ZBrush to Finished Character Workflow
polycounter lvl 9
I've been in zBrush for about a year now, but despite digging around on a bunch of different YouTube tutorials, I still don't understand how I can take a finished DynaMesh sculpt into Maya for the texture maps & retopo. If anyone could explain to me their zBrush character process, that would be much appreciated.
I understand that zRemesher can be used to create retopo, and you can project high detail dynamesh sculpts onto the retopologized mesh, and then take it into Maya, unwrap UV's.. but I've never been able to find any resources on it.
I understand that zRemesher can be used to create retopo, and you can project high detail dynamesh sculpts onto the retopologized mesh, and then take it into Maya, unwrap UV's.. but I've never been able to find any resources on it.
Replies
Now in Maya you would essentially go to File --> Import and browse to the directory/ folder location you exported your ZBrush decimated mesh to, and simply import it. Within Maya you would most likely use the Quad Draw tool, found in the modeling toolkit, to begin drawing topology over your imported mesh.
Once the retopology process is complete, you would unwrap the UVs for your model and lay them out in the 0,1 space of the UV editor. With the UVs layed out you could then bake your original Zbrush detail down to your lo-poly/ retopo mesh, either using Maya's built in baker or another program such as xNormal/ Substance Painter/ Marmoset etc. (This step would take more exporting/ importing of the appropriate files for these external programs)
Some terms to search for and research would be retopology, edgeflow, baking normal maps, UV layout
You can try watching Arrimus' Youtube series too. He uses Max primarily but the same logic and steps apply to Maya (I just found this quickly, seems like a 3 parter but I haven't watched the whole thing you, but seems like what you were asking):
Hope that helps to layout the process and I would be interested in other's processes and thoughts. Being able to streamline and organize will help a lot as it can get overwhelming.
I find this workflow to be the best, although I am stepping over to baking and texturing in substance. Just a 3dsMax ZBrush method would be:
1/ Finish your character in ZBrush (also the diffuse, colors/textures) and merge all the subtools into one model, or into groups like skin parts and costume. Export the hipoly model/s to your harddrive.
2/ In ZBrush decimate the subtools of your model one by one. Start at the default 20% and halve that value with each decimation checking that the subtool keeps its volume and if possible bring the tool back to 1% of its original resolution, or at least as low as it will go.
3/ Merge the decimated tools and GoZ them to the app of your choice. For me that is 3dsMax at the moment. Before I do this I setup ZBrush to export to Max at a perfect size. Also do this before exporting the hi res version of your model to the harddisk.
4/ In Max use the freeform polydraw tool (or similar in Maya) to make your low res model and make a uv layout of the low res version.
5/ Put a projection cage modifier on top of your low res model and adjust it as necessary. The use of a cage will depend on what software you use to bake your texture. With XNormal I find the cage helps quite a bit.
6/ If you use XNormal, installing it will place export options in Max. Probably the same for Maya. Export the uved low poly version (with projection cage if you used one) to your harddisk.
7/ Open XNormal and point it to your Hi and Lo res models. Use the options to define the size and type of textures you need.
8/ Bake
This is the basic process but there are a lot of details which you can research. I havent watched the vid above, maybe it will fill in the blanks for you. Hope this helps!
Hi. You are making the problem a lot more complicated than it needs to be by thinking of the pipeline this way. Of course the final pipeline will indeed consist of sculpting a full character > doing a retopo > baking the textures > texturing > skin weighting > exporting. But when it comes to actually learning the steps you want to work the other way around.
1 • Completely ignore your detailed sculpt for now, and 100% focus on learning how to export a simple stick figure / simple basemesh to a game engine or to the rendering environment of your choice. Don't spend more than an hour on that model or even download one from a marketplace. Then spend a few days learning how to create simple UVs for it, and then a few days on how to assign a skeleton and skin weights to the model. You now have a fully functional game asset, ready to export.
2 • Once (and only once) you know how to do that, look up how to bake texture maps. Don't worry about something like Substance texturing apps for now, it will only confuse you at this stage. Learn how to use Xnormal or the baker in Toolbag3, using a crude sculpt pass done on that placeholder model you've been using to test rigging with. These two programs have a lot of good documentation available.
3 • Once (and only once) you know how to do that, start looking up the concept of retopo. Going forward this will allow you to create a proper lowpoly model based on your detailled sculpts. Ultimately this is going to be the first thing you'll do after finishing a highpoly model, but for the sake of learning you should keep that for last. Take the crude sculpt done for step 2, and recreate a new low for it using the Maya retopo tools.
4 • Rebake the maps once more, this time with this new retopoed model
5 • Do the skin weighting again.
By the time you are done with this exercise you would have created two "throwaway" models, and you will know all you need to know in order to repeat the process on a proper, carefully created sculpt.
Note that these "bottom up" steps are mostly appropriate for self learners researching on their own. If you attend a workshop/class they would likely make you go through the steps the other way around because a teacher would be here to guide you every step of the way.