How to make matching shoes.

[Gadget Girl]

So I'm really proud of myself. I actually managed to make a decent shoe. I say a shoe because only the right one is very good at the moment.

I may still have to go back and tweak it some, but I have a question. Is there an easy way to duplicate and reverse the good shoe? I'm sure some refinement will be needed regardless, but I'm just not good enough to make them the same by hand. The more I try to refine them, the more the shape 'drifts' for lack of a better word.

I'm sure there must be some way to make a mirror copy of the good shoe, but rather then spend forever trying to figure it out on my own, I figured I'd ask.

 

[Glitterati3D]

In your modeler, you should be able to use symmetry to reverse the shoe to the other foot.

UV map the single shoe first - then the UV map will stack on each other and you'll only have to texture 1 shoe and it will be mirrored on the other one. (The 2nd map is actually THERE, just mirrored and stacked under the 1st one.) Saves a lot of time and you have 2 perfectly matching shoe textures.

What modeler are you using? I might be able to help with specific instructions for you.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Thanks, I was pretty sure there was something like that I could do. I have both Blender and Maya.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Ooops, I don't use either modeler. Sorry, can't offer any specific help.

There are tons of Blender users around here, though, so you should get some help with it.

 

[Miss B]

Hey GG, why don't you start a thread in the Blender forum, as I'm sure folks who use it will see your query quicker there than here in this thread.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Hey GG, why don't you start a thread in the Blender forum, as I'm sure folks who use it will see your query quicker there than here in this thread.

Actually I've been thinking about it, and I think I know how to do it in Maya. I was just not thinking about the right software. I should have realized a modeler was the place to go, instead I was thinking about Poser for some reason (probably because I went in there to use the morph brushes to fit and smooth some of the details.)

 

[Miss B]

Oh, OK, and yes the modeler is where you would do that, so if you can get it accomplished in Maya, that's good.

 

[Pendraia]

Glad to see you think that you've worked it out. I use the method Traci mentioned in Zbrush.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Glad to see you think that you've worked it out. I use the method Traci mentioned in Zbrush.

Yes it worked great. Which is good because I realized I needed to move the bow further down the shoe so I'm going to end up duplicating a shoe again.

 

[Ken1171]

Just remember that symmetry may cause some side effects depending on what program you are using. One of them has already been mentioned above, where the mirrored shoe will have flipped UVs. It may sound like a good idea at first, but it WILL mess up your normal maps because they will be flipped as well. Older renderes like Firefly and 3Delight will render each shoe with a inverted normal map. More modern renderers like Octane, Iray and SuperFly/Cycles will automatically flip mirrored geometry UV, though, so it will be less of a problem.

I don't know about Blender3D, but I remember that 3DSMAX had issues with that until more recent versions, where symmetric modeling would result into flipped normal faces. We would have to manually flip the face normals on mirrored geometry created with symmetry, or else they would show inside out in Poser. 3DSMAX 2016 now automatically flips the normals on symmetrically created geometry (like shoes), but the UVs will still be inverted on one foot, which can be a problem if you render with legacy renderers and use normal maps.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Just remember that symmetry may cause some side effects depending on what program you are using.

Thanks for the heads up. I haven't really looked at the UVs yet, at the stage I'm at currently I tend to just toss on various materials I have, until I feel sure that I've got the geometry the way I want it, but I'll keep in mind the possibly backwards materials. Luckily I'm not having any issues with flipping normals, and I do have to do some tweaking because the mirrored shoes doesn't end up in the right place.

 

[Ken1171]

Mirrored geometry require the registration point to be at the exact world center in your modeling program, for that's the reference point for placing and orienting the other shoe. The registration point is the center (origin) of the local axes in your model. In 3DSMAX, we can change the reference point using a modifier, so we don't have to change the model. For example, I can tell it to mirror in relation to the world's center, no matter where the registration point might be in the model. Before this, I was forced to move the shoe's center axes to the world's center before mirroring. I have no idea how it works in Blender, but that's the basic principle.

You only have to worry about the flipped UVs on the mirrored shoe if you plan to make normal maps for it. Everything else is unaffected by it.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Thanks for the heads up. I haven't really looked at the UVs yet, at the stage I'm at currently I tend to just toss on various materials I have, until I feel sure that I've got the geometry the way I want it, but I'll keep in mind the possibly backwards materials. Luckily I'm not having any issues with flipping normals, and I do have to do some tweaking because the mirrored shoes doesn't end up in the right place.

GG, another tip on mirroring objects......copy the X position of your shoe, then, after mirroring, copy that position to the new shoe. If you modeled the right shoe, your X position on the left will be positive, if modeling left and mirroring to right, the X position will be a negative number.

It will work, ASSUMING your figure object is symmetrical. But, even if not, it gets the mirrored shoe very close and you can move it in small increments.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Thanks for the tips on getting the correct position on the second shoe. Is the issue with normal maps also with bump or displacement maps? I haven't decided what to use yet.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Thanks for the tips on getting the correct position on the second shoe. Is the issue with normal maps also with bump or displacement maps? I haven't decided what to use yet.

You're welcome. On the normal thing......if I am reading Ken right, it's not even applicable in Poser. Just rendering in engines other than Poser. I use normal maps only now - just because P11 users are going to have no fun with bump/displacement - those settings do not migrate well to Superfly. Poser has been able to use Normal maps since P8 (I think it was 8, 9 minimally) so I just use Normals now. That way, I only have to make one set of materials for clothing, not worrying with a Superfly version.

Of course, none of this applies to skins/characters, but clothing. I wouldn't know where to start on character skin settings.

 

[English Bob]

The way I do it is with STOMP, an external utility which operates on OBJ format files. I always save the mesh without normals. STOMP takes care of the facet winding order, which is what Poser uses instead of normals to determine the 'outer' face on your mesh. I've never had any problem with bump or displacement, anyway, and I imagine that would also apply to normal maps. You just have to remember to rename the group on the mirrored shoe, assuming you're making conforming shoes. If not, then no problem!

STOMP can be downloaded from here: Spanki's Prop Shop: Downloads / Utilities

I had a message that the site's security certificate had expired, so it may be that the owner has moved on. Just a warning if you're visiting this thread from some time in the future.

 

[Gadget Girl]

Poser has been able to use Normal maps since P8 (I think it was 8, 9 minimally) so I just use Normals now. That way, I only have to make one set of materials for clothing, not worrying with a Superfly version.

Okay, so I've just learned a lot about Normal maps in the last little bit, because I realized I didn't understand them at all. I've been reading through and learned there are all sorts of Normal maps. So what kind do you suggest using? I've never noticed any blue or rainbow colored stuff on any of the materials I have, so do people usually use greyscale normal maps? Or have I just not been paying enough attention?

 

[Glitterati3D]

Okay, so I've just learned a lot about Normal maps in the last little bit, because I realized I didn't understand them at all. I've been reading through and learned there are all sorts of Normal maps. So what kind do you suggest using? I've never noticed any blue or rainbow colored stuff on any of the materials I have, so do people usually use greyscale normal maps? Or have I just not been paying enough attention?

I think most folks have been using bump/displacement since forever and didn't use them much in the past. However, with the advent of Superfly in P11, you'll see them more and more. Look at the Dusk Base textures......normal maps.

It depends on what I am doing, but for clothing I use Nvidia's free Photoshop plugin to create most normal maps........2 clicks and you're done. NVIDIA Texture Tools for Adobe Photoshop

That works if you have Photoshop (you don't need a Nvidia card).

You can also use 2 free products to create normal maps - XNormal and Sculptris. I use this when I want to add things like fabric folds on my clothing. I did a tutorial for it on the old forum, let me see if I can find it.

 

[Gadget Girl]

So as I was doing more research I found a pretty cool tool (at least from my inexperienced point of view) that's in beta called CrazyBump. I've just done some very brief playing around with it so far, but it does seem to do a good job of not only creating a normal map, but letting you refine it to get the level of detail you want. I will say however, their forums don't actually seem to exist.

 

[phdubrov]

For simple things there are even free online texture transformers, like NormalMap-Online