In this multi-part series, I’ll be covering how to box-model a stylized dragon, making heavy use of the various sculpt tools. The texturing will cover creating tangent normal maps and using the “toon shader” to get a nice cel-shaded look. I’ll also go into some intermediate rigging with some nice animations; from walking to pouncing to flying. and finally we’ll look into setting up a good composition with props and lighting.
In this fifth part, I add seams to the model and unwrap the UVs, followed by a high-rez sculpt to give some subtle scales here and there. I then create a tangent normal map to apply to the low-rez version, and also bake the Ambient Occlusion.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
Support the site – Download includes:
- High resolution .mov Video
- .blend file at the state of the tutorial
- Supporting Textures
Part 1
Part 2
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20 Comments
This is really cool! I can’t wait to watch this! Keep up the good work.
-AEvans
nice… my commends to Mr. Ward
Just to mention – reason why you get that bad normal map is you reversed selection while you baked. You need to select hipoly version first and then the lopoly version that you are baking into. Then you don’t need to flip direction of influence of normalmap by setting the normal amount in the texture panel to -1.
thx David
BTW: Adding to Jackal’s comment, I’m pretty sure you don’t need an image for the high poly version. At least, I never have, and it doesn’t make any sense that you would bake low to high.
Amazing series thus far Mr. Ward
Without a doubt one of my favourite instructors in Blender Cookie. One question though – Would tangent maps work for making any bumps or wrinkles on clothes? I’ve been considering adding clothes to my models with those details but I’m not sure if thats the method I should use.
sure, it could work very well for that, and save your computer a lot of rendering work later on
thanks guys
@jackal, mtracer: ah, that makes sense. select the high poly first when doing the “selected to active” bit. gotcha.
and all others, i finally figured out the sculpt tools thing, so i’ll try to go over it in part 6
great tutorial this is really helping me alot ^__^.
just a quick tip, if you go into edit mode from any other mode, and with all the verticies selected, if you press U it brings up the UV unwrap menu ^__^
Adding to both Hackal and MTracer:
Yup, you only need an image on the one you bake to. As you selected the highpoly at last, that one was your active one.
You can tell by the colour of the object outline – the active is slightly more reddish.
That’s why you needed the image on the highres one.
Verts, Edges and Faces can also be active and there are some nice things you can do with the snap tool, if you choose “active”, rather than “closest” – was a real life-saver in two actually quite simple but highly geometric and thus precise works, I did. – life-saver and not time-saver, as without that feature, there would have been no way to do it…
Btw, thanks a lot for applying the suggestions I gave you for the last vid.
right; i guess since i was essentially baking to the high-rez, the “no image to bake to” made sense, as i hadn’t unwrapped the high-rez one. hindsight is 20/20
well i have been resisting making a dragon, but i can resist no longer. it is just way too cool. thanks again, dave!
Just another mention ambient occlusion didnt work at first because it was set to multiply and if you set it to add you dont need to also add environment lightning. this would probably calculate usable AO Maps for the insight of the mouth
sweet, thanks for the heads up. i’ll keep that in mind next time
Just a note to anybody as foolish as me: If you’re getting a grainy map when you bake your Ambient Occlusion, turn on approximate, It should smooth right out. I shoulda trusted Dave.
Hey Dave,
Thanks for this great tutorial series. I’m having a problem. (5.2 at around 5:39) When you switch layers, each layer has it’s own modifier. One has subsurf, and the other multires. But when I do this, each time I add or subtract a modifier it applies to both layers. How do I prevent this?
Nevermind, misconception on my part:)
I love this tutorial. I am very excited for the next part. I can’t believe it took you so long to use the decimal button. That is probably the most used button for me when I am in blender, other than g. Great job!
Great tut David! love your stuff and am learning so much from you. Thank you for your time.
check out this video i found on Blender Cookie that is an excellent video explaining the 2.53 brushes:
http://www.blendercookie.com/2010/07/23/sculpting-blender-2-53/