Question about hard surface in zbrush

swarmedia83

My question stemmed from this video [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MgxvduzA8s"]Epic Games and ZBrush at SIGGRAPH 2013 - Part Two - YouTube[/ame]

Its from siggraph of this year during Epic games' presentation. The artist showcased his backpack work flow for gears of war judgement. Im really interested to learn his workflow because hard surface is my Achilles heal. I can concept it, but adding those fine detailed panels confuse me because i just cant grasp which way to do it.

I know theres panel loops (which ive viewed every tut on), and theres group loops. He mentioned a work flow in which he concepts, retopos, the splits the retopo'd version into the panels somehow.

If anyone has seen this (or cares to watch it) do you know what technique he could have used? Thanks in advance for any advice.

cryrid

He starts with using the topology brush to draw in his custom topology over top of the mesh.

With this you have the option to split your retopology up by focusing on one panel at a time and adding thickness to the extraction similar to what Nicolas Garilhe does in his beta testing thread (he was using the older zsphere retoplogy method at the time; the topology brush uses the brush size to determine the thickness of the resulting topology instead of a dedicated thickness slider).

In the case of Mke Kime's demo, it looks like he retopologizes the entire thing in one go, making sure to have his edges flow along the edges of each panel. He then exports that mesh out to Max or some other 3d program (based on the gizmo in the screen shot). I'm taking a complete guess here as I'm not familiar with Max, but I'm guessing he either:
a) disconnects each panel, uses the shell modifier to turn each panel into a full volume, and then chamfers the edges so that he gets a nice bevel while letting the mesh retain its shape during subdivision.
b) merely selects the edges along the panels, chamfers them, and shells the entire thing so that it's one object/volume.

B seems likely to me in this case, since the topology flows nicely across the entire shape. The fourth step would then involve adding in some control loops before sending it back to zbrush for the minor detailing.

If you were looking for a 100% zbrush solution, you could either treat every panel individually like Nicolas, or you could start your setup similar to Mike. Instead of exporting the mesh out after using the topology brush, instead use polygroups to distinguish each panel. From there you'll likely want to add some Panel loops for the chamfer (play around with the settings here; you'll probably want 1 loop, polish off, regroup loops on, a custom bevel curve, and whatever other settings give you the desired bevel). Once that's done, you should still have nice topology with everything properly grouped, allowing you to quickly add standard edge loops or polygroup-based crease tags to act as control edges.

swarmedia83

Hm, yea it did seem from looking at the screen shot he took it to another 3d package. That being Max cause of the way the image looked. I dont have Max how would the process go if it were in maya?