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not enough polys

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,

I’m working on the character in the picture but I’m having a problem. The basemesh of this char is skinned and rigged in maya for animation. Also I created a uv map in Maya.

But now there’s a lack of sd detail in the serpents head. I subdivided the model 7 times ( 5218304 polys) the amount of body detail is fine but on the head I need a lot more so i can paint a alpha skin but the system I’m working on doesn’t allow me to subdivide further.

Should I retopo( I think when I retopo i also have to do the skinnin, uv map and riggin again in Maya). or should I use geometry hd.or should I seperate the head from the body.( when I do this how do I connect it later on without los of detail and the texture and other maps)

What should I do? I mean what is the best work flow from this point.

Attachments

Serpent.jpg

#2

that was really silly to use so little polygons in the head area. :lol:

dude, do rigging and UV setup LAST!

i’d say do a retop, and redo the uv and rigging - it shouldn’t take that long?

otherwise, you could probably divide to around 1 mil poly’s and do HD Sculpting, but i’m not so sure if the Displacements are gonna work on such a basic head mesh

#3

thanks for the reply

every mistake is to learn so I will never make the same mistake again. It’s still a hobby(to learn) so I can affort to make mistakes :wink:

yeah the head mesh is a little to basic. the char didn’t have a head first but a helmet and armour. the whole head is actually the neck that i pulled in the form of a snake head.

I always skin my low poly t-pose model in Maya for different poses in zbrush.

at the moment I deleted the higher levels and start sculpting HD. now first I have to test and see how the dispmap comes out in maya. when it doesn’t work I will start retopo

cheers

#4

a good tip is to try to have all your low mesh polygons the same size, for instance, look at all the small polys you have in the fingers and toes, its totally unnecessary if you know you’re going to divide, even for animation its too much, i bet at your highest subd level the hands and feet take up more than half of your polycount. so equal poly distribution is a good thing, hope that helps.

#5

You didn’t need to delete your higher subdivision levels. You could just have used HD Geometry to sculpt extra detail in the head area. Then when you generate a displacement map that HD detail would be included, providing your map size supports the extra detail (in other words use a large map size).