Hello, i’m currently struggling a lot with my workflow. I think i’m almost at the last step (texturing) but first i want to add details to my sculpt. I did all my hard surface stuff on Maya for all the armor pieces while keeping in mind the topology i wanted it to have so that i could sculpt without problems. but when i subdivide a piece (at 1mil polys) it still looks pixelated if i add details.
So, what process should i follow for detailing my armor?
Hello @zikiel
There is no single process. It depends entirely on the needs of your output. You’re going to want to do different things depending on if working for print, static render, or animation, and whether you’re detailing this armor by itself as a stand alone piece, or whether it’s supposed to be part of a character.
If you don’t yet know what the needs are for your particular output, you might try looking for more general 3d advice from other people working for the same thing, rather than ZBrush specific advice. I’ll give you some general tips, but these all may change or be complicated by whatever else you want to do with your mesh. I won’t even pretend to try and cover every possible scenario.
You’ll want to make sure each piece of armor that can be logically separated into a separate subtool has been split into its own subtool. The max poly limit is per subtool, so the more you can split the armor, the higher you’ll be able to up the resolution on each piece. Depending on the size of the piece, you may need to subdivide into the double digit millions to get adequate resolution for surface detail.
Eliminate overlapping geometry wherever possible by fusing pieces together with dynamesh or Live Boolean. The fewer polygons you have in a subtool that aren’t contributing to surface detail, the higher the detail potential.
You’ll also want to make sure your topology is suitable for sculpting. The optimal topology for getting the best results in ZBrush is evenly distributed quads, as close to square-shaped as possible. The topology in your picture looks pretty good, but you might want to retopologize any areas where the polygons are too stretched or oddly shaped. ZRemesher may be useful with this.
Keep in mind that when subdividing a mesh with hard surface elements, it often requires Creasing to keep edges hard when being subdivided from low poly. Your mesh looks like it already has some creasing, but more may be required to keep certain pieces from becoming too soft when being subdivided.
HD Geometry can be used to sculpt extreme surface detail into meshes that can’t be comfortably subdivided any further. But this may also complicate matters if you intend to merge the armor together or with a character. Having HD Geo limits what you can do with a subtool, so there may be workflow concerns with using it, or when to use it.
As a part of many workflows, eventually you’ll be aiming to combine the detail from the subtools in some fashion on a more optimized, unibody mesh, possibly as part of a character. To do this you’ll need to use detail projection and project the detail onto the new version of the mesh that has been fused, retopologized, and had overlapped geometry removed. Texture export would generally be based on this mesh.
Again though, this depends on your output needs and what you want to do.