Thanks, folks! I appreciate the positive feedback!
Addressing Blackmath’s question about the creative process…
1.) I sculpt the high-relief complex, organic objects (Lion, Dorthy, monkeys, etc.) in Zbrush separately.
2.) I sculpt simple, hard edge objects in Blender. Try as I might - I just can’t get the hang of hard edge modeling in ZBrush. I watch the hard edge sculpting demo videos - which are incredible and very inspiring. I go through the online tutorials. But I just can’t get the hang of it. A lot of the methods don’t seem intuitive. I either end up with screwed up geometry that’s not easy to fix or I end up with an obscenely high poly count. So - I fall back on what works for me - Blender. Very easy to produce hard edge objects in Blender (the castles, the flowers, the sun, etc.)
3.) I export my Blender models to obj and import into Zbrush.
4.) Then I position all of these subtools for a relief.
5.) Now I start compressing all of the subtools along the z axis - flattening them a little.
6.) Then I merge all subtools and convert to high poly dynamesh.
7.) In dynamesh - I smooth and clean any funky areas and I make any last minute drastic edits - maybe cutting out large chunks to simulate damage to the relief.
8.) I might make alphas for simple low-relief elements (stars, for example) and pull those out of the surface.
9.) Then I exit dynamesh and begin subdividing and adding fine detail. Lots of work reproducing the texturing seen in reliefs.
10.) Ideally I’d drop down to a lower subdiv level, UV unwrap, and export a lo-poly model with accompanying maps - texture, normal, displacement, AO, cavity. But this is where I run into problems. Merging all of the subtools - leads to some flawed geometry in areas that isn’t an easy fix. And this flawed geometry prevents the UV mapping. I’ve tried exporting to Blender and UV unwrapping there, but no success. So…this leads to the decimation master. I decimate the object a couple of times and now my 14 million poly model is about 800K.
11.) I export to obj and drop it in Blender.
12.) Ordinarily, with a properly unwrapped model, setting up textures is easy in Blender. But my model is not properly unwrapped. So I head back to Zbrush and I begin sculpting a few quick variants of my original relief - the main focus is to quickly change the depth of areas.
13.) I export these variants and import into the Blender file - overlapping all of the models.
14.) Now it’s time to experiment with textures. The model with the highest relief - set the specularity highest. The model with the lowest relief - set the specularity low. I experiment with the color settings. Lots of great Blender artists out there with great tips on creating convincing metal or stone textures. I’ve got nothing unique to offer on that front.
15.) Then light, tweak camera, and render (Blender’s cycles rendering is awesome!). And that’s it.
Clearly, my inability to UV unwrap the original model is a significant issue. I’ve developed the work around detailed above, but it’s very time inefficient sculpting the overlapping models and then rendering them. Much better to use the cavity and ao maps to impact texture differences in the model’s surface. Maybe one of these year’s I’ll figure out how to quickly retopologize flawed geometry. The automated fixes - dynamesh and qremesh - rarely fix it for my reliefs. They’re great for less complex models - but my squashed, multi-object merged meshes - not so much. And I don’t have the patience for the manual approach. I want to quickly sculpt and be done.
Thanks for sharing your workflow