Best approach for furniture?

Fogbrain

Hey guys, I've been learning ZBrush over the holidays, so I'm still pretty noob at it, but I usually model in Maya 2013.

I have to do a high to low poly set of furniture and I'm wondering what the best approach would be to this.

Should I create a base mesh in Maya and import that into ZBrush or create the high poly from scratch in ZBrush and import back to Maya to bake and do the low poly.




Here's what I've cooked up so far in ZBrush just to get the basic shape, which still isn't finished because I am unsure if I'm approaching this in the best way.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Depends on what you're making.

If you're going to do something efficient and relatively modern like IKEA furniture typically is, stick to Maya mostly and dump it into ZBrush if you need to do details or specific weird shapes.

If you're going to do sculpture-complicated furniture, I'd say dirty rough sculpt in ZBrush with Dynammesh, and retopo for a clean HP.

Fogbrain

It's a simple chair similar to chairs in medievil type games like in skyrim and such. So it'll be all wooden and worn out.

So yeah I was thinking Maya could handle the base for that and dump it into ZBrush for all the details in the wood and stuff.

Polygoblin

Yes, you're going to want to do the majority of the high poly modeling in Maya, and then bring it into ZBrush for a damage pass after modeling. There are ways to model hard surface things like this in ZBrush, but if you're just starting out in the program, I wouldn't suggest trying just yet.

Fogbrain

Awesome, I'll probably post again with a WIP on the high poly chair in Maya, and see if there's any feedback on my shit work :P.