Zbrush 4r7 - How to soften hard edges on low-poly?

Judgement45

Hello,

So I have a rifle model with some of my problem areas circled (many problem areas this is just the ones I'm on right now):



The issue I'm trying to fix is the hard edges better visible here: 


Subdividing the model gets rid of these hard edges which is expected, but is there a way to soften them on the low-poly or did I just do a poor job of modeling the shape? The goal is to import this into a game at some point once it's polypainted. My plan is to Subd > polypaint > export diffuse and normal. 

It seems that even with a normal map and diffuse map the applied to the low-poly model it still looks to jagged instead of smooth. Any suggestions are very much appreciated. 

ahtiandr

I think zbrush does not have smoothing normals visualisation in real time. When you subdivide your mesh in zbrush it looks smooth because there are a lot of new polygons added. however, you can render with smooth normals. This feature should be in rendering options

cromadbomber

Use FBX export plugin and check Smooth edges. Load it in your other 3D app and see if there are still some edges that need to be fixed.

SebastianBielecki

If you want to import it into the game then that Low poly version should be good. If you want to have them smooth open it in 3ds max or maya or whatever and set the same smoothing group or unify normals.

cryrid

ahtiandr said:

I think zbrush does not have smoothing normals visualisation in real time. When you subdivide your mesh in zbrush it looks smooth because there are a lot of new polygons added. however, you can render with smooth normals. This feature should be in rendering options

This is correct. Zbrush does not use vertex normals to do its smoothing and doesn't use standard 3d shaders like most programs since the model isn't in a 3d environment (no camera, no lights, etc). Low poly models will look faceted, and only appear smoother at higher subdivision levels since the new polygons (while still faceted) eventually become too small for your eyes to notice the difference. 

This is purely a zbrush thing, and shouldn't affect how the model appears in any other program. 

If you baked your maps in zbrush  (I wouldn't.... )  then I would recommend checking the textures and UVs; especially if the model is coming from 3dsMax, as there is a tendency between these two programs to detach every UV and flip them individually which can lead to noticeable faceting in the result. Otherwise I would recommend baking your maps in a program like xnormal where you can control the vertex normals of the lowpoly model, specify the tangent basis, use higher padding values, etc. 

kmacneil91

Are you playing with sliders in dynamic subdivision? What about polishing?