& Construction
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Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
& Manufacturing
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Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Learn to shape high-resolution models using a very intuitive clay-like workflow, and then create new, optimized topology that is snapped directly to your high-resolution mesh.
Type:
Tutorial
Length:
9 min.
Tutorial resources
These downloadable resources will be used to complete this tutorial:
Transcript
00:04
Let's take a look at some tools that will allow us to get
00:06
a little more of a scope like workflow when shaping our models.
00:09
And then also we'll take a look at some of the tools and three Ds Macs we can use to re
00:13
apologize our models so that they can be used in like a real time game engine.
00:17
And so here we have a bus that we're gonna be using.
00:19
So we'll go ahead and click on this
00:21
and instead of using the modeling ribbon,
00:24
we're gonna go over to the free form ribbon.
00:27
And you can see there are two kind of sections here, paint deform and poly draw.
00:31
Let's first concentrate on paint deform and we'll just
00:34
kind of work our way from left to right.
00:36
So if we click on shift,
00:38
this is going to be similar to like a soft selection or similar to if you view ZB brush,
00:44
the move brush or
00:45
in Maya and mud box, be like the grab brush. And so what we can do is come down here
00:51
and start to
00:52
just click
00:53
and drag or with our tablet,
00:55
move these large areas.
00:57
And if we hover over any of these tools,
00:59
they're gonna give you all of the options that you have.
01:01
So in
01:01
this case,
01:02
you can see that control will allow us to change the radius of
01:05
the fall off shift will allow us to change the radius of the strength
01:09
and shift and all will allow us to change the strength percentage value.
01:12
So if we come back in here, we can hold down shift,
01:16
change our strength very quickly
01:18
control to change our fall off,
01:20
softer, fall off will give you
01:22
obviously more of a fall off versus the sharper edged look.
01:25
And so we could come in here.
01:27
And if we had part of a,
01:28
a high res mesh that we were wanting to kind of change the
01:30
shape of this would be a really great way to do it.
01:34
We also have the ability to do the same thing, but instead of with moving,
01:37
we would do it with scale or rotate.
01:39
So if you had to kind of reshape something, but it needs to be more rotated,
01:43
you could do it that way.
01:45
If we move over to push pull,
01:46
this is going to be like a traditional sculpting kind of a brush.
01:50
If you hover over this again, you'll get a number of options for
01:53
uh relaxing the mesh
01:55
or actually, instead of pulling out the mesh pushing it in.
01:58
So it's gonna be very familiar to you if you use something like ZB brush or mud box
02:01
So here,
02:02
if we drag across this, you can see we're actually pulling geometry
02:06
out.
02:08
If the behavior of our brush is to pull that geometry out. If we hold down alt,
02:12
you'll actually do the opposite. And if we hold down shift,
02:15
you'll actually relax the mesh.
02:16
So based by switching between those three keys, you can get a lot of work done very,
02:20
very quickly pushing in, pulling out, smoothing it out,
02:23
uh back into the surface.
02:25
You can also choose to relax or soften.
02:27
You can use the flatten brush pinch and spread.
02:29
So some of these tools will be familiar to you. Again, if you've sculpted before,
02:34
you can also choose control and shift together
02:36
to change the radius on the fly as you're going.
02:39
So that section really pertains to uh kind of smoothly modifying
02:43
the shape of a very high res objects like this.
02:47
But let's say that now we want to create the
02:50
topology that we're gonna be using in our actual production.
02:53
This is known as kind of re topo
02:55
our
02:55
meshes
02:56
that is we have an object that is very high
02:58
resolution and it looks like we wanted it to,
03:00
but it's not gonna work inside of our game engine or even in our production,
03:04
it's not optimized for animation, let's say,
03:06
uh or even for the actual technical limitations of a game engine.
03:10
And so what we're gonna do is create an outer shell that is optimized for that.
03:15
But that still maintains the same shape,
03:17
gives us the same silhouette and everything.
03:19
And we'll use that to actually project through and create our normal maps and,
03:23
and uh create the final look for the character
03:25
that's going to be used actually in the production.
03:27
So to do that, normally,
03:29
what happens is you'll create new geometry that's going to kind of stick to this
03:32
high res shape and we can do this in three Ds Macs really easily.
03:36
So the first thing we need to do is tell 3d max what we want our geometry to stick to.
03:40
And so if we come over to poly
03:42
kind of right in the middle,
03:43
you can see here this grid is highlighted.
03:46
And so right now,
03:47
whatever we do is going to be snapped to a grid and we
03:50
want to change that we want to actually draw on a surface.
03:52
So we'll choose draw on surface.
03:54
And then right under that,
03:55
there's an option to pick the surface that we want to use here.
03:58
We're gonna click on this and click on our head sculpt
04:01
and you can see that that's now listed right here under surface.
04:04
So
04:05
we're gonna be creating a new piece of geometry completely from scratch.
04:08
And so we want to go under poly draw
04:10
and create a new object.
04:12
Now, this is called box one, but we can call it whatever we want,
04:15
make sure that we're on that particular object.
04:17
So we're in a blank object.
04:19
We're gonna create new geometry based on this head sculpt.
04:22
We'll start by looking at step build.
04:25
Step build is one of these tools that has so many options.
04:28
Uh because what you're doing is really creating
04:30
something completely from scratch point by point.
04:33
And so it's really flexible,
04:34
but also there are a lot of options to keep track of if we click on the step build.
04:39
If we actually just come in here without changing anything,
04:43
we can certainly add points.
04:44
And you can see those points are constrained to the surface.
04:48
It's gonna be a little bit harder to see the polygons.
04:50
So what I'm gonna do is change the offset amount to point oh one.
04:55
Now, when we come in and start to add
04:57
some points here,
04:59
and I'll show you that by holding, shift and dragging,
05:01
we can now create
05:03
new polygons and you can see those polygons start to show up here.
05:06
So again, clicking two points shift,
05:09
dragging towards those points creates those polygons
05:12
here. We had our existing ones. We'll do the same thing here
05:15
and start to add those.
05:17
I'll turn this off so you can see this a little bit better,
05:21
can do the same here and the same here and the same here.
05:25
So you can really,
05:26
really quickly start to build up geometry just with a couple of different options.
05:30
Now, if you add some points and you want to, so you add one that you don't want,
05:34
you can hold down alt
05:35
click on that point to get rid of it.
05:37
There are also a lot of other options
05:39
that you can experiment with where things might,
05:41
you might be able to speed things up a little bit by
05:43
not having to uh do that second drag and so forth.
05:46
If you control shift and alt, we can actually grab those points and move them around.
05:50
So where we place them
05:52
is not
05:54
where they have to be,
05:55
you can see that's still constrained.
05:58
Now, let's use extend, let's go ahead and pull out
06:01
the side
06:03
and we'll pull out that side and we can start to extend out our points.
06:06
If we hold down shift, we can do that to an entire edge,
06:12
bring that out
06:14
and you can see everything still conformed to the surface.
06:17
So again, just like with step, build a lot of options here and extend,
06:21
you've also got some tools under optimize that will help you kind of connect points,
06:25
delete edges and just make everything nice and clean.
06:28
So if we come to optimize,
06:30
we can see we can weld that point together.
06:32
So if we move on the other side of where we have our head scope selected,
06:36
there are also some options for creating geometry in ways
06:39
that some of them are a little bit faster.
06:41
Some of them will be more edge cases that you might need to use.
06:44
For instance, the uh the shape tool here,
06:47
we can actually draw
06:49
shapes onto the surface.
06:51
So if you had maybe a cyborg creature where you had a,
06:53
a hard surface piece coming off and you wanted to
06:55
very quickly create a shape to kind of extrude out.
06:57
You could do that.
06:59
We've also got the ability to draw out splines.
07:01
So for instance, if you had vines or something growing across uh part of a creature,
07:06
you could use this to snap those spines, draw them actually across the surface.
07:10
We've also got this topology. If we click on this,
07:14
we can come in and
07:16
draw strips here and you can see these just look like splines.
07:20
But as we start to draw across those,
07:23
we're gonna start to get some geometry there, we turn this head sculpt off.
07:26
You can see those points or those uh polygons rather right there.
07:30
We can also
07:31
draw out strips of polygons.
07:34
We can change the size of those strips by going under poly draw
07:38
and changing our minimum distance.
07:40
So we'll change that to
07:42
And you can see
07:43
I get some strips right there.
07:46
So you could use that as uh maybe if you had a long edge,
07:49
you could use that as a base to work from
07:51
and then use your step build to work from there.
07:54
We've also got conform tools over here where we can come in and start to
07:58
take objects that may be close but not on the surface.
08:02
And we can conform them to the surface. So if you had
08:04
an existing
08:05
uh shirt or piece that you wanted to come to bring in,
08:08
you could use this conform to conform it uh to the surface.
08:12
These are already uh this is already conformed.
08:14
But those tools can be valuable as well.
08:16
And we also have a basic drag which will allow us to take these different elements
08:20
and move them around while still constraining to
08:23
the actual surface that we're working on.
Video transcript
00:04
Let's take a look at some tools that will allow us to get
00:06
a little more of a scope like workflow when shaping our models.
00:09
And then also we'll take a look at some of the tools and three Ds Macs we can use to re
00:13
apologize our models so that they can be used in like a real time game engine.
00:17
And so here we have a bus that we're gonna be using.
00:19
So we'll go ahead and click on this
00:21
and instead of using the modeling ribbon,
00:24
we're gonna go over to the free form ribbon.
00:27
And you can see there are two kind of sections here, paint deform and poly draw.
00:31
Let's first concentrate on paint deform and we'll just
00:34
kind of work our way from left to right.
00:36
So if we click on shift,
00:38
this is going to be similar to like a soft selection or similar to if you view ZB brush,
00:44
the move brush or
00:45
in Maya and mud box, be like the grab brush. And so what we can do is come down here
00:51
and start to
00:52
just click
00:53
and drag or with our tablet,
00:55
move these large areas.
00:57
And if we hover over any of these tools,
00:59
they're gonna give you all of the options that you have.
01:01
So in
01:01
this case,
01:02
you can see that control will allow us to change the radius of
01:05
the fall off shift will allow us to change the radius of the strength
01:09
and shift and all will allow us to change the strength percentage value.
01:12
So if we come back in here, we can hold down shift,
01:16
change our strength very quickly
01:18
control to change our fall off,
01:20
softer, fall off will give you
01:22
obviously more of a fall off versus the sharper edged look.
01:25
And so we could come in here.
01:27
And if we had part of a,
01:28
a high res mesh that we were wanting to kind of change the
01:30
shape of this would be a really great way to do it.
01:34
We also have the ability to do the same thing, but instead of with moving,
01:37
we would do it with scale or rotate.
01:39
So if you had to kind of reshape something, but it needs to be more rotated,
01:43
you could do it that way.
01:45
If we move over to push pull,
01:46
this is going to be like a traditional sculpting kind of a brush.
01:50
If you hover over this again, you'll get a number of options for
01:53
uh relaxing the mesh
01:55
or actually, instead of pulling out the mesh pushing it in.
01:58
So it's gonna be very familiar to you if you use something like ZB brush or mud box
02:01
So here,
02:02
if we drag across this, you can see we're actually pulling geometry
02:06
out.
02:08
If the behavior of our brush is to pull that geometry out. If we hold down alt,
02:12
you'll actually do the opposite. And if we hold down shift,
02:15
you'll actually relax the mesh.
02:16
So based by switching between those three keys, you can get a lot of work done very,
02:20
very quickly pushing in, pulling out, smoothing it out,
02:23
uh back into the surface.
02:25
You can also choose to relax or soften.
02:27
You can use the flatten brush pinch and spread.
02:29
So some of these tools will be familiar to you. Again, if you've sculpted before,
02:34
you can also choose control and shift together
02:36
to change the radius on the fly as you're going.
02:39
So that section really pertains to uh kind of smoothly modifying
02:43
the shape of a very high res objects like this.
02:47
But let's say that now we want to create the
02:50
topology that we're gonna be using in our actual production.
02:53
This is known as kind of re topo
02:55
our
02:55
meshes
02:56
that is we have an object that is very high
02:58
resolution and it looks like we wanted it to,
03:00
but it's not gonna work inside of our game engine or even in our production,
03:04
it's not optimized for animation, let's say,
03:06
uh or even for the actual technical limitations of a game engine.
03:10
And so what we're gonna do is create an outer shell that is optimized for that.
03:15
But that still maintains the same shape,
03:17
gives us the same silhouette and everything.
03:19
And we'll use that to actually project through and create our normal maps and,
03:23
and uh create the final look for the character
03:25
that's going to be used actually in the production.
03:27
So to do that, normally,
03:29
what happens is you'll create new geometry that's going to kind of stick to this
03:32
high res shape and we can do this in three Ds Macs really easily.
03:36
So the first thing we need to do is tell 3d max what we want our geometry to stick to.
03:40
And so if we come over to poly
03:42
kind of right in the middle,
03:43
you can see here this grid is highlighted.
03:46
And so right now,
03:47
whatever we do is going to be snapped to a grid and we
03:50
want to change that we want to actually draw on a surface.
03:52
So we'll choose draw on surface.
03:54
And then right under that,
03:55
there's an option to pick the surface that we want to use here.
03:58
We're gonna click on this and click on our head sculpt
04:01
and you can see that that's now listed right here under surface.
04:04
So
04:05
we're gonna be creating a new piece of geometry completely from scratch.
04:08
And so we want to go under poly draw
04:10
and create a new object.
04:12
Now, this is called box one, but we can call it whatever we want,
04:15
make sure that we're on that particular object.
04:17
So we're in a blank object.
04:19
We're gonna create new geometry based on this head sculpt.
04:22
We'll start by looking at step build.
04:25
Step build is one of these tools that has so many options.
04:28
Uh because what you're doing is really creating
04:30
something completely from scratch point by point.
04:33
And so it's really flexible,
04:34
but also there are a lot of options to keep track of if we click on the step build.
04:39
If we actually just come in here without changing anything,
04:43
we can certainly add points.
04:44
And you can see those points are constrained to the surface.
04:48
It's gonna be a little bit harder to see the polygons.
04:50
So what I'm gonna do is change the offset amount to point oh one.
04:55
Now, when we come in and start to add
04:57
some points here,
04:59
and I'll show you that by holding, shift and dragging,
05:01
we can now create
05:03
new polygons and you can see those polygons start to show up here.
05:06
So again, clicking two points shift,
05:09
dragging towards those points creates those polygons
05:12
here. We had our existing ones. We'll do the same thing here
05:15
and start to add those.
05:17
I'll turn this off so you can see this a little bit better,
05:21
can do the same here and the same here and the same here.
05:25
So you can really,
05:26
really quickly start to build up geometry just with a couple of different options.
05:30
Now, if you add some points and you want to, so you add one that you don't want,
05:34
you can hold down alt
05:35
click on that point to get rid of it.
05:37
There are also a lot of other options
05:39
that you can experiment with where things might,
05:41
you might be able to speed things up a little bit by
05:43
not having to uh do that second drag and so forth.
05:46
If you control shift and alt, we can actually grab those points and move them around.
05:50
So where we place them
05:52
is not
05:54
where they have to be,
05:55
you can see that's still constrained.
05:58
Now, let's use extend, let's go ahead and pull out
06:01
the side
06:03
and we'll pull out that side and we can start to extend out our points.
06:06
If we hold down shift, we can do that to an entire edge,
06:12
bring that out
06:14
and you can see everything still conformed to the surface.
06:17
So again, just like with step, build a lot of options here and extend,
06:21
you've also got some tools under optimize that will help you kind of connect points,
06:25
delete edges and just make everything nice and clean.
06:28
So if we come to optimize,
06:30
we can see we can weld that point together.
06:32
So if we move on the other side of where we have our head scope selected,
06:36
there are also some options for creating geometry in ways
06:39
that some of them are a little bit faster.
06:41
Some of them will be more edge cases that you might need to use.
06:44
For instance, the uh the shape tool here,
06:47
we can actually draw
06:49
shapes onto the surface.
06:51
So if you had maybe a cyborg creature where you had a,
06:53
a hard surface piece coming off and you wanted to
06:55
very quickly create a shape to kind of extrude out.
06:57
You could do that.
06:59
We've also got the ability to draw out splines.
07:01
So for instance, if you had vines or something growing across uh part of a creature,
07:06
you could use this to snap those spines, draw them actually across the surface.
07:10
We've also got this topology. If we click on this,
07:14
we can come in and
07:16
draw strips here and you can see these just look like splines.
07:20
But as we start to draw across those,
07:23
we're gonna start to get some geometry there, we turn this head sculpt off.
07:26
You can see those points or those uh polygons rather right there.
07:30
We can also
07:31
draw out strips of polygons.
07:34
We can change the size of those strips by going under poly draw
07:38
and changing our minimum distance.
07:40
So we'll change that to
07:42
And you can see
07:43
I get some strips right there.
07:46
So you could use that as uh maybe if you had a long edge,
07:49
you could use that as a base to work from
07:51
and then use your step build to work from there.
07:54
We've also got conform tools over here where we can come in and start to
07:58
take objects that may be close but not on the surface.
08:02
And we can conform them to the surface. So if you had
08:04
an existing
08:05
uh shirt or piece that you wanted to come to bring in,
08:08
you could use this conform to conform it uh to the surface.
08:12
These are already uh this is already conformed.
08:14
But those tools can be valuable as well.
08:16
And we also have a basic drag which will allow us to take these different elements
08:20
and move them around while still constraining to
08:23
the actual surface that we're working on.
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