Zbrush to max help (high to low poly)

This_Is_Icarus

hi i am taking part in the monthly noob challenge and have previous experience in 3D but the only ever Normal maps i have made and highpolys have been in 3ds max and have only just started trying to use zbrush.

I am having trouble with making a low poly for zbrush as when i import the mesh it need to be quads and evenly distributed where as the low poly i made has triangles and big flat surfaces. so i was looking for help as to how to get a normal map from my zbrush model onto my lowpoly model.

i have tried to open the obj from zbrush but nothing appears only a bounding box? please help
or any links to videos would be greatly appreciated


TL;DR
need help making low poly from zbrush model

cryrid

Hi. Just to clarify, the mesh that you're sculpting on doesn't have to have all quads that are evenly spaced as a necessity, it just helps to have those things in the area that you're sculpting on. If you have a shape modeled that you want to preserve, there are tools inside of zbrush such as Dynamesh which can instantly give you a (mostly) quad mesh with an even density.

The mesh you sculpt on and the final low poly mesh can be two different things. I typically bake using xnormal, but Max might be up for the challenge as well. You may want to decimate your highpoly sculpt before exporting it from zbrush though.

Chase

The beginning part of this video might help clarify what cryrid is talking about...[ame="http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SZX0MpbohEY"]How to Model a Sword for Games pt. 2 - YouTube[/ame]

You want to have an evenly dense mesh to make scultping on the surface more even for lack of a better word. Joe goes into talking about projecting details as well in the beginning part of the video.

This_Is_Icarus

@cryrid
thanks for replying i never thought to see if i can import the lowpoly then use that dynamesh feture to even it out

i did try to open up the exported obj from zbrush in max but it just came up as invisible for some reason and there was no mesh but the same polycount.

@chase
thanks for linking the video i will watch it and am sure it will help im onlu just starting to learn zbrush so have along way to go until im even half decent

cryrid

Perhaps it was just missing a material, or had a bounding box view to prevent it from rendering millions of polygons.

This_Is_Icarus

yer possible i will reimport and take a render to have a look