SeriousToni's head model

[RPGista]

My workflow would be to sculpt the high poly head with all the details, then in a separate file, decimate that same highpoly untill you get the polycount needed, and that would be the lowpoly, derived directly. The highpoly is essential for you to get the normal map you'll need to fake the details in the lowpoly version. It also doesnt need to be textured, Im afraid you will have to do it again for the lowpoly model. Take a look at that manual decimate tool in sculptris or zbrush, it is the best way to achieve great reductions while still keeping higher detail in important areas (decimating the whole thing will get you a misshapen block indeed).

 

PS: we can probably take this conversation to the editors area.

Edited February 9, 2013 by RPGista

[Springheel]

I didn't manage yet to recompile them to only 10.000 polies in a good way

 

It's not ten thousand polys, it's ONE thousand polys. Maybe fifteen hundred if there is detailed hair. Then a shadowmesh of around 400 or so.

[SeriousToni]

It also doesnt need to be textured, Im afraid you will have to do it again for the lowpoly model.

 

It's not ten thousand polys, it's ONE thousand polys.

[Sir Taffsalot]

@ ST: That male head looks awesome as far as being realistic goes. Maybe its just me but for some reason it just looks very modern to me. He looks like someone I could meet down the pub in real life. Not someone I could see in a medieval themed world. Like I said, maybe thats just me.

[swizzler]

 

Do you mind posting a wireframe of the model? it might help us point out where you can remove some detail. Also does the model have a normalmap or are all the details being done with polys? Baking the current model to a lo-res mesh will help retain the detail without making it look like something made in the 90s.

[SeriousToni]

I guess I'll try out this software called xNormals - which seems to be able to bake a texture and its different maps to a model, so that I don't have to retexture all again after making it lo poly. I don't understand how I can apply my bump maps and stuff to a recompiled low res model after it has lost all of its uvw informations anyways...

[Nosslak]

I guess I'll try out this software called xNormals - which seems to be able to bake a texture and its different maps to a model, so that I don't have to retexture all again after making it lo poly. I don't understand how I can apply my bump maps and stuff to a recompiled low res model after it has lost all of its uvw informations anyways...

Yeah, xNormal is awesome. If you've textured it with polypaint in Zbrush just uncheck the box for your highpoly model(s) that says "Ignore per-vertex-color" in xNormal and then check "Bake base texture" under "Baking Options" and you'll get those textures right back.

 

I wouldn't just decimate it with ZBrush as this will result in poor topology so it might not deform well during animations. I would probably just manually try to optimize the highpoly (assuming that has proper topology) or otherwise rebuild it from scratch on top of the highpoly, but that's just me. I'm not sure how much facial animation TDM is using but if nothing else you might want to animate it for something else in the future.

 

Otherwise I think it all looks good. Well done!

[Tels]

She looks *very* manly, I didn't even realize it was a she. I think the chin is way too manly, women seldom have such a strong chin. Maybe sharpen it a bit to make it obvious the character is a woman?

 

Welcome to Europe

[Tels]

Tony, splendig work! The first version was a bit coarse but I knew it was a woman (not a girl, a real woman!), a strong fighter, someone who knows their way around in a man's world. The second version is just stunning.

 

Please keep a high-poly version for these people with a enough computing power - we could even use LOD to have the high-poly for close-up cinematics and the 1K one for the rest and a 200 poly version for distant (50m +) rendering.

[SeriousToni]

Thank you

 

I've created a lowpoly version now (1000 Polies) even with diffuse, normal and displacement map. I'll use the female tdm lowpoly mesh as shadow mesh, but what should I do with the mouth? (see right head in the picture)

Should I try to cut it out and but it in her mouth while opening the line between her lips? Don't know if this is accurate. (see picture 2)

 

And also must the skeleton be in this file?

[Springheel]

The mouth will need to be separated so it can be rigged. You want to position the sock as close to the mouth as you can so that there's no gap, otherwise you can see through the head when they talk.

 

Not sure what to do about the skeleton. I use Lightwave and an md5mesh importer...what software are you going to use for the rigging?

[SeriousToni]

I am using AUtodesk 3d Studio Max 2013. I have an md5 importer which imports the skelleton, but I need to figure out how to release the bones and reconnect them correctly to the new head mesh.

[Baddcog]

You can simply delete the old mesh to remove it... Or leave it attached to the bones if it is to be the shadow mesh.

 

or just attach the new head to the old (shadow), then reweight everything. It all needs to be rigged to the bones to be exported. if you don't change any bone names it should match the anim files just fine.

-----

 

She is looking much better now btw, very nice head.

[Bikerdude]

Nice work there Toni :-)

[Sotha]

Nice! Time to give some head(s) to TDM!

[SeriousToni]

Yeah, I'm struggeling to make everything fit and still good loking in lowpoly. I must cut the mouth and align the parts to the tdm mouth which is a good piece of workmanship (don't know if this is the correct translation), because everything is so small and you can't look correct into this. Then I must reconnect the face bones so the animations are correct, which means I have to weightpaint the head again.

 

I hate this kind of work, because I could have made another five heads in this time, and 3ds max is crashing every 2 minutes, which annoys the hell outa me..

But thank you for your praise - that maybe keeps my head up over water.

 

// sorry for bad english - sometimes it's hard to find an accurate translation

[Bikerdude]

I hate this kind of work, because I could have made another five heads in this time, and 3ds max is crashing every 2 minutes, which annoys the hell outa me..

What kind of crash, internal to 3DSmax or crashing to the windows desktop..?

[SeriousToni]

When I tried to reduce the polygons of the model, after each second mouse click I made, my 3ds max would crash to the desktop with the message "software must be closed because of an error" (or how it says in english). So I made a click, saved, closed, made a change, saved closed. It was a pain but now I have the low poly model. But theres much to do to make it fit to the original mouth and skeleton. Creation of the heads really is fun, but if I have to do this reqorking and refitting stuff for each and every head I create, this really won't be fun anymore

[Baddcog]

You just need to learn the workflow better. Collapsing edges is the way to go when manually decimating and it doesn't take that long, plus you get the results you want.

[SeriousToni]

Collapsing edges is a good way to do a manual decimation, but it has the downside, that the texture will shift / get stratched, so you can do this only on neutral skin parts and not the face / hair. I did what you said and used the original skelleton, mouth, teeth and shadowmesh (slightly modified). Then I ported the original weight paint informations to my new head (this is possible with a little tool in 3ds max) but what happened was this:

 

https://i.minus.com/ibfMYvTS8ccu5m.jpg

 

Then I deleted all the weight information from the bones and just set the bone named 'head' to controll all the vertexes. It looked correct and I need to make the neck fitting better and find out where to put the textures so that the head isnt dark animore. (I overwrote the female01_shaggy head for this).

https://i.minus.com/imaavbKTOBRh7.jpg

 

My problem now is that I must reweightpaint all the bones but the informations on the original mesh look weird, so I have no refference for this. Here's a screenshot of the imported female01_shaggy head with the right cheek bone selected, which applies to nearly the whole the head which isn't correct I guess

 

So how do I tell TDM where my face texture lies and how do I get a good reference on how to weightpaint the head model?

 

Any tips, help is appropriate!

Edited February 23, 2013 by SeriousToni

[Springheel]

So how do I tell TDM where my face texture lies

 

This is the same as any other model; you create a material shader for your texture and then point each layer to the appropriate material (in Lightwave you give the layer the material shader as a a surface name, don't know how other software does it).

[Baddcog]

That tool in max for copying weights only works from the same mesh to the same mesh (they have to have identical number of verts, or you'll get weird results like you got).

 

You save uv's, detach from bones... reload uv's.

-------------

 

You just need to put a texture on the face that has the same name as your 'shader'. that's in the mtr file that descirbes the shader 9ie: where the diffuse, normal, spec map are, tm lighting info...)

Ai texutres themselves go into : dds/models/md5/chars/...

(only diffuse and spec dds, the rest go in same path without dds in front of it : ie/ normal and editor image)

 

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As far as skinning, imo the easiest way is to select all verts and attach them 100 percent to the head bone.

 

This makes sure everything is connected. it's clean and quick.

 

Then get specific.

ie:

 

choose left eyeball verts, attach them 100% to left eyeball bone. (thus detaching from the head bone)

 

then you just have to figure the other out. If you have enough verts in rows you can progress from one bone to the next.ie:

eyelids verts are 100 % on the eyelid bones, but the next row towards the head is just 50% on the eyelid (which leaves the headbone at 50%)

 

takes a little practice but not hard once you get it down.

[SeriousToni]

This is the same as any other model; you create a material shader for your texture and then point each layer to the appropriate material (in Lightwave you give the layer the material shader as a a surface name, don't know how other software does it).

 

I used now the Sykes head to overwrite, because for this one I was able to find where all the textures and the model lies, so I adapted the folder structure just like the same like in "tdm_ai_humanoid_heads01.pk4".

This means I placed my diffuse map in darkmod\dds\models\md5\chars\heads\sykes01.dds the local and heightmap in darkmod\models\md5\chars\heads\sykes_h.tga and sykes_local.tga and the model in darkmod\models\md5\chars\heads\npcs\head_sykes.md5mesh but looking ingame the engine seems to search still in the old path - console says: "couldn't load image: c:/users/.../teeth". So I guess I must place and use the textures in the tdm directory when exporting it as an md5mesh

 

EDIT: I did change the shader path manually in the md5mesh file to:

mesh {

shader "head_sykes"

 

still her head is a little bit burned..

Edited February 24, 2013 by SeriousToni

[Springheel]

I can't quite tell what the problem is...but why are you overwriting the textures? Instead of making your md5mesh point at the Sykes textures, just make your own material shader and point at that.

 

 

"couldn't load image: c:/users/.../teeth".

 

You should be using the default teeth image provided anyway; it cuts down on drawcalls if characters share the same one.

[SeriousToni]

When I make my own material shader and model, then it will only appear in Dark Radiant (correctly textured) as a static model and not in the list for available tdm heads. Plus ingame it is not there (console says: "idRenderModelMD5: Instantiate Dynamic Model: NULL joints on render Entity for 'models/md5/chars/heads/npcs/femaleguard.md5mesh'. I directly edited the md5mesh to assign the correct shaders.

How do I setup the model to be available as a tdm head?