Advice for Zbrush > Game Workflows

StormyBA

I'm pretty new to Zbrush having spent the last 2 weeks burning through the Three "Intro to Zbrush" video tutorials by Michael Pavlovich, I've learnt a great deal on the inner workings of Zbrush and how to make a good start on getting sculpts done but I'm wanting to find a bit more information or general advice on the step of getting it out of Zbrush and into game. 

As far as I'm aware the steps would be something along the lines of
-Base Mesh either in Zbrush or in another 3d app
-Get it in, sculpt and get a nice highpoly
-Recreate and UV the game ready mesh. (This is where I'd like more info, what app, how are you doing this? does Remesh do a good job? is it mostly done outside of zbrush?) 
-Export high and low as seperate files and dump into xnormal / substance etc to export maps. 

I guess I'm most curious about the retopology step and what software and methods are being used to great game ready mesh. Again, does remesher in zbrush create good enough results these days? or the likes of zpheres to remesh? or do you usally export the high poly into your 3d package of choice and remesh from there? 

pior

The issue with this line of thinking is to consider that Zbrush is central to the game asset creation workflow, whereas in reality it is just one small aspect of the whole thing. Sure, some artists may start directly in Zbrush and derive their lowpoly from that. Sure, a lot of things can be retopoed by snapping onto the surface of a high resolution sculpt.

But !

If you are currently at the stage when you are wondering about all these things, then your best course of action is to forget Zbrush altogether for at least a month or two and fully dedicate this time to clean lowpoly modeling, clean UV mapping, and exploring various retopo tools to find the one that works the best for you (hint : for complex things like a detailed character face, it's Topogun. For other things, you will get a lot of mileage out of the usual modeling tools of your regular 3d app.)

Once and only once you've done that will you be able to see how to best integrate Zbrush into your game asset creation workflow. Doing things the other way around might emulate the workflow of more advanced users, but it will very likely prevent you from developing the fundamentals you need for clean and precise game asset creation.

In short : focus on the fundamentals of game asset creation first and foremost.

Good luck !

StormyBA

pior said:

The issue with this line of thinking is to consider that Zbrush is central to the game asset creation workflow, whereas in reality it is just one small aspect of the whole thing. Sure, some artists may start directly in Zbrush and derive their lowpoly from that. Sure, a lot of things can be retopoed by snapping onto the surface of a high resolution sculpt.

But !

If you are currently at the stage when you are wondering about all these things, then your best course of action is to forget Zbrush altogether for at least a month or two and fully dedicate this time to clean lowpoly modeling, clean UV mapping, and exploring various retopo tools to find the one that works the best for you (hint : for complex things like a detailed character face, it's Topogun. For other things, you will get a lot of mileage out of the usual modeling tools of your regular 3d app.)

Once and only once you've done that will you be able to see how to best integrate Zbrush into your game asset creation workflow. Doing things the other way around might emulate the workflow of more advanced users, but it will very likely prevent you from developing the fundamentals you need for clean and precise game asset creation.

In short : focus on the fundamentals of game asset creation first and foremost.

Good luck !

Ha I hope I got some of that down  

Sorry I should of probably given some more background on the first post. I've been working in 3D packages for quite some time but over the last 10 years I've spent most of my time working on racing games and a big focus on mobile development in recent years. To cut a long story short I've never needed in my past projects to work with zbrush, the focus has always been on poly modelling in Maya, Modo. But I've this week moved into a new job, new game + new genre where I think we want to be using Zbrush for assets. 

So with that in mind jumped into doing a bit of a crash course to "hit the ground running" for when we ramp up production. 

One of the things not shown much in the intro to zbrush series is that step of Zbrush to Game workflow and just wanted to hear form some of you guys what work flows you find fast, productive and generally produce good results. 

Thanks for the reply! 

pior

Well, the general advice (especially for sculpt-heavy productions) is to create some very solid basemeshes that can be reused easily in order to minimize grunt work. Because every time something is made from scratch in Zbrush, or retopoed from scratch ... that means that new UVs have to be redone each time, and that's obviously not viable when doing, say, 10 characters in a row. The same line of thinking applies to a lot of other aspects of asset creation : thinking outside the box in order to avoid any repetitive task.

So basically, every good habit that you got from the last 10 years still applies And as said, for retopo you will need Topogun (or equivalent), as well as the toolset of your regular modeling package.