how do i reduce the polycount on my chracters? at the moment they are around 500-800mb. and in the millions of polygons. surely this is way too high for this kind of cartoon style sculpt.
if i use decimation master and decimate him down. can i still sculpt/pose as usual after decimation?
i understand once you decimate its turns the polygons into triangles, so you cant animate later, which is fine as i just want to sculpt - pose then export to photoshop to render
To reduce the poly count, use ZRemesher. You can read about it starting on page 19 of the ZBrush4_R6_whats_new.pdf in the Documentation folder of your ZBrush installation.
Regarding your file size, if you save the project (File > Save As), it saves everything, like all your settings and material changes and lighting changes, etc. and that is why the file is so big. In a lot of cases, saving the project is not necessary. Maybe when you get near the end and you want to save render settings and custom materials etc. then you can save the project. Saving the tool (Tool > Save As) will reduce the file size considerably. This will save the ztool plus any materials you might have assigned to your subtools. If you look in your ZBrush 4R6/ZTools folder, you will see the file sizes of the ztools.
Thanks again zber2, your a genius! yes i probably shouldnt have polypainted the character(not sure if polypaint effects file size) was just testing it out. as all i want to do is create a character, pose it, then export to photoshop to render.
as to zRemesher, yes i will look into it further. i did a try zRemesh it, but it only reduced the character from 2.8mill down to 2mill.
Thanks again
If you save the tool (Tool > Save As), it will save any polypainting you did. File size will still be much, much smaller than a project file.