Workflow Help

TD_100

Hey i am currently creating a character with multiple sub-tools most with quite high poly count for all the details. (this is all done in zbrush)

I was wondering what would be the best next step when retopologizing everything. If i group it all then its so big that i cant retopo easily, should i do it all separately and then combine them?

For example if the demo solider had a lot more detail how would you go about making it suitable for a game?

Thanks alot
Thomas

Alex_J

First, save your subtool as is with all the subdivision levels. Give it an appropriate name.

Second, export the lowest subdivision levels. In tool>subtool you can hit "all low" and then use fbx export in the plugin pallete and export all visible subtools.

Third, put all subtools back to your highest levels. If it's not more than 1-2 million, you can probably export them as is. Depepnds on your machine. Otherwise, go through each subtool and use decimation master to reduce them as far as possible before losing your detail.

Export these visible subtools and called it "decimated____"

The low meshes are what you will begin your game mesh from. The decimated meshes are what you will use to build your new game mesh over. Using maya quad draw or topogun or whatever you'll use.

Open up the low and the decimated fbxs in your 3d app and just do your typical retopology. If you got a potato maybe you can only do a few meshes at a time, export them, and then bring the others in. Lots of methods to increase performance so just do a little research if you need to. That will depend on your program and you machine so I won't go into specifics there.

When you got the new game res mesh ready, how you combine the different meshes really depends on what you are doing next. If you are texturing in substance painter, it probably makes sense to combine them all so you can see the whole thign as you tetxture. Then if you are going into a game engine, it may make sense to have certain parts of the mesh separate if they are like a modular part that sometimes should be disabled. Really just depends on tons of factors. Just get in the habit of not overwriting things. Save out all your milestones and give them descriptive names. Doesn't matter how bad you break shit if you can just revert back to a previous version.  So for instance you may have "character A combined mesh game res.fbx" "character A head only low.fbx" "character A combined mesh decimated.fbx", "character A combined mesh Tri's for baking.fbx" and so on. If you are working alone you just need to make sure that you understand the names a month later. If you are part of a team, you need to have a talk and settle on naming conventions early, and not deviate from them unless you have another talk and agree on changing the standard.

Don't try to understand it all before starting. Easiest way to learn is just by doing. Make mistakes and don't freak when you got to do things over. Eventually you'll get to a point that there isn't really any mistakes you can't recover from and you'll be able to adapt new workflows on the fly. But you got to just jump in the fire and try things out.