Questions about Zbrush workflow (and GoZ with other software)

[Josh_Thomas]

Hi, so I’ve been using Zbrush for a few years, but am starting to plateau and want to start making some more realistic portraits, and I have some questions about the suggested workflow. Essentially, I sculpt and detail everything in Zbrush and then texture and render everything in Vray for Cinema 4D. Because that’s what I have and I’m used to it. I primarily sculpt for 2D art. No animation of game assets. Strictly to be rendered. So here’s my typical workflow:

1. Dynamesh until it’s fairly detailed and I’m ready to start things like wrinkles and pores.

2. Zremesh the whole thing to as few polys as possible and project the details on around level 3 or 4? *More on this part

3. Add sub levels as I go, and do things like pores on level 6.

4. Unwrap everything and rely on Zbrush to UV map for me. (Good or bad idea?)

5. GoZ everything to C4D.

Questions:

Mostly, I’m wondering when the best time is to STOP using dynamesh. I’m terrified of “moving” the mesh around, or doing geometry changes after remeshing, because I rely so much on Dynamesh. Is my mesh going to be a disaster if I keep sculpting on say, level 4 sub? Should i reconstruct the geometry if I’m doing this? I’ve never actually used that option.

While dynameshing, I tend to smooth everything out and remesh CONSTANTLY. So much that’s hard to get details like eyelids because I’m OCD-like smoothing them out. But when I watch people sculpt they rarely actually remesh. Am I shooting myself in the foot here?

When is transpose done? At the end? Before I detail?

I don’t often get as clean a texture in my displacements in C4D as I can see in Zbrush. I found a helpful guide with settings and how to exactly set it up. But one, it’s a bit outdated because of software updates, and two, I still get sharp results. I’m wondering if this is a UV issue, because I rely on UV master, or just C4D sucking at displacements?

Any help would be great, thanks!

[Spyndel]

Mostly, I’m wondering when the best time is to STOP using dynamesh. I’m terrified of “moving” the mesh around, or doing geometry changes after remeshing, because I rely so much on Dynamesh. Is my mesh going to be a disaster if I keep sculpting on say, level 4 sub? Should i reconstruct the geometry if I’m doing this? I’ve never actually used that option.

Don’t let fear make the decision for you. At any point if you decide you want to change the topology, you can simply project the detail from the previous mesh onto a new mesh. Make yourself as comfortable as possible with this process in order to never worry about this stuff again.

That said, dynamesh and the other single-resolution level tools are designed around the idea of rapidly creating form, not fine detail. Generally when you’re ready to start sculpting fine detail, posing, or painting for texture export, you are ready to transition to a multiple subdivision level process.

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I don’t often get as clean a texture in my displacements in C4D as I can see in Zbrush. I found a helpful guide with settings and how to exactly set it up. But one, it’s a bit outdated because of software updates, and two, I still get sharp results. I’m wondering if this is a UV issue, because I rely on UV master, or just C4D sucking at displacements?

It could be any or all of those things. It’s very difficult to troubleshoot someone else’s displacement workflow from secondhand descriptions. Successful displacement requires a user to be knowledgeable in general about the subject, regardless of the software involved, and also to have expertise in both of the programs being used. There are plenty of places for things to go wrong in either program, and every program does things differently. You want to look for resources devoted to your target program, as they will already have solved this workflow, while the best you’ll probably get here is more general advice.

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Generally speaking, the biggest problems I see over and over again with people with displacement/texture issues are:

1. Not understanding that there will always be visual issues associated with UV seams, and failing to unwrap the UVs so that these seams fall along natural breaks in the geometry, or in areas they wont receive much attention. Dont unwrap UVs so a seam falls right in the middle of a character’s face!

2. Not understanding that subdividing a mesh slightly alters the original mesh at all levels of subdivision, hence the necessity for storing a morph target in order to restore the original mesh just prior to any texture generation. This is necessary when creating maps for a mesh that must match the mesh in another program exactly. If exporting the geometry the maps were created for directly from Zbrush, this isn’t necessary.

3. Zbrush doesn’t like it when UV islands are too close to the edge of the map. You always want to have a few pixels of space wherever possible between the UV islands and the edge of the map. This can cause drastic artifacts otherwise.