Adventures across the 3rd dimension

Valence wrote:

After a few failures it'll probably just be a big wooden stick.

*goes off to watch some tutorials*

EDIT:
*watches an entire playlist*
*slowly realises that we're going way beyond the limits of my ability*

Well, on a positive note I've worked out the Quadflow issue. If you choose remesh from the Object Properties/Geometry panel then the option is there but if you remesh from the sculpt mode panel or the menu then it's not there thanks to Blender's inconsistent interface.
But as Banj suggested it does have mesh limitations when you try it.

Apart from that I mostly spent this evening learning what NOT to do.
My attempted axe just looked like a plastic toy. Until I turned on smooth shading... and then it looked like one of those metallic foil balloons!
More work needed. More learning needed.

Obviously Banj can work so quickly in 3D simply because he actually knows what he's doing.

Valence wrote:

Obviously Banj can work so quickly in 3D simply because he actually knows what he's doing.

I'm thinking that may be the key to everything.

Oh, and when I was watching those numerous videos I saw one guy doing that retopo thing and in order to map one mesh onto another he used snapping AND shrinkwrap... at the same time!
And that way seemed to work much better than me with those straps. Then again everything in these videos works better than my efforts.
I still may add it to my list of things to try next time.

Valence wrote:

Obviously Banj can work so quickly in 3D simply because he actually knows what he's doing.

Tried again with the axe last night and it's still not working.
How on earth do you sculpt hard smooth surfaces and keep the planes flat and the edges sharp? And why doesn't the flatten brush actually flatten?
I would confidently declare that it's impossible if it wasn't for the fact that I spent 90 minutes watching videos of people successfully doing it.

So I have two saved axes. A low-poly one made through extrusions which looks like a plastic toy. Plus a hi-res sculpted version that looks lumpy and soft. And neither of them match the style or realism of the orc, not that he looks realistic anyway, but he looks a lot better than his "weapons".

I think I may have to try and add more detail to the low-poly one by just subdividing it. Annoyingly the usual smoothing algorithms completely destroy the overall shape and sharpness of the edges so I guess the only way is by repeatedly loop-cutting and manually moving vertices.

Well, an orc with colourful plastic toy weapons could be fun and original

You know more about sculpting than I do, but... if you want hard edges and flat surfaces maybe you should not sculpt and just use the edit mode instead? Also, in case you have forgotten, remember that auto smooth setting where you can change the angle at which stuff looks smooth vs angular... (under normals, in case you forgot which you probably didn't, but I'm mentioning it anyway, just in case, you know...)

I've made two attempts at flags now. The first one, I'm not sure I was even going for a flag to begin with, but I was trying out the sculpting mode and thought I COULD make it into a pirate flag... But it looks kind of lumpy (sound familiar?) and not very cloth-like. So I tried again, by manually moving the vertices (wait, was that the word that didn't exist? ) around. It's more like what I wanted yet still not good at all. So I'm thinking I might scrap the flag. I want this bundle done before Halloween after all, and I've still got a lot to do, so... I'll probably go back to making furniture.

There is a cloth brush in sculpting mode.
I tried it out when I was experimenting with the lower half of the body and ended up with something that looked like a kilt.
But I didn't want a Scottish McOrc.

If you're wanting the flag to ripple like its blowing in the wind then maybe the proportIonal editing might help.

I did find the smooth shading thing the other day. That was when the axe looked like a metallic foil balloon. The "smoothing" that's bothering me now is the one that interpolates vertices so that the series of straight edges look like a curve while still keeping that cutting edge sharp. If that makes sense.
Maybe I should have designed it to have a flat, straight blade instead.

Ah yes, I think I understand what you mean.

I just want the flag to hang on the wall. You know, just sag a bit like cloth does.