I am sculpting a pretty detailed ground plane with a couple of trees and a figure with clothing, etc. The millions of polygon count are troubling me, because I have to export it all to another 3D application (Strata 3D CX) for rendering. I am also messing around with the Decimation master, but too much % of decimation takes away detail. I am afraid that after the decimation process I still end up with a very heavy document that makes Strata crawl to a point where it is almost impossible to work with… I am working with 8gig of memory in my Mac Pro. Is more RAM a solution here?
If you have a low poly mesh and a high poly sculpt based on that, you can generate normal, grayscale displacement, and vector displacement maps. If you don’t have a low poly mesh, you’ll need to retopologize your high poly mesh so that you have one. They you be able to generate a displacement map which you can apply to your low poly mesh in whatever external application you use to render. I don’t know anything about Strata so I can’t tell you if this will work, but retopology is the general rule of thumb for rendering a high poly object in another app without slowing that app to a crawl (or freezing it up lol). There are lots of videos on Youtube about retopology and a search should yeild something helpful for you to get an idea of what you’re in for.
Edit: No, more memory won’t help with ZBrush which is currently a 32-bit application and thus limited to how much memory it can access. More memory might help with Strata though, provided it is a 64-bit program running on a 64-bit machine and operating system. No guarantees though.
G’day Danny,
Firstly, if your geometry from ZBrush simply has too many polygons (as is often the case) you need to learn how to use bump/normal/displacement maps. Basically they fake the detail of your high poly mesh on a low poly version using the information in these maps. I don’t know Strata, but it will probably support these types of rendering effects as do most 3D apps.
There is plenty of information around for you to learn all about it. (Consult your ZBrush documents).
Secondly, you will only benefit from more RAM if your apps are 64bit. At this moment ZBrush is only 32bit so this means it cannot make use of more than 4GB. Of course, if you are running multiple apps at once then more RAM will always help (depending on the demands of your software).
When ZBrush 5 arrives, we have been told that it will be 64bit, so then all of your RAM can be used. Until then, it’s all about planning and optimizing your project at hand, particularly when it involves bringing your work over to other 3D apps.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for your help guys, good info.