Smoothing problems in ZBrush

Superliminal

Hey Polycount. I just began a prop that I'm planning on sculpting in Zbrush to bake out some normals. This is my first time creating an asset with this process, so I'm a little confused as where to begin.

The problem I'm having is that when I bring my mesh into Zbrush (which is comprised of multiple un-welded geometry), it doesn't divide in a way that I was hoping for.

Here's what it looks like when directly out of Maya. Obviously it needs to be divided a few times before I can do any sculpting.


Here's what happens when I divide. Some of the un-welded parts lose their silhouette and are smoothed in areas where it should have a hard edge. I've tried a combination of creasing, smoothing, polishing, and dynamesh in zbrush; all which have given me undesirable results.


I've begun to remodel the gas can in sub division mode to compensate, but I'm curious if there's a better way to get the same results.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

DireWolf

Disable that orange "Smt" (Smooth) button before you divide.

Bartalon

If you want some parts of your mesh to smooth but not others, you may want to set up creased edges before subdividing. It would be easier to crease edges in Maya than to fiddle with isolating/unisolating dozens of times in ZBrush (you can send over crease data in Maya with the GoZ app bridge).

Neox

Bartalon wrote: »

If you want some parts of your mesh to smooth but not others, you may want to set up creased edges before subdividing. It would be easier to crease edges in Maya than to fiddle with isolating/unisolating dozens of times in ZBrush (you can send over crease data in Maya with the GoZ app bridge).

pretty much this, but realy. what did you expect it to look like andhow does it look if you hit 3 in maya on that geo? the result should be the same. Your geometry is just not prepared for subdivision

Superliminal

Neox wrote: »

pretty much this, but realy. what did you expect it to look like andhow does it look if you hit 3 in maya on that geo? the result should be the same. Your geometry is just not prepared for subdivision

Thank's for this. I'll make another revision of the geometry and crease/divide each peace individually as Bartalon suggested.

Superliminal

I did a revision on the geometry and I'm happy with how everything is dividing and smoothing now. I started sculpting some of the rust in but it raises a few more questions. Up until this point, all the rendering I've done has been in UE3. I know for UE3 you want to exaggerate your normals a bit to help the readability. I'm curious how you would go about this for PBR though. Here's a picture of the current sculpt as well as the reference image. I would like to get this looking as close to the reference as possible.

So my question is should I make the rust layer more subtle for PBR to better match the reference, or is it still a good practice to exaggerate details like this?

I also have a feeling I should add another layer of divisions and start over. What do you fine people think?

SuperFranky

I think rust is something that can be easily added in photoshop, instead of sculpting it like that. Just paint the rust, make it into a height map and turn it into normal detail with nvidia filter or use Crazybump