Hi, I have a question, that on the surface of it, doesn’t sound directly appropriate for a Zbrush forum,…but I’ll maintain that it is, since the majority of people using this software intend to integrate their models into some kind of animated production or game…okay…At the company I work at,…we all love the phase where we get to just sculpt out the form of the characters, tree trunks, whatever it is…Zbrush is an elegant solution to making form, no doubt…after that things start to go downhill a bit…we have to rebuild the meshes to be optimized for the engine,…thanks to a tool called “NEX” for Maya, this really isn’t so bad,…honestly, I don’t mind doing it…I’ve found it to be faster, more elegant than the zsphere rebuild solution currently available in zbrush…ok,…so after this phase is where the pain starts for me…I’m using Maya 8.0 to layout UV’s and honestly it just feels a bit stone age, slow and tedious, although having “unfold UV” is certainly a step in the right direction…So, my question to this community, would be to take a consensus and get opinions on what is the fastest, most elegant piece of software for dealing with this task…I know perfection in this area of CG is far from attained,…but perhaps I’m still not up on the best available option…
Okay, so we aren’t finished there…Its been the attitude of my co-workers, and from what I’ve observed, that the normal maps generated out of Maya seem to have less problems with seams than that of Z-Mapper, and the end result tends to be more dimensional,…some how the normal maps we are getting out of Z-Mapper tend to be a little flat; not incorrect, just sortof more bump map like…maybe we are all doing it wrong…the problem with working in maya, is that it can only handle so many poly’s and getting a map without artifacts can sometimes mean generating dozens of partial maps and making a final composite in photoshop…painful, not fun, just wondering what is the consensus on the best option available…
Lastly, we generate Ambient Occlusion in a similar way that we do with our Normal maps, which is the runner up in tediousness…
what I’m getting at, is that I know there are a ton of packages out there, Maya plug-ins, a new Modo, ect…but with tight deadlines goin on I don’t have time to test them all and find out for myself, so if anyone can point me in the right direction, it would be Greatly appreciated.
thanks,
Josh
