flat plane in Max with a displacement map applied to it. I don't remember what the polygon count of the plane originally was, but I didn't work past subdivision level 1 in Mudbox. That left it around 67k.

The level of detail you'd get from MB would also be dependent upon the size of your map. If you made a small map, you could get a lot of sculpted detail into the terrain without needing to decimate it too much. You'd definitely have to reduce it as the terrain gets larger.

Regarding textures, you could cut up the terrain to match any textures you develop for it, but that wouldn't help you much if you were making a large environment. Once you start getting past 50 meters, you'd need something bigger than 2048x to keep it from being blurry when you get up close. So you're really better off just using the mesh you create with a set of tiling textures versus trying to paint the entire map with a single texture in MB.
Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480068 is a reply to message #480057] Sun, 24 March 2013 09:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ethenal is currently offline  Ethenal
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zunnie wrote on Sun, 24 March 2013 01:52

That looks like shit lol.

LMAO

pot
kettle
black


-TLS-DJ-EYE-K wrote on Mon, 18 March 2013 07:29

Instead of showing us that u aren't more inteligent than a Toast, maybe you should start becomming good in renegade Thumbs Up

Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480084 is a reply to message #480041] Sun, 24 March 2013 20:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Gen_Blacky is currently offline  Gen_Blacky
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Can you get a copy of mudbox as student? I tried registering at autodesk but it wouldn't go through. I was playing around in it the other day and its a really easy program to use.

http://s18.postimage.org/jc6qbn4k9/bricks3.png
Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480089 is a reply to message #480041] Sun, 24 March 2013 22:02 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Aircraftkiller is currently offline  Aircraftkiller
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Yes, you can.

[Updated on: Sun, 24 March 2013 22:02]

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Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480098 is a reply to message #480057] Sun, 24 March 2013 22:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ani is currently offline  Ani
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zunnie wrote on Sun, 24 March 2013 02:52

That looks like shit lol.


Nothing for nothing but have you seen your own [recent] maps? .....

If you added actual buildings and my gosh - trees; to this 30 minute sculpture ACK made, the map would probably end up being quite simple and good.
Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480103 is a reply to message #480041] Sun, 24 March 2013 23:56 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ethenal is currently offline  Ethenal
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"Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house"

-TLS-DJ-EYE-K wrote on Mon, 18 March 2013 07:29

Instead of showing us that u aren't more inteligent than a Toast, maybe you should start becomming good in renegade Thumbs Up

Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480121 is a reply to message #480041] Mon, 25 March 2013 13:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Gen_Blacky is currently offline  Gen_Blacky
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yea got it to work! Guess you cant copy paste email when registering.

http://s18.postimage.org/jc6qbn4k9/bricks3.png
Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480178 is a reply to message #480041] Wed, 27 March 2013 14:44 Go to previous messageGo to next message
c0vert7 is currently offline  c0vert7
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I actually think the flow looks pretty good, I think if you really put some time into a map in that program you could come up with some nice stuff. I grow tired of using renx and making manual terrain, I might try this Thumbs Up
Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480488 is a reply to message #480178] Sat, 20 April 2013 14:27 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Jerad2142 is currently offline  Jerad2142
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I was thinking it looked like hightfield, but on closer inspection it is clearly far more advanced (it allows for overhangs on the cliffs and stuff). Does this handle lightmaps well or does it take a fair amount of work to do it?

Re: Mudbox terrain sculpting [message #480545 is a reply to message #480041] Thu, 25 April 2013 18:34 Go to previous message
Mad Ivan is currently offline  Mad Ivan
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I haven't been active around here at all and now that this pops up I think I might have something to contribute Smile

I am currently working on a university project with a sound guy (short story: audio-heavy "game" for blind people proof-of-concept) and keeping in mind that I am a coder and my audio guy doesn't know anything about game art (well, apart from sound) there were some tools that helped me a lot.

Disclaimer: I am not an artist, so please refrain from judging the artistic quality of the following. The project's main focus is audio and will be shown to people, so I've just put stuff together to make it look somewhat descent.

Sculptris is a sculpting tool, developed by Pixologic.
It's much simpler, compared to ZBRush/Mudbox (up to 2k textures, brush textures can't zoom in/out if you don't zoom in/out on the model itself, can't switch from texturing mode back to sculpting, texture paint acts weird on some topologies, is in alpha stage), but does support obj import/export, normal map and bump map import/export (paint normals as well) and has a nice games-friendly polygon reduce brush *and* is free (including commercial projects!). Link: http://pixologic.com/sculptris/

Structure Synth is a really cool tool for creating 3d structures, using design grammars (technically, you "code" your models).
For an example, the following grammar:
Toggle Spoiler
[/align]

Generates one of these models.

If you look at the script, you'll see that each model is made out of many cubes and some spheres. The bottom left one is 7756 cubes = 7756x6 faces = 7756x6x2 triangles, which obviously isn't very game friendly (for a tree).

As Aircraftkiller pointed out, you can use MeshLab to optimize:
Toggle Spoiler


*MeshLab can generate structure synth objects as well. Filters->Create New Mesh Layer->Structure Synth Mesh Creation and just paste your script in the grammar box.
Link: http://structuresynth.sourceforge.net/

Structure Synth's 2D Version: http://www.contextfreeart.org/

And on the topic of terrain, you can try the Filters->Create new Mesh layer->Fractal Terrain filter on for size Smile
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[Updated on: Thu, 25 April 2013 18:37]

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