Planning my 3D education

[Joseph_Ferano]

Hello everyone. I guess this is the best place for a nub to ask some questions in order to organize my studies.

I am not a total noob. I already know my way around ZBrush and have been working with anatomy tuts to get some nice models. However, I am still a long ways away from my goal of game content creation. Right now I can say that I am able to sculpt, but that’s about it. I also plan on updating to ZBrush 4 so I will be learning the new tools available.

Now, on to my questions;

With the retopologizing and polypainting tools found in ZBrush, do I ever have to get into Maya for anything other than rigging and animation?

To better explain, I am not an artist. I can’t draw for the life of me. I love ZBrush because I can just draw directly on it, so to speak. So I am not interested in base meshes with Maya where I would have to first draw out the content. Whatever part of the workflow requires Maya, I will need to add that to my study plan.

Can I take a model from start to finish in ZBrush and make it statically game engine ready? Does the retopologize tool work well enough to make a low poly character?

This ties back into the first question. I know people have achieved great results with polypaint and generating normal maps from the high res detail, however, I don’t know if people are using the retopo tool in ZBrush or if they are using another 3D application. If I can do this in ZBrush and save myself the trouble of learning this facet of Maya, then great. If the retopo tools of Maya are far more superior, please let me know.

That’s pretty much the gist of it. Now that I know how to sculpt fairly well, I just need to start getting into polypaint and then doing the eventual retopology for game content. So if y’all have any tips or can answer any of my previous questions, I would truly appreciate your help.

Thanks a bunch! Take care.

[goast666]

What you’re asking is basically a personal workflow option, or could be more in balance with a studio that you’re trying to get a job working for.

Some people prefer the topo tools inside of zbrush, others don’t. Some people prefer polypainting in zbrush, others don’t. Some people prefer baking in Zbrush, others don’t.

It all really comes down to what works best and fastest for you. If you can retopo faster and more efficiently in zbrush, then by all means, work in zbrush, if you can retopo faster in topogun, modo, 3dcoat, etc, then use that application. The problem isn’t always about learning a new program, it’s about learning the facets of that program to do what you want it to do, faster.

You can make a completely game ready mesh inside of Zbrush, but I don’t recommend it. Zbrush’s UV tools are not the best for actual game content. The baking system in Zbrush isn’t very forgiving either…in my opinion. The layer painting system in zbrush is kinda half ass as well.

Don’t get me wrong here. I love Zbrush as a sculpting tool, I even love polypainting, but I hate the layer system as it stands right now. As an artists tool Zbrush is amazing and nearly everything you could want from a program. As A technical tool…not so much (which is great to me). I use modo for retopo and UVs, xnormal for baking and Maya for animation. PS, modo and Zbrush for texture work. This toolset gives me the fastest workflow that I have found to date. Mari may get added to that set for texture work and I am also looking into picking up topogun for certain aspects of retopo as well.

But to answer your question, everything can be done in Zbrush, but the question you need to ask is…should it?

[Joseph_Ferano]

First of all, thank you for replying.

Yeah, it is a personal workflow question, I first have to take into account my lack of drawing skills, which immediately makes ZBrush an ideal candidate for base meshes. However, like you have pointed out, retopo and painting are different matters and several apps are available so I can pick and choose.

The thing that I realized while reading your post is that I will never know which one of those apps is better unless I have two points of comparison. So I will never know if Modo, topogun, or any other app is better unless I learn how crappy the tool in ZBrush is, if it is crappy at all.

However, you did answer my question. And the important part about that is that now I can plan my training so I can focus entirely on ZBrush to start off (or continue doing since I already started). Then I can skip most of the Maya training and head straight to rigging and animation. Of course, I will attempt to learn the general basics of all Maya features, but I will try and just brush over that (which I already have started) so I can focus more on the aforementioned topics.

Once I have understood how to use ZBrush exclusively, then I will look at other applications to see which could help me speed my workflow up.

One step at a time.