Chracter Creation / Pipeline

Notes

K, i have about 4 weeks to attempt this character and would like some advice before I start...what would be the most efficient way to make this character from start to finish?
I was thinking start the base in max, unwrap, then finish in zbrush.

Or, start with Dynamesh in Zbrush, retopologize in zbrush, then export the low and maps out to be used in UDK.

Teacher also told me to start with zspheres to get the basic shapes, then export the lowest subdivision to max to be cleaned up, the back into max to finish.

This will be my final project for this quarter so I wanted to aim high..thanks again

Psyk0

Check out one of these threads (he's referencing others at the top):
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=98115

Notes

awesome, thanks!

Mark Dygert

Typically it goes:

- Create a base mesh, whatever works best for zbrush, normally evenly spaced quads or a mesh generated in zbrush.
- Sculpt.
- Export a lower level and retopoligize inside of max to get the final low poly model.
- Import the highest level from zbrush (normally run discrimination master first)
- Import that into max and bake our a few maps, normal, AO ect...
- Start the base material in max and export to UDK where you set up the final material and a sample scene and do the rest of the texture work.

It's pretty hard to get a good optimized mesh out of zbrush that works for games, you almost always need to do a fair bit of remodeling to get it to work, which is often just easier to do from scratch using the retopo tools and standard modeling techniques.

If all you are doing is adding cloth folds and minor surface details to your model and not really changing it around that much while sculpting then going pretty detailed on the base mesh can save you alot of time later but you still need to keep in mind how zbrush will subdivide the model and how the final low poly needs to be optimized to work best in the game, those two don't always mesh perfectly but you can get pretty close if you aren't doing a lot of major sculpting.

Notes

getting the base mesh into zbrush was the hardest part...I just ended up starting it using zspheres then imma go in later and retopologize it when im done.