Detailing low poly props in Substance Painter to avoid subdivs in Zbrush?

focus_method

Hey guys,
since im not yet substance painter user im discovering what i can do with it when i become.
I've noticed when making a 3d characters (which is all WIP), in zbrush i push all subtools on to 6 or 7 subdiv level  because of detailing which is huge  load on my computer system if the character has a lot of props and clothes so optimisation is necessary.

So, is substance painter that much powerful that i can do nice details by creating height,bump,normal,displacement maps on my low poly props to create illusions of actual detailed sculpt so i can  avoid those 6 level subdivs detailing in zbrush (which is ,again, huge load on my PC system and it gives me problems, it lags and gives me a headache)?


and  could you recommend some alternatives (if there is) ?
i've heard armor paint and quixel mixer are nice, what do you think of it ?



thanks in advance

Ghogiel

Yes and no.

You can paint normal map details, similar to what you would end up with after sculpting them directly into the high poly and baking it down,  directly into the textures via materials, alphas, brushes, projections etc. You do get a superior and accurate result if you sculpt the detail, and some things are much better off sculpted, but that's not always true, and there are other concerns too.

Things like cloth weaves, some types of scratches and wear/weathering, stiching etc arguably work better painted or done proceedurally in the material work in the case of games anyway. For example it's much harder to decide that your cloth texture as seen in the normal is too noisey and reads badly in that resolution and you get a bit of a moire mess going on, if it's sculpted into the model. You now have to go back to the sculpt, change it and then rebake it.... not just move a slider or add a different number in a material settings.

Zack Maxwell

Adding normal/height details in Painter is good for really fine details that would require an unreasonable amount of subdivision in ZBrush, like a small screw or fabric weave textures.
I tried as a test though to do all the normal detailing in Painter before, aside from the basic bevels and such of course. And the result was not good. Any heavy alterations made in Painter just do not shade remotely well, and look really weird. It's not possible to use it as a replacement for ZBrush.

icegodofhungary

I'm running a i5-4690K, a GTX 970, and 16GB of DDR3 RAM. So I understand having to work around your computer limitations. Though I don't do character work, just environment stuff.

Understand that you don't always have to have an insane polycount in Zbrush to get good bakes. It's tempting to crank up the Sub-Ds until each small part has 10M tris. But there's a point where increasing the Sub-Ds won't get you better details. Let's say you're making a character with a 512x512 texture. You probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between having 6M tris and 1M tris once you bake everything down. When sculpting, you don't have to zoom in really close and add really fine detail to everything. Only add what will make it into the final texture. It's okay if you zoom in really close to your highpoly and you can see some rough polygons. Think of it like pixel art. When you zoom in really close, it's rough and jagged. When you zoom out, it appears smooth. Of course you won't be baking current gen character textures at 512, but you still can finesse the tri count in zbrush to keep good detail without going overboard.

When you're using both Painter and Zbrush, just focus on macro detail. Painter can do the microdetails. For example, when I do bricks in Zbrush, I would do the large chips and cracks. But then I would leave the fine detail like the porous surface to Painter.

Another thing that helps is to keep evenly dense topology. If you're importing a base mesh into zbrush, try to make sure the polycount isn't only concentrated at the edges. If you only have a bunch of support geo at the character's elbows, but no support loops on the forearm or bicep, then when you Sub-D in zbrush, there will be fewer polygons to pick up detail in those places. This goes for the little items on a character too such as armor or clothing. Keeping the distribution of tris even will help ensure you pick up details evenly everywhere.

If you're creating a character entirely in Zbrush, then using the Dynamesh tool can help. It re topologizes your mesh to have more even geo. It keeps tris distributed evenly.

Worst comes to worst, break up your character model into parts and sculpt each one. Or sculpt a base mesh and then build it in parts of that. Bake them separately. It sucks to have to collate the textures afterward but you can use Material IDs to generate a mask for combining layers in a photo editing program.

It sucks to have to learn how to work around your slow computer, but it's good practice for problem solving and will make you stronger.

melviso

I think its high time we have a software that allows handpainting of height/bump maps instead of sculpting. This would save a lot of time, especially eliminating the need for high poly sculpts, retopology. I don't know why more research isn't done towards this. Also the requirements for high end computers to handle high polycount would no longer be a thing.

The issue here is painting organic height/bump maps. Bump maps can be converted to normal/displacement maps I have tried this in Blender, you can paint the different levels of a bump using grayscale but you can't smoothen or blend between the vaules, it would look very wrong. We need some sort of smooth brush that smoothens details exactly like in sculpting programs to create organic surfaces. If a software like that gets released where you can paint very accurate organic bump/height maps using pixels instead of subdivisions. Sculpting softwares would be done for. All you need to do, is create a low poly of your character, handpaint all the height/bump maps, generate the normals, curvature, displacement etc from that, that would be way easier and can be done on low end computers.

With all the technological advancements we have made in 3d, I wonder why this isn't a thing.

poopipe

What you're describing is a shit version of zbrush so yes, it's a thing

Alex_J

How prevalent is zbrush across game industry art departments? Anybody have an idea? 

Granted, I only make shitty indie games and I am moving away from realistic graphics, but I've made probably 100 unique characters in the past two years and majority of them I rarely open zbrush. If I do it's just for a quick pass at adding some secondary anatomy details. But 95% of the work is maya > substance painter, thats it. 

From xyz and others you got all the skin detail you need. For character work, as least the type I am doing these days, I just dont often find a need for zbrush as primary and most secondary forms are easier to do just by tweaking verts on a base mesh in regular DCC. 

Like, I understand the guys who specialize and are making top end characters for the industry leading companies is a whole different level, but if I was hiring a few artist to help me I would advise them not to be be spending too much time detailing in zbrush. Seems like a time/money sink.

poopipe

Almost everyone uses it

As you say, it can be a massive waste of time and resources if misused, fortunately most art departments have established guidelines and working processes that minimise fuckery

melviso

Not almost everyone, most artist don't use zbrush anymore, especially with substance designer and painter, megascans, quixel have become 'a thing'. Zbrush nowadays seems to be used mostly for character art. Blender is also being used more now for sculpting as well.

And I don't see it as as a shit version if you can create details without subdividing meshes to high amounts and using high end computers imho.

DavidCruz

Detailing low poly props to avoid subdivs in Zbrush?

In your application you can subdivide (give a higher look, export bake) then add the micro details in painter, profit?
Bobotheseal way back when put all of us on a neat trick in max by just using smoothing groups and the subdivider to avoid zbrush subdivisions, i still use it, i'll edit post with info if i can find it, atm to lazy to make a quick example. (edit it is basically the you are making me hard thread)

poopipe

melviso said:

Not almost everyone, most artist don't use zbrush anymore, especially with substance designer and painter, megascans, quixel have become 'a thing'. Zbrush nowadays seems to be used mostly for character art. Blender is also being used more now for sculpting as well.

And I don't see it as as a shit version if you can create details without subdividing meshes to high amounts and using high end computers imho.

 That's just not true - I can tell because I see it in regular use by artists across most disciplines every day, just like I have done for years. It's not a small sample size of studios or artists either.

Re shit zbrush. 
You described 1dimensional height painting which is less good than zbrush because...
You can only displace along normals.
Anything that works in UV space is limited by texel size 

melviso

poopipe said:

 That's just not true - I can tell because I see it in regular use by artists across most disciplines every day, just like I have done for years. It's not a small sample size of studios or artists either.

Re shit zbrush. 
You described 1dimensional height painting which is less good than zbrush because...
You can only displace along normals.
Anything that works in UV space is limited by texel size 

You are entitled to your opinion. Lets stay on topic and not  digress away from the op's purpose of the thread.
@focus_method I havent tried Armor paint but quixel mixer isn't that bad especially if you are using ue4 with megascans which is free if you are using ue4.
You can paint displacement maps in quixel using brushes to a degree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt78oTprWjY
But as suggested earlier on the thread, probably use sculpting for large details and quixel/painter for smaller details that require high subdivision to get those. 

Hopefully in future, more development is made to improve painting height/normal/bump maps in quixel mixer or painter that gives very good results.