IMPROVE WORKFLOW - CHARACTER ARTIST

BittaSingh

Hello Everybody ,   i need some help  to improve my workflow for character modelling .  i mainly work in zbrush , maya  and substance painter . i will write down  my  workflow   and  then the problems i face  .  if you can help with any of these problems it will be very  helpful  . so  

1 - ( CONCEPT )   so i start by collecting some reference images   for what i want  to make   and start it in zbrush .  i try to get as much details  as possible in this stage only  using dynamesh .   usually i have many subtools   but not crazy high  just around 10 - 15  . once base is finalized i decimate   the meshes and export  them . 

2 -  ( RETOPOLOGY )  so  now i import these decimated meshes in maya  and retopo them using quad draw . i also use  topogun   and  zbrush's  zremesher   sometimes  , depends on the mesh . 

3 - ( UVs )  after retopology i  use maya to make uvs  using uv toolkit  .  i almost  always make multiple UDIMs   . Then I export all the meshes   with uvs  to reproject details in zbrush again . and also save the maya file .

4 - ( REPROJECT DETAILS )   import back all the new meshes  with uvs and proper topology   to  zbrush  and divide them    and project the details back on new meshes .

5 - ( SUPER DETAILING ) now i give all those little little details  like skin pores  , cloth seams and other high end details  .  

6 - ( POLYPAINT )  so this is tricky , i polypaint  to make color id map , which i can use in substance painter .  

7 - ( EXPORT )  now i will export  all the meshes  again both as low and high poly . for high poly  i first decimate them  then export . 

8 - ( RENAME IN MAYA ) import all low and  high poly meshes in maya  and rename them  properly  and use suffix ( _ low and _ high ) . this is done for  sp  .  combine all the low meshes and export them as single object . i use to do same thing with high poly  , but that is not necessary   as i can import multiple meshes  for baking   as long as naming is proper ( i recently find this out  , before that i use to combine the high mesh too , which almost always resulted in maya crashing and  freezing and  wasting my time , which was the main reason i  wrote  this ) .

9 - (  TEXTURE IN SP )  then i import  low mesh  in substance painter    bake   all the maps     and  texture it  too . export all maps  . ( below is not a very good result  , hope this time  i'll make good one )

10 - ( WORK IN MAYA )  in this last step i would  import  and apply the  maps we made in  sp .   and MAKE HAIRS IN XGEN . then render in arnold .  ( below   pic  not rendered in arnold . this is iray  render . this time  i'll render in arnold . )


PROBLEMS  


1 -  ( RETOPOED MESH  CHANGE SIZE )  so this i the first problem i often get . i don't know why   but  when i import the low poly mesh with uvs  that i had made in maya   , its size is reduced . and  weirdly  , some time just re importing it solves the problem   but mostly i have  to export it quite a few time   again from maya and re import in zbrush to get the correct size .  i you know why this happens    please  help .

2 - ( IMPORTING HIGH POLY MESH IN MAYA ) so this problem had wasted so much of my time  because i used to think  i can only use single combined  mesh  as base high mesh for baking  , now i know  i can use seperate  objects  too .   thanks @pmiller001 . but i still have some baking problems  , that ill describe below . 

3 - ( UVS PROBLEM )    don't know why  when i export the high poly mesh from zbrush and import in maya  it  have some trillions of seams . almost like it separates all the polygons , but this generally happens to objects that are duplicated and mirrored . 

4 - (SP  PROBLEMS ) firstly  i am quite new to sp . it  is a wonderful and easy  software  i think  ,  but still you need to study some concepts and things in it for best results  , like masking  and layers they are not that difficult , we all know  photoshop , it is quite familiar .  so my problem here is  when i bake using  match by name   it gives weird results  ( see image below ) i dont know what am doing wrong here   , i mean  when  i use match by always   results  looks still better  ( but those obvious  problems  i do get   because of overlapping and all ) but match by naming  is not working for me . please i need help in this .

5 - ( MAYA PROBLEMS )    

( multiple UDIMS )  so i dont no  what i was doing wrong but  earlier i was working on a project and i could not  load   textures on all udims automatically . ( like you set one map and all other maps will be automatically   loaded )  this  did not worked for me  . had to set all udims manually .

( XGEN PROBLEMS ) xgen is  super cool for  making hairs   but it kinda  gave me below result  when i tried to render using arnold . 

 so these are some problems iam getting   hope to get some solutions  and  help,i know this got too long  but i hope  this would help  others  too  .  right now i am working on this model 

 http://polycount.com/discussion/196704/cw-flash-barry-allen-sculpt#latest 

  and  needed  some help regarding it . please feel free to check and give your crits  on it  . Thank You .

BittaSingh

ok , i  found out exporting as fbx is better  than obj , when exporting high poly meshes with polypaint data and also other datas  like names groups etc . so  when exporting high meshes for  baking this is good . it worked for me . 

D_Choi

I'm not an expert but I make characters and use same tools. I faced some of similar issues you have If im not misunderstanding, correct me if im getting it wrong for when Zbrush export objects with faces detached each other, turn off Grp option in Tool - Export setting. And for baking, I had hard time to find right tool for satisfying outcome for very long time. My suggestion is to use Marmoset or Max's RTT. I'm not a Max user but sometime there is some tools in Max work better than maya, RTT is one of them. I can control cage, check ray miss and correct it very easily. Marmoset does mostly same and faster job so my first attempt is marmoset, but in some situation I have to go Max ( for example, bake other object's normal map to other low poly model). Oh, one good thing about baking in Marmoset is I can put 10M poly and it does the job, so not really have to decimate high poly most of the time.

BittaSingh

D_Choi said:

I'm not an expert but I make characters and use same tools. I faced some of similar issues you have If im not misunderstanding, correct me if im getting it wrong for when Zbrush export objects with faces detached each other, turn off Grp option in Tool - Export setting. And for baking, I had hard time to find right tool for satisfying outcome for very long time. My suggestion is to use Marmoset or Max's RTT. I'm not a Max user but sometime there is some tools in Max work better than maya, RTT is one of them. I can control cage, check ray miss and correct it very easily. Marmoset does mostly same and faster job so my first attempt is marmoset, but in some situation I have to go Max ( for example, bake other object's normal map to other low poly model). Oh, one good thing about baking in Marmoset is I can put 10M poly and it does the job, so not really have to decimate high poly most of the time.

yes turning off  Grp worked for me , you are right . and i have never used marmoset  i ll check it , but  right now iam learning substance painter , it is also a very powerful software . and  i dont like working in max , i think ive forgotten to use  it . . i have solved baking errors i was getting  with fbx export .  now  ill see what else i get . hope to get a good result  out of it . 

BittaSingh

also do you use arnold ? what is your rendering workflow ? i want to learn arnold , but last time it did not worked , this time  i want to crack  it .  

BittaSingh

ok so  someone send me this very informative link for texture baking . it is so good . please have a look at it . 
 http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_Baking

BittaSingh

yeeee... so i crack the match by name bake  and did  it successfully  .  thank you for your help guys  .

BUT as you can see the error below , it did not pick the vertex color i assigned to high poly meshes , i researched  and found  out that  when exporting it to fbx i have to make sure  that  all vertex have color , like even the white color  has to be painted . so i checked it again  and i am pretty sure there is no vertex without color , but still am not getting any color  . plus  my third  udim  which is of face and half mask  is black . like this  and others are blank . here is a curvature map too if that helps . if iam doing something wrong  please tell me . 

D_Choi

BittaSingh said:

D_Choi said:

I'm not an expert but I make characters and use same tools. I faced some of similar issues you have If im not misunderstanding, correct me if im getting it wrong for when Zbrush export objects with faces detached each other, turn off Grp option in Tool - Export setting. And for baking, I had hard time to find right tool for satisfying outcome for very long time. My suggestion is to use Marmoset or Max's RTT. I'm not a Max user but sometime there is some tools in Max work better than maya, RTT is one of them. I can control cage, check ray miss and correct it very easily. Marmoset does mostly same and faster job so my first attempt is marmoset, but in some situation I have to go Max ( for example, bake other object's normal map to other low poly model). Oh, one good thing about baking in Marmoset is I can put 10M poly and it does the job, so not really have to decimate high poly most of the time.

yes turning off  Grp worked for me , you are right . and i have never used marmoset  i ll check it , but  right now iam learning substance painter , it is also a very powerful software . and  i dont like working in max , i think ive forgotten to use  it . . i have solved baking errors i was getting  with fbx export .  now  ill see what else i get . hope to get a good result  out of it . 

Wish I could be help you with substance painter baking but I don't know much of that process. I tried it couple of time but for me just explode mesh and control cage directly always works better. Me as well can't use Max other than RTT but I highly recommend to try it sometime as it saved me in many cases. but I guess the best method is whatever you feel comfortable with  
I guess you try use vertex color to get ID map, I feel bad cuz I can't give you any suggestion in SP but I know I can get ID pretty easy in Marmoset by assigning color material on each mesh and bake diffuse. If you don't like Max, Marmoset baking is super easy, I think I didn't even watched tutorial and figured it out in just few clicks.
 I also learned that almost every time either small or big, some issues is better to fix in Photoshop rather than find perfect bake setting. 

BittaSingh

@D_Choi thank you for the info  , i will  surely try these  tools . plus i always wanted to see how powerful marmoset is  , i will try that too .

BittaSingh

so apparently  what i was doing wrong was  i was not changing id source to vertex color  . now its picking the color  .  thanks for the help @pmiller001