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Pixar style animation - ZB and Maya workflow?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello all (I wasn’t getting any answers in other thread, so I thought I’d try in this one),

I am interested in creating a Pixar style character for use in a short animation. I am a bit foggy on the tools/workflow I should be using.

My guess would be base mesh creation in Maya, details in ZB and then back to Maya for animation. Correct? Is ZB even necessary in this case? I ask because while ZB is certainly my tool of choice for highly-detailed characters, I’m unsure if it would be used in more simplistic Pixar styled characters (think the movie UP or Ratatouille).

Any help or enlightenment is greatly appreciated.

P.S. If anyone has any animations of this type, and would like to share their methods, I will buy the first round of beer. Thank you!

#2

You could probably save yourself a lot of time by starting the models using zspheres. Also, keep in mind that just because the models are simple, they probably aren’t low poly. Once you get the high poly models done, you’d retopologize them and export to maya for UV’s. I haven’t used zbrush’s retopo tools, but I’ve heard good things about a program topogun. At that point you do the UV’s in maya, then bring the model back into zbrush for painting.