I need some help with High to Low Poly Workflow

[DaytonTN]

Hey everyone, I’m Dayton. New here and to Zbrush in general. Hopefully, I’m posting here correctly.

Over my break from work this holiday, I’d been studying and practicing sculpting. However, my intention in learning Zbrush was to complete my High to Low Poly Bake workflow for games.

That all said, I’ve become stumped and really could use some assistance on a specific matter. Below are two images of both the Low and High poly mesh shown in Zbrush. My trouble is that, for whatever reason, my topology ALWAYS, seems to create these hard, jagged edges that do not demonstrate how the mesh should look:

Now, this isn’t consistent in Maya, as when I open the low poly in Maya you can see it’s surface normals are smoothed in the way they should be:

Additionally, the High Poly when imported into Maya, looks like this:

Now, I’m aware the topo for the high poly is a bit wacky, and I plan to redo it- however, this is why I’m coming to you for help. How can I use ZModeler to get the same/similar details you see on the current high poly, without the topology distorting the surface normals when viewed in Zbrush/Maya?

When I get this complete, I’m gonna bring it into Substance to bake the high onto the low. However, it’s currently obvious that I can’t with the normals having offputting distortions. I’ve been scouring the internet for tutorials on ZModeler, but none seem to touch specifically on creating panel lines without distortion. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Spyndel]

Hello @DaytonTN,

Actually, that’s precisely how your mesh should look, or would look without any smoothing shader applied to the polygons. ZBrush does not do this (at least not under most circumstances, and not while leaving a mesh editable–it does not perform well with the sort of polycounts Zbrush works with). That is the real geometry. In order to smooth geometry in Zbrush, you must subdivide it.

Dynamic Subdivision is extremely useful here, as it allows you to preview how a low poly mesh will look when subdivided in a non-destructive fashion.

When subdividing a hard surface mesh, if you were to disable SMT next to the “Divide” button in the Geometry palette, your mesh will subdivide without any smoothing applied to the geometry. This would be ideal for meshes that are all faceted planes without any curves or rounded surfaces. It will subdivide the mesh while leaving all the edges perfectly hard-edged.

The more common scenario is that you have a mix of planes and rounded or curved surfaces. In this case you must define which edges are to stay hard edged, or reinforce the geometry in such a way that it stays hard edged through the subdivision process. Every subdivision modeler has a feature for designating hard edges when subdividing from low to high poly. In Zbrush, this feature is Creasing. There are quite a few ways to establish creasing beyond what you see in the Creasing sub-palette. Zmodeler has advanced features for establishing creasing, and Polygroups can also be used to quickly establish creasing. Good polygrouping skills are vital to hard surface modeling in Zbrush.

Good luck!

[DaytonTN]

Thanks Spyndel, I’ll update this thread if I find any further difficulties regarding this topic. Gonna give this a go right now, thanks for your timely reply!