ZBrushCentral

Higher Subdivision for Head

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi all, new to the forums and fairly new to ZBrush

I’m currently working on a humanoid model (2 arms, 2 legs, ahead and torso)

The model is for a high quality video game cinematic and i want the poly count to be around 30K, the model is currently 4 subdivisions deep which has perfect detail for the head but the body should be perfect with a sub division level of 1 or 2

What method is best for keeping the head at a higher subD and the body at a different subD? I don’t want to run poly reduction in another 3d app and mess up the clean topology and edgeloops

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

#2

Why would you want fewer polygons on the body? I’m at a loss as to what you plan to gain. If you can support all of the detail you need then use it.

But, you can make polygroups of each region you want and then group split those into different meshes so you can control your subD level independently on each mesh.

#3

Thanks for the reply,

I want fewer polys on the body because for this particular character the body does not need all of that topological detail but the head does, most of the topological detail in the head is being used for the eyes and mouth. A lot of current gen games use this technique especially for cinematics and i’ve done this many times in other apps like Softimage and 3DS but i want to consolidate my workflow as much as possible

Currently the model is around 145K polys which wll take up too much memory in-engine so i want it to be around 30K and i can easily afford to lose the excess polys from the body without loosing much of the shape but the head needs to keep it’s current topological detail

I already had everything separated into poly groups and tried separating them into 2 meshes but when i lower the subD on the body how can i seamlessly join it back with the head so it’s a single mesh again?

#4

It sounds to me like you’re looking for an auto retopology solution for a game ready asset. Zbrush doesn’t do this, nor does any other software that I am aware of. You can Zremesher as a good starting point for topology (hands down the best autoretopo solution out there), or you need to do it all by hand, unless I am not understanding your problem. It also sounds like your workflow is a bit off. Your highpoly and lowpoly assets should be two completely different meshes.

#5

You can try to delete some edgeloops to decrease your polycount in the body, arms etc. while keeping your details in the face.

1_Freeze subdiv levels
2_Mask all
3_Erase mask where you want the edgeloops to be deleted
4_Tool>Geometry>EdgeLoop>Delete Loops button will do the job. Play with the angle and aspect ratio
5_Unfreeze subdiv levels

Hope this helps

#6

Thanks for all of the help,

I have been using R5 but i just upgraded to R6 which has the new ZRemesher tool and it gave me perfect results, easily the best retopo tool i’ve used. It allows for selective retopo and keeps perfect edge loop structure

If anyone else is looking for selective retopo or quick retopo while keeping clean edge loop structure i recommend watching the video in this thread - http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?180668-NEW!-An-in-depth-look-at-the-quot-ZRemesher-quot-with-Joseph-Drust

The only down side is that i have to redo my polypaint now since it can’t be copied over as far as i know…

#7

The best thing is to duplicate your mesh before ZRemesh so you can allways have your details and polypaint proyected with proyectAll and the ZProyect brush

#8

Just gave it a try and it worked like a charm, thanks man!

I’m not a noob to 3D Modeling but ZBrush is very different than what i’m use to - Once you get a hang of it though it’s a huge time saver in almost every way