Fantastic thread. Not only the original post, but the very good videos and the stuff you are sharing. Top Notch, thank you very much!
ah, btw, stars are in the mail.
Great work! Really like your style.
Truly awesome to such detailed work. Is there anything that we beginner should note when we pick concepts like the "snow girl ".
The amount of assets that you have for each model is remarkable. Will always love to learn from you.
you sir are a tech genius. great workflows you share many wouldnāt have thought of even after all those years tinkering with zbrush.
Just one notice though, why not instead of projecting the texture from the hires to the lores inside zbrush via polygon resolution, do it instead in a 3d application like max or maya, using its own texture map instead of its poly resolution, you might retain more texture quality that way and not lose any texture resolution. I guess its a matter of speed and convenience right?
But iāve always wanted to know mathematically as a rule of thumb, how many polys does a model need to project lets say a 2k texture map perfectly without any quality loss or blurriness.
Fantastic work and thanks a lot for sharing all this knowledge!!!
Thereāre wonderful details. Thatās so epic. Congrats Josephā¦ o_O
great and lovely works thanks for sharing your techniques 
Awesome stuff!!!..Really, ZBrush meant for u ppl only?!.
My Humble Tread :
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=150726
Great work Joseph! I want to thank you for your contribution to the classrom with your very helpful webcast tips and tricks!
Fantastic work!
Amazing work! Really inspiring! small_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamond
@KonginChains: Yes sadly it is often about speed (damn deadlines 
The plane and the carrier were reduced b/c the sheer amount of subtools. Someday ZBrush may allow me to clone tools with HD sculpting on them 
In the end the reduction didnāt hurt the carrierās ingame normals. With the addition of Sculptris (and GoZ) I can shoot a decimated mesh over and then refine it in there to adjust any issues that arenāt as clear. (This works perfectly since Sculptris enjoys triangles.)
The majority of the time I try not to reduce at all. I tend to do all my map baking with xNormal (Diffuse/Normal/Base Color.) I usually send multiple million (10+) poly objās into xNormal to project onto a lowres mesh. I also end up attempting to do a lot of my colorizing/texturing on the actual hires and projecting it through xNormal at the same time (This allows for subtools to also be filled with a certain color acting as masking objects on the lowres mesh.) (I have plans to do a video/tutorial of this eventually.)
As for the rule of thumb with quality loss, I usually save any cloth details on layers and turn them off before I export. I enjoy them on the final hires renders but the normal maps usually turn them into blurry mush (I have never been great a math so I usually just eyeball it
@skdzines: So I was browsing ZBC and noticed that ZBC user skdzines was requesting an update baking MatCap vid for ZBrush4. (Rather then hijack Cedric Seautās thread (where the question was asked) I figured Iād send skdzines a private message and throw the link in here.)
Thanks again for all the kind words!
-Joseph
Sent you a PM. Thank you very much for the video tutorial. Iām going to watch right now.
Wowā¦Great stuffā¦Congrads on Top Rowā¦and Thanks 4 all the really cool things u taught me a few things I was wondering about for a little bit all answered by uā¦ And a big big thumbs up 4 the Subtitles, as I am slowly losing my hearing I really appreciate it so so very much thank you 4 taking the time. It is also easier 2 follow with the subs. Beautiful work I am a big fan of ur sculpts. 
Awesome job on getting to the top row love the soldier character, Keep It up
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?p=890763#post890763
http://artofartyramazanov.blogspot.com/
Wicked stuff - chair is very cool
cool vid was takin bout this the other day
Well this is simply the best work Iāve seen in ZB Central!
It takes more than a technician to put together such balanced work.
True artist!
Thanks for the looks.
Steve
Nice, impressive work!!!
The video tutorial, it isnāt clear for me. Sorry. (I mean it may work on this model but not everywhere)
The only decent way to export materials from zb is the ānaturalā way.
Render a sphere, crop as needed and use it as normal projection to camera on a renderer (very similar to sculptris shaders). Export a cavity mask, mix it with textures. (Ps or similar app is needed, blender has a great nodes editor as well)
Here an example, one year ago, one well known default material of zb.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showpost.php?p=702405&postcount=73
@michalis: You are totally correct when rendering that the Sculptrisāish method of a normal projection to camera is absolutely the best way to achieve a replicated MatCap. (I really enjoy your work btw, the 3dcoat Temple was a desktop background on my work computer for a while :D)
I never use the process shown in the video to attempt to replicate a MatCap in rendering (The lighting for the bake is done based on a camera facing displaced plane so the lighting is already incorrect in terms of replication.) I usually end up using the MatCap baking process to help establish a quick diffuse texture starting point. I polypaint on the model then edit MatCaps/create them until I find a look that I like. (I find this faster for myself then just painting a diffuse in Photoshop from scratch. I usually strip out most of the lighting info in the diffuse by the time I am done so that it can be viewed in a game engine.)
In the image is a quick example where I have used the above technique to establish quick submaterials for skin. Now the ones depicted in the image are the raw examples and have not been edited (All the materials would need a good round of touching up.)
Another example is a model generated byCedric Seaut: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showpost.php?p=840444&postcount=588 The model uses the technique to āenhanceā rather then replicate the MatCap. (This is also the model where the question arised of seeing a redone tutorial for the MatCap baking tutorial for ZBrush 4.)
So yeah by no means is the process a way to replicate the MatCap perfectly ( I guess I should probably clarify that in the future ;))
-Joseph
I just want to say, your sculpts are so incredibly inspiringā¦i want to be able to do that someday.
great job! you have immense talent!