ZBrushCentral

Turning a high poly Zbrush Sculpt into an animation ready Maya model

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’m having a lot of trouble with this. I’ve searched a lot of sites and watched videos, but still can’t get it quite right. Can anyone help me understand the process used to make this happen correctly? I just want to create what’s in my head but its very unintuitive.

I’ll list my pipeline so you can better follow my thinking and spot any faults.

  1. Create simple base mesh in Maya. (No problems)
  2. Export as .obj to Zbrush. (No problems)
  3. Sculpt and refine details. (No problems)
  4. Retopolgize Mesh (No problems)
  5. Create displacement map (Unsure)
  6. Create normal maps (Unsure)

My problem lays in step 5-6.

I was following Alex Alverez’s Jester tutorial and it’s a great aid, but it only shows how to use normal maps to create a still image. (The mesh he brought into maya was way too high for animation). He briefly talks about using displacement maps to get the mesh high poly enough for a normal map, but never goes into detail. Can anyone shed some light on this?

#2

I made a video for this exact thing since it gets asked so often, only I send my models to 3ds Max to render. The process is essentially the same, so the video should help clear some of the fog, then you can supplement a few things to gear it toward a Maya workflow.

http://www.vimeo.com/6674655

NOTE: I’m using ZBrush 3.1 in the video.