ZBrushCentral

beginner question about workflow and model posing

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

zbrush looks awesome, but i was hoping for clarification of a few things.

the main question i have is about posing my model. i will be rigging my characters for animation mostly, HOWEVER for when i want to just do a still is it possible to pose my base mesh (from maya) within zbrush without rigging. i know you can pose zspheres, but is this possible with a base mesh created in an external 3d app?

also i wanted to run through my basic workflow for when i do characters for animation to make sure i have the right idea.

here is how im thinking right now:

1 basically i create a base mesh in maya, which is around 2k polys,
2 uv map
3 then into zbrush i subdivide once to 10k and sculpt the main big shapes (this will be the mesh i reimport back into maya after finishing)
4 and when detailing the higher sub divs levels i use displacement mapping.
5 texture model in zbrush
6 then i reimport my model with textures and displacement
7 rig
8 then animate

im sorry if this is a simple beginner topic, i have been learning zbrush for a while now. after looking over many tutorials i think i have the right ide,a but i want to clarify with the vets. im constantly inspired and excited by the art i see on these forums.

can you recommend any dvds that are worth buying that cover my basic workflow and concerns?

hope you can help :slight_smile:

Idris

#2

Yep, that’s a solid workflow. Although before you actually generate the displacement map you’ll want to go to level 2 and turn on Tool>Geometry>Cage. Leave that on while you generate the displacement map and export the model. This is because when you apply the map to your model in your other app, there’s undoubtedly going to be subdivision smoothing taking place, so you need to begin with a cage mesh.

As for your other question, you can do poses in ZBrush with ZSpheres like you describe. Or you can use TransPose. Either feature works whether the model was created in ZBrush or not.

#3

thank you so much.

thats totally helped me out :slight_smile:

#4

Hi all,
I have been searching for a solid workflow too in the past days (almost weeks…) but I think I am missing something.
I would like to use some external programs like Maya and Headus UV Layout but I need to know how to integrate them in the right way. I watched many tutorials but there still are many things I don’t know and that I don’t understand; I hope you guys can help me out here!!!
Ok, this is how I do:
-I first create my Mesh into Maya without giving too much attention to the topology (for example I don’t create the eyes, the mouth or the nose so I don’t create particular edge loops) even if I try to keep the mesh organized and clean only with quads. At this point I have a very small number of polys.
-I import my Mesh into Zbrush (without the UVs because I still don’t know how my model will look like) and I start modeling the high details and I bring up the Mesh to milions of polygons.
(Now that I am happy with my modeling I want to use Maya and some plugins to create the new topology so that I can animate it or pose it, with zbrush or with a rigging technique…)
-I export the Mesh from Zbrush at level 2 or 3 depending on the number of polys and I bring it to Maya to do the retopology part.
-Once done I export to Headus to create UVs.

Now let’s say I want to do the texturing in Zbrush using all the details created earlier and also a normal map, what should I do? Should I just go back and paint on the high def mesh? Even if I paint without the UVs, what happen next? I need the UVs and the UVs are done on a model with a complete different topology and poly count. Also for the normal map I think I will still have the problem of the UVs.
Any suggestions??? Or link to other threads that explain this??
Thanks
Lumat