Zbrush: Sub-d leveling and loss of detail
polycounter lvl 18
I find Im having a tendency to go up and down in my sub d stack adding or smoothing larger or smaller areas. I noticed tonight that by the end, even though I didn't work on my eyebrows or hair during this, they had lost all the detail. Is this because of the sub-d stack work Im doing? Meaning I have to completely finish each subd level before going up to the next one?
Also, too add the fine detail such as pores, I need to subd the model another step, which unfortunately puts it in the 6 mil area. I only have one gig of ram, and though i can do the actual sub-d, the model becomes almost unworkable with a minute and a half pause projecting and sometimes even moving. Will I have to rely on bump maps? If I had 2 gigs of memory, would this be more feasable?
Lastly, is there a good site that show the shortcuts used for making the fine wrinkles and pore master alphas (maybe even with alpha maps pre made or at least shows how they were made).
Also, too add the fine detail such as pores, I need to subd the model another step, which unfortunately puts it in the 6 mil area. I only have one gig of ram, and though i can do the actual sub-d, the model becomes almost unworkable with a minute and a half pause projecting and sometimes even moving. Will I have to rely on bump maps? If I had 2 gigs of memory, would this be more feasable?
Lastly, is there a good site that show the shortcuts used for making the fine wrinkles and pore master alphas (maybe even with alpha maps pre made or at least shows how they were made).
Replies
I haven't found many good tuts on pore level detail. There might be some stuff on Antropus's page. You should try the Zbrush forums really.
I cant divide the character without slowing the system down too much it seems (goes up to 6 mil polys). So am I going to have to try to add that detail (pores, etc.) with the bumpmap painting tools in zbrush?
Your right, I should do zbrush forums, but thats just another forum untop of all the others..
Antropus is so incredibly good..
Note that if you use photosourcing for the final texturing you can aswell use the actual picture of, say, the face, to use as a stencil or an alpha to create small details from. Search for the 'modelling with your texture' video tutorial on Zbcentral.
Hope it helps!
I can confirm that Zbrush does like alot of RAM.
I just finished a hi-res dinosaur skull for print purposes for work, My work computer has 2gig RAM in it,I bought my skull home to do abit of extra on it and loaded up on my computer with 1 gig RAM and the change in loading time was noticable,lagged a fair bit etc.
All other Specs in my work computer are lower than those in my Home computer.
Having said that unless your planning to do alot of Zbrush work at hi-detail I wouldn't really consider it nessary to put another gig of Ram in your set-up.
In terms of the pours and such I would do as the great Pior says and use alpha maps and the stencil tools.
John
Since I cant get the detail with projection master since my mesh isnt dense enough, will making a bump map suffice for pores and skin texture and using zmapper to integrate?
as for really high detail not working well in zbrush, are you using masking to hide areas you're not working on, or not?
i've also noticed that if you go up and down subd levels a lot it can change the shape slightly, it seems to average the positions from the higher res cage when you go down a level... i guess that's the price you pay for being able to edit any level of detail.