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how to sculpt hard surfaces like architectural props
October 27, 2010 - 8:29am
- 1661 reads
Hello there. I want to know that how can i sculpt hard surfaces in mudbox ? I am not asking how to create a hard surface object in mudbox. I am wondering how can i sculpt an hard surface object (imported from maya to mudbox). For example i tried to work on a very basic building. I used split edge rings in sides to maintain the hard surface shape when subdividing in mudbox. But in some areas if there are too many rings side by side the sculpting brush in these areas giving me a weird noisy effect. You can look at the pictures to understand it. I really need to understand the workflow when working with these enviroment sets.
Can you also share some good enviroment sculpting tutorials that you know? I need to understand the workflow and mesh structure. Thank you.
Yes i know that. I read that on somewhere else too but this example you show me is a very basic example as you know =) Can you tell me how can i make more complex inorganic model's subdivisions uniform. For example i am using maya. When creating a cube in maya without touching its vertex positions you can change the subdivision width, height and dept at the same time whatever you want but when you start with a model , play with it and for example make a building from that cube mesh. if you then change the subdivision properties, the mesh is going to be messed up. so i need to use a tool like "split edge ring tool" to cut the faces evenly like the example you showed above. but the distance between the faces is not going to be the same as in the above cube example. did you understand what i mean? is there a tool in maya to make the complex hardsurface model even quad based mesh?
Thank you
By the way i saw your "fountain" entry Andy. It is fantastic. You are a very talented environment modeler. I am lucky to get answer from you so thank you for your understanding. But if you can answer my above question too i ll be very gratefull also if you can show me some of your working pipeline with a hard surface object it would be uber cool!! =D Thank again.
Thanks for the kind words!
Im sorry for the late reply but i missed the notification email :/
Im not familiar with Maya so i can only give general technical advice but the uniformity doesn't have to be 100% exact and for complicated shapes just get it as close as you can.
The best way to ensure uniform subdivision is to:-
- Loop cut the mesh where you want the divisions to be
- Use the Maya equivalent of the connect tool in max to add cuts
- Create your meshes with higher initial geometry (rather than using a 8 sided cylinder, use a 16 or 32 etc.) and then add cuts where needed.
Hope that helps 
Thank you very much again Andy! I am going to try your advices.
no worries 
Hope it works for you!
Hi Mayalicious,
To get good results when sculpting you need to ensure that the subdivision of your object is uniform to the smallest detail on your mesh.
This will stop the problems you are seeing
Hope that helps!
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