Help taking model from zbrush to vrchat

HallowsHumour

I cannot for the life of me get this thing out of Zbrush. I've put my unity models into VRchat before, but this thing is way higher poly, like 3mil. and I cant even get it into blender without blender crashing (understandable id crash too). Ive been trying everything for like 2 days now, following tutorials but it seems pretty hopeless and I'm exhausted.

Would anyone be able to take my stupid probably a little busted model (it was my first go in the program) and help me get it out of zbrush? Hopefully with the textures I polypainted and not too much quality drop so I can bake the thing onto a 7000(or less) poly model ready for rigging and vrchat. Possibly explain what you did? So I can learn what mistakes I made and how to avoid them next time I try this.

i am at my wits end. Ill even pay money for your time at this point.
Thanks.

BagelHero

Do you already have the low poly made? Can't quite tell from your post, usually you have to retopologise Zbrush sculpts. But also, you don't seem to have done anything wrong so far haha. I think your comp/blender might just be struggling w/ the weight of the sculpt.

If you upload the file I'm sure someone can take a look, or like... This shouldn't take too long so I guess feel free to DM the link to me if you'd rather not post publicly? OBJ or zbrush files or both

pior

So just to be clear : your problem here is that your high is too dense to be manipluated outside of Zbrush ?

There are two ways around that.

- You either do your whole retopo stage using an app that is optimized to load very highpoly models as surfacereference. That'd be Topogun. Max comes second in that regard (as it is quite fast when it comes to importing highpoly meshes, and handles them well) ; Maya third ; and Blender comes dead last unfortunately, as its OBJ/FBX importers are not optimized. Importing raw highres sculpt data in it is basically impossible.

You might also be able to load the high in Meshlab and reduce there.

- Or, the other obvious approach is to just make your sculpt more lightweight directly in Zbrush. The software has many tools dedicated to just that (Dynamesh, Zremesher, Decimation master, and so on). You just need to learn how to use them.

(Your post title is needlessly confusing BTW. VRchat has absolutely nothing to do with your problem, since your goal is just to get your high into Blender - and VRchat will only ever see your 7000tris model, nothing else.)

On a side note : considering the technical specs of VRchat, the time spent sculpting a highres model in Zbrush was probably a waste in the first place as the visual look of VRchat is such that models receive barely any surface shading. You're very likely be better off just using Zbrush as a sketching tool, and spending most of your time doing the actual polygon modeling for the real game model.

kanga

That isn't very helpful. Polycount doesn't delete posts as it may help those who have a similar problem. The polite thing to do is post the solution that helped you.

Eric Chadwick

Restored the OP, hope you don't mind. Would you be willing to reply with the solution you learned elsewhere?

HallowsHumour

I'm so sorry, I only just saw these replies. Absolutely new and unfamiliar with this place so I'm extremely sorry for not checking the rules.

I've since found a fine way to fix the polycount issue I had this first go: Splitting it into multiple subtools and using the zplugin "decimation master" on each subtool (thanks to bagelhero ^ for this advice in dms, they really helped put things simply for a beginner / idiot like me). It lets you choose an approximate percentage of polycount to get it to, so you can prioritise extra polygons for subtools that need it. It REALLY helps get things low enough to export and doesn't sacrifice too much quality if done carefully. But the ideal solution is completely retopologizing the piece / part of the piece (the face usually) manually, using your original sculpt as more of a "reference". It's a lot to do and can be very time consuming but its better to start early as it's the only real way to go if you want a finished looking final product. I learned how from some youtube tutorials and friends I met who do modelling!

I was completely new to zbrush modelling when I made this post, I didn't understand the terms people were using for the most part so I was embarrassed after when it was a such an obvious answer. Again thanks to bagelhero for being so patient and understanding with me. This particular issue and my lack of understanding almost made me quit modelling entirely, I'm still learning but I've had so much better luck with modelling since my talk with them.