[Zbrush] Retopo and "finishing" a concept sculpt

krailyx

Hey guys, sorry if this is the wrong section but I don't know where else to post this.  I'm currently working on this concept sculpt in zbrush and can't quite figure out how to "finish" a sculpt like this.  I get everything up through the whole dynamesh and concepting stage and I'm unsure how to proceed to produce a finished model.  My end goal for this is to create a finalized high and low res mesh for normal/displacement map baking to use in Maya.  

My first attempt to bring my concept sculpt to a more finished product was doing retopo with zspheres, which turned out alright.  However after doing this retopo and some creasing with zmodeler to get those clean edges, the result is lacking a lot of the cuts and panels that made up the concept sculpt.  I could always project this retopo'd version onto the concept-dynamesh but the result would probably be pretty muddy.

How can I go about bringing my concept sculpt in dynamesh to a proper high and low res version without losing these features?


The one on the left is the dynamesh concept and the one on the right is the subdivided retopo w/ creasing.  I know that right off the bat it wouldn't retain the cuts and inset portions of the original but I feel like adding those back in by hand would lose a lot of the clean-machined look of it.

musashidan

The simple answer is retopo the silhouette/main forms and shapes (which you've almost done) and bake the details. There really isn't any more to it than that. Also, breaking off pieces separately in the retop is going to give much better results with most hard surface models. Think about funtionality. is it a robot? is it a helmet? Is it composed of multiple materials? What is its purpose? Is it going to be animated? Do parts detach/hinge?

krailyx

musashidan said:

The simple answer is retopo the silhouette/main forms and shapes (which you've almost done) and bake the details. There really isn't any more to it than that. Also, breaking off pieces separately in the retop is going to give much better results with most hard surface models. Think about funtionality. is it a robot? is it a helmet? Is it composed of multiple materials? What is its purpose? Is it going to be animated? Do parts detach/hinge?

When you say to bake the details in do you mean to use the concept sculpt onto the retopo for baking details?  My concern is that since its just a rough dynamesh sculpt that baking from it will bake the muddy unrefined details of the concept sculpt onto the finished model.  I guess I'm just not certain if I should take the dynamesh sculpt from just a rough concept sculpt to something cleaned up and finished to use for baking, or if i should use the retopo with subD to create the cleaned and finished model to bake back onto the low poly.

Heres the retopo I've done so far with zspheres.  Its not animated, its just a static object to be textured so I'm not concerned about the godawful topology and various tri's.  Its just going to be textured and rendered in Maya/Arnold.

kanga

The model would look ok at a distance, but closeup it needs more work. You can use a dynamesh to bake, if it gives you the finish you need. Retopology makes it easier for you to add detail and refinement, because at a certain sub level its: go with the flow. So we dont know what LOD you need. Just for cleanup tho you can do either, increase the dino or retopo  so you get more detail with less polys. It just depends.