Zbrush and Maya Pipeline Question

Ren

Hi all,

I'm in the process of creating a dwarf sculpt that I will be turning into a animate-able mesh with textures, and I'm getting a little lost in my workflow. Especially when it comes to when I should have UV's and when I should transfer details from my high poly to my lowpoly mesh. 

Perhaps someone could correct me on my workflow list.

1. Created the dwarf with Dynamesh, sculpting high level details into the sculpt.
2. Use Z-remesh to get an overall automatic low poly version of dwarf.
3. Fix any geometry flow errors in Maya.
4. Bring new low poly mesh back into Z-brush and use UV master to create UV's.
5. Project sculpted details from step one onto new low poly mesh with correct UV's
6. Correct any errors in the detail transfer.
7. Export mesh and bump maps from Z-brush.
8. Connecting all in maya and rigging and skinning from there.

This list seems logical to me, but I'm getting a bit confused when it comes to getting the detail to transfer over properly to the low mesh, do I have to use UV master directly after step 1? Also, when the heck would decimation master fit into here?? or does Zremesher sorta replace that step?

Any help is really appreciated,

Thanks all!

Ged

Firstly is this a character for a game or for a rendered cinematic? If its for a game then you just need to get to step 3 then create uvs (in maya or zbrush) and then bake all the textures from the highpoly to the low poly and texture it nicely. I do my baking in substance designer or xnormal these days. 

Unless you mean the geometry errors in zbrush in step 3 are so bad that you need to retopologise before you can continue adding detail for the bake?

pior

@Ren : You are describing something closer to a preproduction / prototyping workflow (relying on UVMaster and Zremesher for automation). For a real clean ingame model you need much more accuracy and careful crafting.

1 - Start by creating a rough blockout model to establish good proportions. You could even rig and pose that model to make sure that you'll be able to manipulate it later as expected. No need for Zbrush for that - make it light and easy to edit.
2 - Create your highpoly mesh through any means necessary. Not everything has to be sculpted.
3 - Create the clean lowpoly model using either a dedicated retopology tool like Topogun or using built-in geometry tools from your main 3d app. Create your UVs.
4 - Generate all the needed baked maps in xNormal. This alone is a very technical topic, you will find a great deal of info about it here on Polycount. Then move on to texturing.
5 - Final rig and posing, and eventually exporting the model to a game engine.

Now of course the "prototyping" workflow that you described has its place in some specific scenarios. But if your goal is to not only produce art pieces but also be hired by a game studio for your expertise, then you need to show that you can optimize things every step of the way.

And of course for movie work things are indeed different (very different kind of UVs for instance) but I assume that you are interested in game art since you are posting here.

Good luck !

Ren

Ged said:

Firstly is this a character for a game or for a rendered cinematic? If its for a game then you just need to get to step 3 then create uvs (in maya or zbrush) and then bake all the textures from the highpoly to the low poly and texture it nicely. I do my baking in substance designer or xnormal these days. 

Unless you mean the geometry errors in zbrush in step 3 are so bad that you need to retopologise before you can continue adding detail for the bake?

Hi Ged, Thanks for the reply. The character is for game purposes. Pior hits the nail on the head when he says below "relying on UVMaster and Zremesher for automation" These tools are extremely nice, I just really don't know where they should fit into that pipeline list. With that said, im not afraid to get my hands dirty with doing some retopo also.  What I mean geometry errors is actually bad edge flow. For example around the eyes and the mouth of the mesh. Many times I dont get the edge flow I want around those areas, even when using Zremesher Guidlines with curve strength increased. So in step 3, I just correct that edge flow manually in maya.

Ren

PIOR
Thanks for the reply PIOR,

I actually did just that and created the base mesh (superlow poly) in Maya then imported into Zbrush and build up my levels from there and eventually turned on Dynamesh. This is another part I'm a little confused on, my finished sculpt (which I'm happy with now) does not have any UV's, how could I create maps when it doesn't have those UV's? Or would I need to transfer that detail to my new retopo'ed mesh, which would have correct UV's? Or hell should i just create a low poly mesh from my completed sculpt and just redo the sculpted details? (This would be a shame considering having to redo the work, but maybe I should have had UV's set before sculpting? Perhaps a lesson all the same?) 

Any insight is appreciated.

pior

The highpoly sculpt and the low poly model do not need have anything in common (of course they *can*, since in some case the low is also the basemesh for the high,  but that's not necessary). Only the low needs UVs for detail transfer from high (geometry) to low (texture).

The only case when you would need UVs on your high is if you were to transfer texture information for it, but in 99.9% of cases it is not needed.

Practice the whole pipeline on a very simple model first (a smoothed cube for instance). If not you will end up having to backtrack a lot and it will get frustrating.

Ren

pior said:

The highpoly sculpt and the low poly model do not need have to have anything in common (of course they *can*, since in some case the low is also the basemesh for the high,  but that's not necessary). Only the low needs UVs for detail transfer from high (geometry) to low (texture).

The only case when you would need UVs on your high is if you were to transfer texture information for it, but in 99.9% of cases it is not needed.

Practice the whole pipeline on a very simple model first (a smoothed cube for instance). If not you will end up having to backtrack a lot and it will get frustrating.

Awesome, Thanks for the advice PIOR