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ZBrush for hard surface creation in production - Workflow question

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,
I just tried ZBrush to create a hard surface object, a Satnav.

I’m just curious as to whether people are using it to create hard surface objects like satnavs, watches etc… Which then need to be rendered with packages like mental ray/VRay? And what kind of workflow they employ…

The challenges I faces were trying to get accurate straight lines, without using the help of zapplink… (I ended up zapplink to get the straight lines, by polypainting then inflating areas +vely or -vely). The brushes with stroke wouldn’t give accurate results… (As accurate as I would have liked)

Once I had that I tried using spotlight to project decals and they turned out blurry, it was good for areas that didn’t require too much detail.

In the end I had to retopologise the mesh to have all quads, UV master was great for the UVs.

Now to render with mental ray/vray, it looks like I will have to use displacement/normal mapping… As my low res meshes just don’t capture all the details. Or remodel the mesh from scratch using traditional poly modelling in Maya/Max.

Hence my question with regards to whether anyone is using ZB for objects like satnavs, phones, watches, which will be rendered in Mental ray/Vray, it seems its more work going the ZB route for these things. Unless I’m missing the point somewhere…

Anything people would like to share on this is much appreciated.

#2

I don’t realy think you are missing the point. I’m new to Blender and come from a brief background with Blender and have been working with the hard surface tools the ZB 4 offer, such as shadowbox, the cliping and polish type brushes. I have mixed emotions concerning the identicle questions. Shadowbox quickly enables you to get the base mesh of almost any kind of form including those with holes at the expense of a heavy polygon count and with triangles in the majority of those models. The triangles prevent decimation so if you need to get the polycount down your almost forced to retopo everything if exporting and rendering like your intending. In that same amount of time it seems you could build the model originally in one of the polygonal modeling programs. On the other hand Zbrush now has pretty good renderer now so depending on what your trying to do The rendering could be done in ZB. With hard srface models that aren’t intended to be animated, other than at joints you will probably build in, the triangles and high polycont aren’t really important. So bottom line it depends on what your intentions are for the model/scene/work that your doing as to which way to go. I’ve been having the same issues with the ‘blurry’ using spotlight also. I figured it was my inexperience.

#3

Thanks for sharing your experience Ezra… I was banging my head against walls thinking that there was something wrong with my workflow… Nice to see there is another person experiencing the same challenges… :slight_smile: