Rigging a Film-Fidelity, Mutli-Million Poly Character

Brian "Panda" Choi

Hey Polycount:

I have a ZBrush sculpt I want to rig to pose for a 3D print, but I do not know about how to rig a model of several million polygons, with seperate armor piece etc. Is there any special process to this that I need to know about, or is it really just a matter of "can your computer handle the weight?"

arcitecht

Why aren't you using transpose to pose the model? Its kinda time consuming and there will be resculpting, but it seems like the simplest choice for going to 3d printing.

Justin Meisse

I went to a film centric school back in 2000, the process then was you rigged the low poly cage mesh that gets subdivided at render time - everything was done with subd modeling and displacement maps.

edit: what Per said

Brian "Panda" Choi

But how do I pose it so that what I get in the end is something I can send it to say Shapeways? Because I can't send them any maps for a print, usually.

Jason Young

Aye, using transpose in zbrush probably makes the most sense. You could also do a quick retopo job, rig that, and then use something like a wrap deformer to deform the high poly version. Probably a good idea to decimate the mesh as well.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Alright, I'll guess I'll use Transpose's somewhat destructive deformation and fix what I need to fix.

SonicBlue

That's something I was thinking by seeing all those million poly characters posed in ZBrush, the documentation seems to suggest various approach, but without going too much in depth: http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/posing-your-model/

Or: http://pixologic.com/interview/artist-in-action/demo-reel-with-zbrush/3/

But I think what you're looking for (I hope XD) is the Rig method, a video should help:

http://www.3dm3.com/articles/posing-characters-in-zbrush-using-a-zsphere-rig/

Neox

if you are using basemeshes you can always rig these and export the pose to zbrush, you could even import the pose as a morphtarget, making it less destructive.

JohnnyRaptor

you either pose it in zbrush with transpose master, with just move, rotate tool, or you create a zsphere rig.

or

if you have subdivisions on your subtools, you export the lowest subdivision to your rigging software, rig, skin and pose, then export each part out again, and when you import them back on to lvl1 of their corresponding subtool, your subtools will be posed.

If you dont have subdivisions, now its even easier to retopo with zremesher and re-project the details back on.