Zbrush Polish workflow for hardsurface - How to utilize polygroups and speed up ?

Peksio · Oct 2019

Hello. I am a big fan of zbrush polish workflow for hard surfaces. That is if you want to get smooth cyllinder you go like that:

1. Create cyllinder with a lot of edges (128+)

2. Import into zbrush and use Polish.

3. Done, you have hipoly, smooth cyllinder.

But I know that there are faster ways to do this. Ideal case is that I would use the same amount of edges that I would like to have in low poly and do the "dirty" work in zbrush.

But I don't know how to approach this. I heard about many ways, like getting polygroups from uvs/edge creaes/ ?? and then first using Polish by polygroups (or features?) and then using standard polish.

Can someone please explain this to me or give me some links or "names" of this workflows so I could google that ?

Thanks and Cheers !

Ghogiel · Oct 2019

panel loops might be part of what you are after. It has polish and bevel features. It's pretty awesome tbh.
https://pixologic.com/zclassroom/lesson/panel-loops-options-part-1

Peksio · Oct 2019

Thank you, looks interesting I will definitlely check it out. But also to be honest It is kinda custom I would say. I mean it looks like a tool for very custom shapes. And right now I am looking for more "general" workflow.

Maybe you have some more workflows in addition to this three ?

kanga · Oct 2019

https://polycount.com/discussion/168610/3ds-max-zbrush-proboolean-dynamesh-hardsurface-workflow-tutorial/p1

Are you referring to this technique? It does involve a high edge count for rounded forms but flat areas, booleans and fillets can be pretty low poly.

Shrike · Oct 2019

I dont know your software, but in cinema 4d you can use subdivision with hard edges, so you can just sharpen your subdivision based on hard edges but round the rest like cylinders. Like this you can use your lowpoly mostly

Peksio · Oct 2019

Yes, I am talking exactly about this workflow: https://polycount.com/discussion/168610/3ds-max-zbrush-proboolean-dynamesh-hardsurface-workflow-tutorial/p1

I came from Max to Maya to Blender. In blender you also can keep your booleans as modificators and change amount of edges later, that is main reason why I decided to switch but it is not important here.

To be honest, as I am reading this tutorial it shouldn't work well. He don't have a lot of geometry in curved places on hipoly so Polish shouldn't work good there. And I can see that he is using standard Polish.

I talked with several people, and I heard about two additional workflows:

1. You create model for zbrush, but you don't use many edges. Instead of a lot of geometry you need to do basic uvs. Basicaly you are making a cut on uvs where you want it to be smooth. Then in Zbrush you are creating polygroups from uvs and then you can either use polish by features or you can use mask by features and with mask use standard polish.

2. Edge creases. You are creating normal model for zbrush with less geometry but then you are applying to your edges crease value and subdivide it and then bring into zbrush and polish it.

Is there anything else that is "viable" for speeding up modelling ?

Zbrush Polish workflow for hardsurface - How to utilize polygroups and speed up ?

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