Preparing your model for Zbrush goodness

Striff

Hey guys, I have recently dived into the world of Zbrush, and am having a pretty ok time with it so far. The one problem I seem to be having is preparing a model in Maya to bring into Zbrush. The problem with this is dividing your model in Maya so that it divides well in Zbrush. Every time I end up dividing things in Zbrush, with smrt turned off, I get jagged faces that when sculpted, turn out jagged as well.

Working on mostly environmental pieces, the meshflow of my models in Maya don't seem to work well with Zbrush. What is the best way to divide your model in Maya so that it divides well in Zbrush, so you are able to paint in details? Ive heard that squares work well, but with some models that I make it seems hard to divide them into square pieces. Here is an example.

This is part of a sci-fi door I am working on. I created it using the create polygon tool in Maya and extruded the edges :


Here is a paintover I did to show my train of thought on creating something that might work. It is probaly way wrong, but I wanted to take a stab at it.




Would anyone be able to guide me in the right direction on how to approach modeling objects in Maya the correct way in order to bring them into Zbrush?

Thanks guys.

Mongrelman

Generally the best way is to make your mesh entirely quads, trying to keep them fairly square, and as uniform in size though the mesh as possible.

From you paintover you seem to have a lot of ngons and a few triangles, wich are probably what is causing the smoothing problems when you are subdividing in zbrush.

oXYnary

If your trying to add surface detail to large surface areas like that.. have you thought about just using nvidas photoshop plugin for normal maps to create your own?


(Yes, Im just taking a stab as to your purpose)

MoP

I think oXYnary is right here ... what were you planning on taking this into ZBrush for? Just adding wear and tear and scratches?

It's way more effort to actually properly quadrangulate something like this model you have, and get it into ZBrush nicely, than it is to just do a UV-map and paint in greyscale or use textures as a base for wear and tear, scratches and dents and stuff.

For mechanical stuff, especially complex mechanical shapes like this, I wouldn't bother using ZBrush at all.

J.I. Styles

To add to what the others are saying, you can also consider a "hybrid" technique of both -- use zbrush's bump map viewer material and paint the height in zbrush and then rip to normal. Just as fast as flat painting, but also direct feedback of the depth and painting on the model still.

MoP

J.I. Styles: That sounds like a cool technique, can you explain a bit more or point out a good tutorial that goes over ZBrush's bump map viewer material you mentioned?

Either that or tell my lazy ass to go and read the ZB Practical Manual

Mongrelman

All you do is select the bumpviewer material, then in projection master paint in RGB instead of deformation. Use shades of grey and voila.

MoP

Ah nice, thanks!

Noren

The fastes way to quadrangulate this would be, not to actually connect all the tiny edges, but to divide it in some larger areas/chunks and also "slice" the long, straight parts a few times in order to get some fairly quadratic pieces. Then use meshsmooth or tesselate on it (or whatever it is called in Maya) while keeping the shape in order to get an all quad- surface. If you see it's messing up somewhere, go back and add a few more edges where needed.
You'll have to export a heavier basemesh this way and you'll get lot's of distorted quads which can cause problems later on, depending on how often you can afford to subdivide later in Zbrush. But if you take care not to get too stretched quads it should be ok.
In 3dsmax when extruding shapes, you can choose to have it capped by a regular grid instead of just connecting the edge-verts. ( It's a bit faulty sometimes, though.)
Perhaps there is an option like that in Maya, too.

J.I. Styles

what lupus said -- oh and make sure you got that crappy quick edit mode OFF otherwise it's all aliased

bumpviewer material has to be loaded from the directory, it's not in the default list.

if you want to rip to normal in zmapper, convert the b&w to alpha and use the displacement view settings (these use the alpha as the bump instead of the diffuse). zmapper knows to rip it if it's using the displacement settings.