Hi!!!
Right now I’m working with Maya and Zbrush, and my goal is to achieve realistic models, while modeling my base mesh in maya, what im doing right now is spending enough time to get the model to an almost final state to then be imported into zbrush for fine details.
i know is possible to get a rough mesh from maya into zbrush and work it out to the final state so, shoud i continue as i am or you think i shoulnt spend so much time in maya?
I go for speed, so I make box men base meshes with good geometry. I think of the gross shapes as squares. then import. I’m more zbrush savvy so is just faster for me to smooth, pose and shape in Z. You can even take it back to wherever and add more geometry. then reimport again.
mmm. yes I know what you mean, is a lot faster like that.
so you say, base in maya - overall modeling in zbrush - and then match it with the actor references in maya?
There’s a lot more to it, but the basic workflow is there. When doing the majority of your modeling in ZB you will probably have to re-toplogize, and then bounce that out to setup the UVs in what ever package you want, I personally like the workflow of using the pelting-tool plugin for Maya, then bouncing it to UV mapper then back into Maya for some final setup and tweaks. Good paintable UV’s are essential especially for Mental Ray and Renderman. Also good Topology makes rigging the model more realistic and easier to paint the weights.
Good topology and UVs are important but one of the great things about Zbrush is being able to work creatively in a very short period of time. Don’t lose sight of that!
Consider working in Zbrush with completely arbirtary geometry then retopologizing and unwrapping as needed – and it will be needed. 
A lot of people these days just throw polys at their Zbrush mesh and then rebuild a clean base when they’re ready (myself included). With the Project/ProjectAll tools in Zbrush you rarely lose work at any sDiv level.
I just posted some wires of my workflow between Maya and Zbrush in my Sketchbook if it helps:
http://209.132.96.165/zbc/showthread.php?p=545233#post545233
Hey thanks for your opinions, this is really helping me meka up my mind.
hey nice models Josh.
another question, lets say you are modeling a character that requires of realistic accuracy, using pictures from a live model. then the best aproach would be to model in maya, refine in zbrush and then back to maya.
Or exporting a low res from zbrush to maya, matching it with the references and back to zbrush would work?
(Sorry for my bad writing, my english grammar is not so good )
Both of those would work as you can use some form of image plane references in both Zbrush and Maya. I’m more comfortable with image planes in Maya and do that when needed but there is some amazing work here at ZBC created in Zbrush alone.
I would recommend keeping an eye on your output. Prerendered in Zbrush, prerendered in Maya/Max/XSI or low-res game all have different outputs and you’ll want to build and maintain a pipeline to that output as early in the modeling process as possible.
My point before is that Zbrush can be used as a conceptual dev tool as well as a modeling tool. You can also tell that as a game artist I don’t spend much time dealing with or striving for “realsitic accuracy” so some other people might chime in on this one? 