UV offset for Zbrush questions

torijinsir

Hello guys, I am trying to make my first character but I have a questions about how to set up my UV and all assets for rigging. I am not going to retopo and make animation of it. All I want is to make some good normalmaps and give her a good pose with fairly large detailed texture.

I attached everything together except eyeballs so the char can be rigged later. And I have finished UV unwrap for her, as you can see in pic2. I layout UVs to 3 tiles so they can be easily "UV group and Groupsplit" in Zbrush. However, I stuck at here for not being able to import normalmaps as one map to 3dmax. So how do you guys deal with this?

I read so many tutorials and know u guys usually detach body as several parts for zbrush. But do you attach them back to one in 3dmax at the end before rigging? If you really attached them to one object, You would screw up your UVs's layout and that means you have to recreate normals in zbrush. How do you deal with normalmaps from each subtools?
ps, sry for my bad english.

http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/6250/inprogressp.jpg
http://img194.imageshack.us/i/questionz.jpg/

TROGLODYTE

There are different workflows for different purposes.  I am still learning, as you are, but I believe the "detaching into several body parts" is used often for static models that will not be deformed or animated but just used as part of a scene to be rendered out for example, or for concept or paint overs, for ex.  However, my understanding is that even in animation, some modelers do 'not' re-attach all the parts together but just export models out as one unit.  I asked a similar question in my thread:

https://polycount.com/discussion/211285/my-first-texturing-please-critique#latest

kanga

Never just made a model just for posing, but for animation the final lowpolys are usually in a few groups: the base figure, boots and upperclothing, lowerclothing and accessories for example, just as long as the group contains no items that intersect for baking. The groups remain separate and are only united by the rig at the end. If you are only posing, just import each part with textures.