MacJ
December 22nd, 2003, 05:51 PM
You see, I have this problem; this is Pagoda Guy, and he cannot be made unless he appears like a piece of the earth had decided to take a walk. If he is to appear to be a part of the environment, as a mountain would, then he will need mountainous cliffs/crags, and intense vegetation. Let me Illustrate just exactly what I mean:
http://www.entropygraphics.com/josh_docs/helpme.jpg
This is a full body shot of this creature.
http://www.entropygraphics.com/josh_docs/helpme3.jpg
What I need is to do this. I need to take these smooth featureless polys, and make them into what the arrow is pointing to.
http://www.entropygraphics.com/josh_docs/helpme4.jpg
Also, if I succeed in having this mountainous character read correctly from a distance, I want there to be environmental detail such as this on the beast,
Now, I have taken quite a few shots at this with the methods I am aware of. First off, I told myself, "no problem, this is a job for displacement maps and paint fx," Then I took a shot at it using those methods. My computer (1.5 ghz, and gForce3) fealt the strain of displacement maps early on, it would take me nearly half an hour to do a test render in order to check my work. Another major difficulty I ran into, was that I needed to crank the subdivisions up 4 or 5 times to get the detail that I painted with my D-map. This crashed my machine, with no problem.
With the Paint Fx, I ran into several problems. The first one is that it will not show up in Mental Ray renders in Maya. Besides that, the look that was achieved with it was not very impressive. It was annoying to find that when you create these paint effects vegetation, they have their own lighting source, seperate from everything else. So, what I decided to do, was to convert the Paint Effects to Polys. Eventually this taxed the hell out of my computer, and crashed it every time.
Where I'm going with all this, is that I've ran up against brick wall after brick wall, and I really don't know what to do. If this project is not possible I want to know why, and if it is possible, I desperately want to know how to achieve it, I don't care what it takes, I will replan my life around making it happen one way or another. In my mind there is a whole ecology of environmental beasts and personalities that I am currently powerless to bring to life. So I ask the cg community to lend me a hand, anything you can do will be greatly appreciated.
http://www.entropygraphics.com/josh_docs/helpme.jpg
This is a full body shot of this creature.
http://www.entropygraphics.com/josh_docs/helpme3.jpg
What I need is to do this. I need to take these smooth featureless polys, and make them into what the arrow is pointing to.
http://www.entropygraphics.com/josh_docs/helpme4.jpg
Also, if I succeed in having this mountainous character read correctly from a distance, I want there to be environmental detail such as this on the beast,
Now, I have taken quite a few shots at this with the methods I am aware of. First off, I told myself, "no problem, this is a job for displacement maps and paint fx," Then I took a shot at it using those methods. My computer (1.5 ghz, and gForce3) fealt the strain of displacement maps early on, it would take me nearly half an hour to do a test render in order to check my work. Another major difficulty I ran into, was that I needed to crank the subdivisions up 4 or 5 times to get the detail that I painted with my D-map. This crashed my machine, with no problem.
With the Paint Fx, I ran into several problems. The first one is that it will not show up in Mental Ray renders in Maya. Besides that, the look that was achieved with it was not very impressive. It was annoying to find that when you create these paint effects vegetation, they have their own lighting source, seperate from everything else. So, what I decided to do, was to convert the Paint Effects to Polys. Eventually this taxed the hell out of my computer, and crashed it every time.
Where I'm going with all this, is that I've ran up against brick wall after brick wall, and I really don't know what to do. If this project is not possible I want to know why, and if it is possible, I desperately want to know how to achieve it, I don't care what it takes, I will replan my life around making it happen one way or another. In my mind there is a whole ecology of environmental beasts and personalities that I am currently powerless to bring to life. So I ask the cg community to lend me a hand, anything you can do will be greatly appreciated.