Hi all,

what is your approach on sculpting displacement or normal detail for an already rigged character? After sculpting the base has probably changed.
Is there a way to tell mudbox not to alter the lowest level like the store morph target option in zBrush?

I don’t think there is a way to do that but Ill default to someone that knows MB2009 better.  What would stop you from exporting the new low res, and then using it as a morph channel so you skinned model would look just like the new model?  what package are you using?  If you are using max you could just add a morpher modifier before the skin, then morph to the new mesh, then collapse everything down below the skin, leaving the skin modifier intact, but now you have the new mesh.  (also make sure always deform is off, and do your morphs and collapses at frame 0. )

One more method that Is probably the best way to go is to use the low res from your app for baking, not the deformed new mesh in mud.  Just import your skinned low res model into mud and bake it against your high res.  As long as you didn’t go crazy in MB and make the mesh totally different then your maps should come out fine.

http://www.justin-lloyd.com

keep in mind...that game res characters will have lots of triangles and optimized geometry....which does not lend well to sculpting.

Also, you may get mixed results, because the UVs are matching the low res mesh..and with to much sculpting that may exaggerate the surface a lot....you will get stretched looking normal maps.  Its also not very comfortable sculpting to a texture map.

Thank you Justinoman, I’ll try your second approach.
I had thought of it, but was afraid of rather minor changes affecting the sculpted version too much. As for the morphing approach: Yes, I’m using Max. The character is supposed to morph through several targets, while at the same time the bones will grow. So collapsing the morph is not an option. You see my problem: The mesh would need to be affected by both, the skin modifier AND the morphtargets.
I won’t really go crazy, but there will be overhangs which a scalar displacement map can’t handle.

I received another suggestion to bind the morphing object to the rigged base via skin wrap . Would you know how that is possible without the skin wrap overwriting the morph?

Yes, thank you 2byts. My mesh is quads only.

then you should be good to go...just do your sculpting, bake the maps and applying them to your orginal mesh.  End result is just a texture map, so if your UVs dont change you wont have any issues.

Yes, you’re right about the UVs. What I’m worried about is the surface normals of the base. Mudbox alters the normals of the basemesh a little. So the displacement probably assumes wrong vectors when applied to my rigged mesh.

But I guess the only way to find out is trying ;) I might give morphx a try, though. It’s a free script for MAX supposed to apply morphs after everything else in the stack without overriding it. Sounds too good to be true, but who knows..

i cannot speak for displacements...but normal maps are pretty flexible.  Thats within reason of course...if the characters is already modelled and finished and you just want to polish with a normal map then you should be fine.  Its when you want to model a head out of a sphere....when it wont work.

For anyone interested who is using 3ds Max:
There’s a plugin called morphix2. It’s free. I enables morphing to targets AFTER the skinmodifier, without destroying the pose.

You could also just adjust your base mesh to comply to the sculpted one after done with sculpting. Because usually I change ideas on execution while sculpting.