Retopology workflow question

Adrian

Hi guys,

I'm unsure about the workflow for producing an animatable character using zbrush and Maya.

The way I used to do it was:
sculpt a base in zbrush > retopo in maya (modelling toolkit) > UV retopo'd geo > sculpt over the new geometry in Zbrush (discard old sculpt) > displacement maps

But this process takes long and it seems excessive to have to sculpt the same thing twice in zbrush.

Is it possible to initially create a really high poly, detailed sculpt in zbrush (using zsphere 'basemesh'), then somehow retopologise and apply the initial high poly sculpt to the new mesh? But how if the sculpt has no uvs?

So it would look like this:
zsphere armature > sculpt highly detailed model in zbrush > retopo in maya > uv the new geo > apply the initial detailed sculpt to the geo as displacement map.

Would really appreciate you help. Cheers!

Count Vertsalot

Yeah, why are you doing it twice? What I do is get to a point in Zbrush where I know there won't be any major changes, then I retopo, then I bring that retopo'd mesh back into Zbrush and then reproject the original sculpt back onto it while I step up in resolution one step at a time and reproject at each step until I'm happy with the results. Then I finally fix anything that went bad with the reprojection and add any other fine details that won't change the silhouette of the model so I don't have to start over.

You don't need to use maps until you're baking normals and whatnot. Just reproject the details one step up of resolution at a time until you're satisfied. Then just make a copy of the subtool and decimate the highest division and use that to bake maps on the lowest division in whatever app you choose.

Adrian

Count Vertsalot wrote: »

Yeah, why are you doing it twice? What I do is get to a point in Zbrush where I know there won't be any major changes, then I retopo, then I bring that retopo'd mesh back into Zbrush and then reproject the original sculpt back onto it while I step up in resolution one step at a time and reproject at each step until I'm happy with the results. Then I finally fix anything that went bad with the reprojection and add any other fine details that won't change the silhouette of the model so I don't have to start over.

You don't need to use maps until you're baking normals and whatnot. Just reproject the details one step up of resolution at a time until you're satisfied. Then just make a copy of the subtool and decimate the highest division and use that to bake maps on the lowest division in whatever app you choose.

Ok great man thanks, I'm glad that's possible cause it'll save me plenty of time! Is that all there is to it or are there some features or steps I need to know in between? I've never projected details in zbrush but it's probably easier than it sounds.

So once I have that projected can I create a displacement map from that in zbrush's Multi Map Exporter? The plan is to create a displacement map and render in Vray.

Count Vertsalot

As long as you have multiple subdivs and UVs you can create any map you want. Just go to the lowest subdiv and click away.