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Your Best Workflow Recommendations !!

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi All
I just started sculpting again and I am back learning how to create great characters with Zbrush 4R5. I need your very best opinion for sculpting and a final products for animation in Maya, XSI, Lightwave etc, as well game design and animation for games, texturing ect. I have gone through a lot of tutorials have found there are lots of ways to create charactors, so here are my questions:

I sculpted a character using zspheres, my base mesh a 1, is blocky but at 7 is fine with all the details, should I of exported it to Maya, etc in the base 1, and put edgeloops in the head area first then bring back with GoZ, OBJ, etc to have better geometry to work with as a 1, basemesh, then work up to higher subdivisions? I used UV Master and worked on a clone, but 1 base mesh was blocky and not projecting all the higher subdivsion details to UV map before I texture or poly paint.

What are the best steps to take? , for a good end result? create mesh in Maya? import as OBJ, sculpt, retopologize, texture,

Just start with Dyanmesh first?

What the very best steps to take in Retopolygizing? QRemesher, vs Retro with a Zsphere in Zbrush? or another program like 3d Coat etc?

What your workflows? What works for you?

Sorry for all the questions, but I need your valuable impute and help !!

Thank You

Tim C

#2

Workflow all depends on the end goal.

If you want to work on a character that has a pre built rig, or a series of characters that are going to share a rig then I build a mesh (or grab one of my base meshes) and use that as a guide for all of my joints, etc. Your mesh can be made using Zspheres, Dynamesh, modeled in another application, etc, it really doesn’t matter how your mesh comes around these days.

I tend to work in Zbrush for the brunt of my work. I start with dynamesh, get my forms, etc then I use Qremesher on a duplicate, subD the mesh up and project my details so I can have my subD levels to work more efficiently. Play dress up for a while then move on to retopo. When working in a pipeline I tend to have a base mesh built out already and I just bind that to my new mesh. If it is something new, or a one off character/creature than I retopo from scratch here. At this stage I am about mid to upper mid level details on my mesh. I wait until I have proper edge flow to add the little details like, pores, skin wrinkles, etc. I add hair planes, etc at this stage as well. After all the retopo is done I unwrap. Once this is completed I take my highpoly sculpted pieces and decimate them for export for the baking process. I bake all of my maps and then start the texturing process. I usually have base/quick textures done in polypaint that are also baked. I prefer to work in a UV environment rather than polypaint because I can ensure that the detail level I am painting will be seen in the final texture output, as well as getting the use of layer styles, layers, groups, masks, etc.

Basically, here is a breakdown of a workflow.
Zbrush or Modo for basemesh(s)
Zbrush for mid level sculpt
Zbrush for clothing, accesories, etc (some Modo, anything I can do faster in Modo than Zbrush is done in Modo)
Zbrush for decimation for retopo
3d-coat for retopo (mostly quads)
Zbrush projections and clean up
Zbrush for final sculpt details, etc
Zbrush for decimation for baking and final game retopo (tris all over the place)
Modo for final UV layout
xNormal for baking
Handplane for object space to tangent space translation
3d-coat and Photoshop (& dDo) for textures.

I hope that makes sense and is helpful.