Need help for Exporting OBJ, Baking Textures, Creating Alpha Hair Maps.
Hello there, I'm new here and I'm not sure if this is the right forum to post this topic. This will be quite a long post, but I seriously need help 
I've been working on a personal project ever since I graduated back in June 2019. I'm trying to create a decent AAA quality recreation of Adam Taurus from RWBY. Yes it may sound very ambitious when I'm aiming for a AAA quality this early since I'm very much a beginner and I only started learning Maya and ZBrush back in 2018 but I'm still trying my best to make an acceptable output for a portfolio since I prefer doing realistic characters. I learned this current skills of mine through watching in YT tutorials, Skillshare tutorials and the 2 Udemy Courses I purchased. This will be my first 3D character for games in my portfolio and I'm in a bit hurry to finish it so I can apply for a job.
So far, my progress is that I have made all the low-poly meshes (Base Body + Garments + Mask + Hair) I needed with high-poly subdivision inside in ZBrush. I have put alpha textures to the garments, not sure what Alpha texture I'll use for the mask though, same for the shoes. I'm yet to learn how to put proper alpha textures for the skin.
I have created the low poly meshes as well for the weapon, Wilt and Blush. I had to put the Scabbard in a Lv. 7 Subdivision to sculpt the Rose symbol in it. Alpha textures are all ready as well for both Scabbard and Sword.
My biggest problem is that I only have a laptop that has low-med end specs. I use both Marmoset Toolbag (Height, Roughness, Metalness etc...) 3 and XNormal (Normals, AO) to generate the maps. I'll be using Photoshop to create the texture designs on the back of Adam's coat, mask, and the piece of cloth beside his hip. I am yet to learn Substance or Mari for additional knowledge of Texturing.
In the past 2 weeks, I've been struggling to bake textures for the weapon (Wilt and Blush) because it's taking too long for me to generate the maps I need and there are times Marmoset crashes and my laptop may freeze at some point. I just started learning to use Marmoset recently this January and I'm not sure if this is how Marmoset works but it feels like it runs very slow for me especially when I try making the cage and fix it, I always thought it'll crash anytime since I often get the message "Not responding" on the application.
(I regret trying to bake them in 4K so this time I'll just stick with 2K).
Another concern of me is that I don't know a proper step by step process of exporting OBJs, and I'm not really sure if I should export the low/high poly models both in triangles or in quads, though I did it in quads at first but this is how I currently do it. I export both low and high poly objects as quads and then I import them first in Maya to create the custom cage I'll use to Xnormals. I import the low/high poly models in Marmoset for baking other maps that wasn't available in XNormals such as Roughness, Metalness, etc. However I only import one low/high poly models at a time when I bake the maps since my laptop can't that many high poly models in Marmoset, otherwise it'll crash or my laptop freezes.
Now another thing I really don't know is that how can I import the low poly models again in Marmoset where it's totally seamless and has soft edge? I just can't get things done in this Texturing process, I'm still stuck on making the texture maps for the weapon (Wilt and Blush) as I used them for testing.
Can anyone give a proper workflow for me to get this texturing part works?
- What's the proper way of exporting and importing OBJ and the correct settings for it?
- Is it ok that I use XNormals for Normal, AO maps since I think it generates faster while my Marmoset takes a lot longer to generate or should I stick with Marmoset?
- is there a way to speed up Marmoset? The problem might be solely for my laptop but I really there's a fix for this problem
I am really desperate, and I need help ASAP to figure all of these.
Lastly, I would really like to know what's the best workflow to create the hairs for this specific character. I need help for creating alpha hair in ZBrush using Fibermesh with a good settings. I want to know what texture maps I should create for the hairs (I plan on doing it in 2K canvas in ZBrush). I plan to do the method of manually hand place the hair cards on Maya.
My laptop specs:
ASUS Zenbook Pro UX501JW
-Intel Core i7 4720HQ 2.6Ghz
-8GB RAM
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4GB
-Windows 10
I've been working on a personal project ever since I graduated back in June 2019. I'm trying to create a decent AAA quality recreation of Adam Taurus from RWBY. Yes it may sound very ambitious when I'm aiming for a AAA quality this early since I'm very much a beginner and I only started learning Maya and ZBrush back in 2018 but I'm still trying my best to make an acceptable output for a portfolio since I prefer doing realistic characters. I learned this current skills of mine through watching in YT tutorials, Skillshare tutorials and the 2 Udemy Courses I purchased. This will be my first 3D character for games in my portfolio and I'm in a bit hurry to finish it so I can apply for a job.
So far, my progress is that I have made all the low-poly meshes (Base Body + Garments + Mask + Hair) I needed with high-poly subdivision inside in ZBrush. I have put alpha textures to the garments, not sure what Alpha texture I'll use for the mask though, same for the shoes. I'm yet to learn how to put proper alpha textures for the skin.
I have created the low poly meshes as well for the weapon, Wilt and Blush. I had to put the Scabbard in a Lv. 7 Subdivision to sculpt the Rose symbol in it. Alpha textures are all ready as well for both Scabbard and Sword.
My biggest problem is that I only have a laptop that has low-med end specs. I use both Marmoset Toolbag (Height, Roughness, Metalness etc...) 3 and XNormal (Normals, AO) to generate the maps. I'll be using Photoshop to create the texture designs on the back of Adam's coat, mask, and the piece of cloth beside his hip. I am yet to learn Substance or Mari for additional knowledge of Texturing.
In the past 2 weeks, I've been struggling to bake textures for the weapon (Wilt and Blush) because it's taking too long for me to generate the maps I need and there are times Marmoset crashes and my laptop may freeze at some point. I just started learning to use Marmoset recently this January and I'm not sure if this is how Marmoset works but it feels like it runs very slow for me especially when I try making the cage and fix it, I always thought it'll crash anytime since I often get the message "Not responding" on the application.
(I regret trying to bake them in 4K so this time I'll just stick with 2K).
Another concern of me is that I don't know a proper step by step process of exporting OBJs, and I'm not really sure if I should export the low/high poly models both in triangles or in quads, though I did it in quads at first but this is how I currently do it. I export both low and high poly objects as quads and then I import them first in Maya to create the custom cage I'll use to Xnormals. I import the low/high poly models in Marmoset for baking other maps that wasn't available in XNormals such as Roughness, Metalness, etc. However I only import one low/high poly models at a time when I bake the maps since my laptop can't that many high poly models in Marmoset, otherwise it'll crash or my laptop freezes.
Now another thing I really don't know is that how can I import the low poly models again in Marmoset where it's totally seamless and has soft edge? I just can't get things done in this Texturing process, I'm still stuck on making the texture maps for the weapon (Wilt and Blush) as I used them for testing.
Can anyone give a proper workflow for me to get this texturing part works?
- What's the proper way of exporting and importing OBJ and the correct settings for it?
- Is it ok that I use XNormals for Normal, AO maps since I think it generates faster while my Marmoset takes a lot longer to generate or should I stick with Marmoset?
- is there a way to speed up Marmoset? The problem might be solely for my laptop but I really there's a fix for this problem
I am really desperate, and I need help ASAP to figure all of these.
Lastly, I would really like to know what's the best workflow to create the hairs for this specific character. I need help for creating alpha hair in ZBrush using Fibermesh with a good settings. I want to know what texture maps I should create for the hairs (I plan on doing it in 2K canvas in ZBrush). I plan to do the method of manually hand place the hair cards on Maya.
My laptop specs:
ASUS Zenbook Pro UX501JW
-Intel Core i7 4720HQ 2.6Ghz
-8GB RAM
-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4GB
-Windows 10