Lead modeller at Framestore Adam Dewhirst explains how to use retopology tools to create a character ready for rigging.
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This gives you a complete and usable model in as much time as it took to conceive: the benefits of this are enormous, as modellers need not to be confined by lack of technical skill and can be free to sculpt in a creative and limitless way.
Here, I'll walk through how to turn a loose 2D sketch into a fully functioning animation-ready model, using Mudbox's retopology tools and the new retopology tools in Maya 2014.
01. Starting out and reference
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I wanted something that could fit into a number of worlds - Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Narnia - so we decided on the idea of a Coal Troll, a being whose only existence was to gather and collect coal. Dan suggested that after some time he might start to look like the thing he collected. For this reason, my starting point was to collect reference of coal, rocks, caves and any creatures that I thought were relevant.
02. General shaping
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Mudbox may not have DynaMesh to play with, but using the retopology toolset will allow us to increase the polygon spread as we go. Working in a similar way, start by using the Grab tool to pull out very basic limbs and a torso; this is the rough blocking.
03. Add the clothing
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04. Retopologise
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05. Refining the shape
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final mesh, it's enough to work with for now. Use the Wax brush to build up the muscle shapes and refine the figure, and next we’ll drop in two spheres for the eyes. To do this, go to Create>Mesh>Sphere. Duplicate the sphere, then go to Mesh>Flip Mesh>Around X.
06. Adding the mouth
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in a mouth cavity just in case. I'm going to use the Freeze tool to mask the mouth out, and then go to Edit>Inverse Freeze. Now you can use the Grab tool to pull the jaw down.
07. Second retopology
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08. Adding teeth and gums
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09. Final shaping of the hands
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We're also going to freeze everything except the area directly above the eyes, so that we can pull out some eyelids. Although they would be pulled back in the pose we’re modelling, we want them to be quite prominent for the basic bind pose in case the animation requires a more prominent blink.
10. Add guide curves for final retopology
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Click on the middle of your model, then use the Curve Loop tool to define areas around the arms, neck and legs. With the window open, right-click on the curves and define them as a soft or hard constraint: we want the centre line and the eye and mouth loops to be hard constraints, to ensure edges are there.
11. Maya clean-up
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Maya 2014's new topology tools allow you to set a Transform Constraint, which lets you import your high-res sculpt into Maya and use it as a mesh to snap your new topology to. You can set this up by turning on the new topology tools using the new icon next to the Attribute Editor icon.
12. Basic UVs in Maya
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13. Unwrap in ZBrush
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14. Transfer attributes in Mudbox
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into the Mudbox scene. With our new base mesh selected, I’m going to run Transfer Attributes. Go to Mesh>Transfer Attributes and select your target model (new topology) and your source model (sculpt), then transfer the details over. You may have a few stray vertices to clean up afterwards.
15. Add the asymmetrical detail
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Create a new sculpt layer in Mudbox, and use the Wax tool again to build up some rocky surface detail. During the retopology phase, make sure to add some extra loops around the shoulder with this in mind, so you have plenty of surface area to play with.
16. The Detail pass
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You can add individual layers for particularly prominent components, such as the crack down his shoulder and the facial detail - all this work should come out in the displacement map. To finish the Mudbox scene, set up some basic lights and shaders and bring all the elements together, then wrap up the sculpting and export the displacement maps.
17. Clean up and finish
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I can't emphasise enough how important this final stage is: so many models I receive are not clean. You should always clean and check your models before you deliver them. And that’s it, we're finished! In the future you may want to create some nice colour maps, but what we have created in a short amount of time is a named, UVed, well-topologised mesh that’s ready for animation - and we have done the majority of that work in Mudbox!
Government lies about
inflation
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman famously said: ‘Inflation is always and
everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be
produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in
output.’ Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint
Under increasing pressure from the Opposition, the current government
wants to be seen as pro-active in tackling rising prices. The finance
minister has successfully portrayed speculators as evil monsters, and
the Essential Commodities Act has been imposed to crack the whip on
wrong-doers. This, despite the useful role that speculators play in
allocating resources and stabilizing prices. The general media has
joined the band-wagon against speculators, and, among other steps, a
price stabilization fund is in the offing to shield the common man from
higher prices.
None of this, however, addresses the real cause behind price rise:
monetary inflation (increase in the money supply). That increase in the
quantity of money in circulation leads to higher prices in the absence
of a corresponding increase in the quantity of goods available in the
market is well-known. In fact, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman famously
said: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the
sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in
the quantity of money than in output.”
To be sure, factors like wars and weather affecting the supply of oil
and agricultural products can explain the jump in prices. But such price
movements are largely temporary and isolated to a particular set of
commodities. What India has experienced over the past decades, however,
is a general rise in the price level — that is, an increase in the
prices of all (or most) goods and services. Notably, this has occurred
despite increase in the supply of goods, which, however, has failed to
keep up with the pace of money creation. Thus, monetary inflation offers
the only credible explanation for rising prices.
Toward this end, more often than not, a proper study of the money supply
data provides a more honest picture of the nature of monetary policy.
That is, as compared to judging policy intent based on pronouncements of
central bankers. In the period between 1991 and 2009, India’s broad
money supply (M3) grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 17.2%. This
was marginally higher than M3 growth between 1969 and 1991, which stood
at 17.1%. While money growth has been sluggish in recent years, at the
present moment, there is a clear uptrend in broad money growth standing
at around 15% in 2013 — well over the growth rate of 13% projected by
the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Thus, currency debasement is the norm and any temporary slowdown in the
pace of money creation is to be celebrated as “tight” money policy
adopted by a strong, independent central banker. Moreover, successive
governments would have us believe that rising prices are caused by
supply-side shocks well beyond their control. Then, the government,
projects itself as actively fighting the problem of price rise through
emergency measures. This, while such price rise was caused by aggressive
monetizing of government debt by the RBI and a policy of easy credit in
general.
As far as monetizing of government debt goes, the RBI has run India’s
very own quantitative easing programme by funding over one-fourths of
the government’s gross market borrowing in fiscal years 2011-12 and
2012-13.
In such a scenario, there is little reason to hold high hopes of the
government curbing inflation by beating its age-old habit of debasing
the currency. The pressures of populism almost always trump concerns of
prudent economic policy-making, and things are (and will be) no
different when it comes to the issue of price rise. Despite all
high-flying rhetoric about tackling inflation, what is likely in the
days to come are more government actions that convey the message of
“doing something” to tackle inflation while the real cause behind years
of double-digit inflation remains unaddressed.
Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/n41Tonq0w15y4IJMINqJzJ/Government-lies-about-inflation.html?utm_source=Affinity&utm_campaign=Affinity_Livemint&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=63679&utm_content%253Dfutureplc-creativebloq%0A&u=futureplc-creativebloq
Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/n41Tonq0w15y4IJMINqJzJ/Government-lies-about-inflation.html?utm_source=Affinity&utm_campaign=Affinity_Livemint&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=63679&utm_content%253Dfutureplc-creativebloq%0A&u=futureplc-creativebloq
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