Trust me - I’ve done it before 100 times (with slight exaggeration…)
thanks mega and grey32 you guys are a big help.
one more thing though… i seem to be having trouble with the reconstructuction button… its not reconstructing?? whats the deal. ive used it before and it worked, but now its not??? any ideas? do i have to have things at certain settings?
NM i found out how to do it by doing a search in the forum… you have to have UV’s enabled in the texture pallet. dont have to have any UV’S however.
one other thing. i got my projection to work perfectly hands and all. i will give details at a later time however, its 12:31 am and ive got to eat, take a shower, bugg and make my girl friend angry, then hit the sack. i gots class and track practice tomorrow.
Hi foreverman.
I for one, would love to know how you finally got projection to work 
G.
Foreverman,
I found a solution to the adaptive mesh / projection finger problem that has to do with, actually, topology. When you’re in Edit Topology mode, the thing that you have to keep in mind about the fingers is that any cyllinder-like, or actually, just any structure that you re-topo NEEDS to be 6 SEGMENTS in crossection OR MORE (like in a six-sided cyllinder or 8-sided cyllinder.)
I discovered this when I ran into the same problem trying to re-topo the hands of some old model of mine. I re-did it 2 times, and only then realized each finger has to be done with 6 segments around, not four (not like a series of 1-polygon extrusions you could have in other apps.) The tip of each finger, then could be something like 2 quads combinded into a sectagon. This solved the wierd “holes” problem in the geometry. After doing it this way and using adaptive skin / projection it seems to work out nicely.
I hope that sheds some light onto the former problem.
thanks mega morph for the info
the way i gots the projection to work is as follows:
simply export a new low poly model (your hi-res mesh will be projected on to this) from what ever 3d package you have.
then in zrush (obviously import the low res mesh and what not) sub div the low res mesh once giving it 2 lvls of sub div.
then project. there may still be some minor parts of the mesh that you may need to use the smooth tool on and some minor resculpting like in the hands, but nothing major like it would be if you hadn’t sub divided the low res model first.
one other thing is that if you want to regain the origional low lvl model you can reconstruct you new projected model, export it to maya or what ever, project the uv layout from the first low res model onto the one you exported from zbrush and tweak as need be.
now this method has worked for me so if you have any questions please dont hesitate to ask, and sorry for getting back so late with my method. hope it helps people
Yea, this works well, good point.
I guess the only problem with doing “re-topo” in Maya / Max is that you can’t really see your hi-res (if you already have one, that is.) The new ZBrush pipeline is supposed to be all about non-linearity (meaning you can do any part of the process at any point in the production, not in any particular order.) If you stick to the old pipelines, like these, you should have no problem with topology in the first place:
Maya/Max -> ZBrush -> Normal Map -> Maya/Max -> Render Output / Game Engine
-or, a little newer,
ZSphere -> Adaptive Skin Base Model -> Maya/Max UVing -> ZBrush -> Normal Map -> Maya/Max -> Render Output / Game Engine
Your sugguested one would be (if I read you right) something like:
(Maya/Max) -> ZBrush |
…| – 2 Objects in ZBrush -> Retopo -> Maya/Max
(Maya/Max) -> ZBrush | corrections (no HiRes reference) -> ZBrush -> …
The new non-linear ZBrush pipeline variation:
Maya/Max/ZSphere -> ZBrush HiRes Detail -> Retopo to new Base Mesh (with hiRes reference) -> Maya/Max UVing -> ZBrush Normal Mapping -> Maya/Max -> Render Output / Game Engine
The :b4: pipeline also works with the 2 models combined with, per se, the MultiMarker…
hmm when yo project your mesh in zbrush and then reconstruct the adaptive skin you just made to get the lower poly count, you can export that lower poly count into what ever 3d package and just layout the uv’s. then export the new uv layout model from 3d package and import it to your new adaptive skin in zbrush to update the lvl one sub div uv’s.
the part where you smooth the hands out with a little rebuild is in zbrush after the make of the adaptive skin.
is this what you understood?
I own a Powermac G4 and am using ZBrush 2.0 ( I believe that I will not be able to use the 3.1 version when it becomes available because its written for intel based Macs) this is the version available to me so it looks like I’m going to have to learn how to do everything in 2.0 ( or buy another computer). Could someone direct me to a tutorial or some other information that could help me? Thanks
if z brush two has a subtools pallete then what you could do is use the append button in the subtools pallet to add a second pice of geometry… or however many pices of geometry you want… and then use the extract button which will make a new tool with all of you subtools combined. then if you want… you could import an obj file and project your new combined tool onto it for a solid pice of geometry like i did with my character in this thread.
how i was of some help and good luck :D
hey megamorph… how do i edit the topology the way you were talking about??? can you explain it or link me to some tutorials? that would be great thanks