Question about posing a highpoly character

Obscura

Hi all! So I have a highpoly character that I need to pose because the client want it in this way. I made the character in T post because I wanted to use symmetry on it to make the progress easier when I'm sculpting it. Now the character is done, then I made cloths on it in Max again, and I need to make the pose, then go back to ZB and sculpt some folds on the cloths. How could I do the posing in the easiest and fastest way? The character is like 2-300k, because only the body has been sculpted, and the cloths are just prepared for subdividing, so all the clothes are like 10k polies. Should I rig it in max and pose it? Wouldn't be too hard to set up the envelopes properly on a model that has this much polies? Or Should I make a "lowpoly" for the body, bake a displacement map from the sculpted hp, rig and pose the lp, and add the displacement map to it to get back the detail? Actually I wouldn't like to do this because it would take too much time. Or should I use the transpose in ZB somehow? As you see I have some ideas about this, but I don't know which method would work the best and fastest in this case.

Thank you all for the answers!

Bek

I think Transpose Master allows you to pose a model and move all your subtools accordingly. Might be worth a look: http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/zbrush-plugins/transpose-master/

thomasp

you could use transpose master to create a merged low-res copy of your sculpt, rig that with zspheres, pose and apply the pose to the sculpt; i suppose that is the intended way.
not a fan of building a throwaway zsphere rig and fumbling some sort of skinning together, tbh.

i prefer exporting the output of transpose master to max, rig, skin and pose there with all the bells and whistles that max allows (numeric transformations, object linking, skin wrap modifier, creating simple deform proxies, FFD's, edit poly to tackle tricky areas, etc) and import back into zbrush, append to the ztool that transpose master has created, copy the object name and delete the transpose master original, then transfer this pose to the sculpt.

if pose transfer fails for some unexplained reason - i know i had it happend with a couple of files where upon import vertex counts didn't match - i can then at least export the high poly from zbrush and skinwrap that in max to the proxy object and pose it that way. that's a slow and painful method though only recommended if transpose master screws up.

Obscura

Thank you guys, I didn't know about transpose master. After reading your guides, I searched for a tutorial about it, and I found this: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6THhnv0m6g"]Posing Characters in Zbrush using a Zsphere Rig[/ame] Looks very easy to use and very fast. Thanks once again, lets see what I get

Obscura

Unfortunately this isn't work with my model, because its too much polies, and the body parts goes wavy after moving the "bones", no matter how big I scale them I try bones and a biped in Max.

Edit - I tried them out but Max is lagging like hell when I'm trying to edit the envelopes, so I must try to get the zspheres to work...

thomasp

hey - not sure if my earlier post is that unclear but you would rig up your LOW in max - don't try to rig your highest subdiv level - that will make you jump out of a window for sure.

as a first test to check if you can go with transpose master <-> 3ds max at all in your scenario, try the following:

1. with your sculpt selected, go to transpose master and press the 'TPoseMesh' button. export the output of that as an OBJ.
2. import into max (select the ZBRUSH profile and make sure import as multiple objects is ticked)
3. right away select all the imported objects and export them back as OBJ (again, ZBRUSH profile should be activated here)
4. in zbrush's tool palette select the simplebrush or any primitve (to switch away from the TPoseMesh object, else it gets overwritten) and import that OBJ again
5. select your TPoseMesh, append the newly imported object as a subtool, copy the object name onto your import, delete the original TPoseMesh object and in transpose master press 'TPose->SubT'

wait for it to run through all your subtools and check if it finishes without error.
if so, you can now do a rig and skin job in max using whatever workflow you prefer and even deform the output on a vertex level after posing it (to get joints to deform nicely i.e. proper spikey elbows, not the CG bendy-tube ones).

since you imported separate objects, you can skin them up separately and use one as a skinning proxy for others (skin wrap).

if you have some subtools in your TPoseMesh that are not very low, you can build a lowpoly in max around them, skin that to the rig and skin wrap the subtool to it. you can also do that in layers of objects to get from a really low poly proxy to bend the subtool into shape to a second, more defined proxy that is skinwrapped to the first, to handle problem areas.

with skin wrap you can also do stuff like put an edit poly modifier on your skinning proxy and deform it on a vertex level. it will then in turn deform whatever you have skin wrapped to it, like some sort of custom-shaped FFD.

you can also use morphers in the stack, FFD, whatever.



and if!! in the original test step transpose master threw an error about something, then you can still do all the skinning on the TPoseMesh but instead of epxorting it back into zbrush and having transpose master handle the mapping of pose to sculpt, you'd have to import your highest level subtools into max one by one, skinwrap them to your skinned TPoseMesh and export them posed out back into zbrush and rebuild your subdivision levels there.

in this case you just have to make sure to bring lots of patience (!), to put the rig into bind pose and to deactivate whatever deformation you have going on in the stack above plain skin/skin wrap modifiers on your proxies prior to skinwrapping your HIGH subtool to your proxies.
when skin wrap finishes calculating, snap the rig into pose, activate all your vertex deformation modifiers and export the deformed subtool back out. rinse and repeat.

obviously when having to deal with this ordeal it's absolutely crucial not to collapse any parts of your stack!



now i'm awaiting somebody to post some awesomly quick and reliable workflow that lets mine look like straight from the dark ages!

Obscura

Hi, thank you for the detailed answer! I successfully posed it. I tell you what happened. After I sculpted the body in ZB, I exported it back to Max to make the cloths with retopo on the sculpted body. So then I had just the highest subd level mesh... That was the problem, and this is why it was really hard to rig it properly with zspheres. But after adding more and more zspheres, it worked better and better, and at the end, it worked. Now I know, next time I should pose it after sculpting, and before exporting it back to max, so I could pose it on the lowest subd level.