Looking good TDW, you can use zbrushes UV master then tweek in maya..........dave

So if I want to import that model into ZBrush, how would I best do it? It would be really cool, if there was a way to import the whole model at once and have it being seperated into several subtools in ZBrush. Is that possible or will I have to export/ import every single piece of the model, which might be a pain, the more complex a model gets.

Also, I always hear about those Maya to ZBrush pipelines. Is there something like that for ZBrush 4 and where could I get it?

EDIT: Problem solved!!! Just found out about that GoZ thingy and its plain awesome!!!:happy:


TDW;)

I'm going to take my model into ZBrush now. But before I will have to make the UVs. I'm not sure though wether I should better make those beforehand in Blender or Maya or do it in ZBrush. I don't want to have per face UVs, cause I might want to do some post production in photoshop lateron.

Anyway, I got some further questions, before I start:

1. I always see that most artists have just one texture for a full model. Doesn't this mean the resolution of the character will rather be very poor in the end. As I want my character to be used for a render only, I'd prefer to have it more detailed and high res. So should I rather make a single UV map for every piece of the character?

2. My character is a tiger, which means it will have fur and I was asking myself what would be the best way to do this. Tetxure, fibre brush, particles or polygonal fur. Never done this before, so I could use some advice.

3. How to handle small objects like rivets and such. Better have them as a model or just use alphas in ZBrush to drag them out of the given geometry?


TDW;)

Well, I decided to dump that stupid armor and work on the body of the tiger first, cause it looked like crap. I will lateron extract some armor from the body and add some further clutter to it.

I just began adding some loose clay brush strokes. Doing this from mind without any reference, cause I thought it didn't need to be hyperrealistic when it is covered with fur lateron anyway. So I'm mainly concentrating on getting the proportions right now. Haven't worked with ZBrush in a long time, kinda relearning now while character is in progress! :p

Current polycount is about 330.000

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/7616/zbrush001.jpg

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/5104/zbrush002.jpg


TDW ;)

Looks kinda mean even without armour!

Yeah, it's supposed to be a badass, looking kinda stupid without any teeth at the monet though. How would you guys go about the teeth, rather make a single model or sculpt it all in at a higher subdivision level?

Update, still 330.00 polies, going to next subdivision level now...

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/4646/tiger0001.jpg
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/9171/tiger002.jpg
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/2059/tiger003.jpg
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/9729/tiger004.jpg


TDW ;)

I dont think it matters does it?? do the teeth in Maya or Z...LOL you probably looked funny without teeth too mate...I did...LOL. Still looks good mate

cheers bullet

You can make the teeth either way. It really just depends on what you're planning on using the model for? Just practice? Or are you hoping to animate this piece?

Obviously you can just retopo and sculpted teeth, but if you need them as their own model for animation/rendering purposes at the end of the pipeline, it might just be worth modeling them now, and saving the extra step of retopo later.

this is a cool base mesh. you should get more proportion refs online and make some changes to the proportions and muscle definition,
for instance the elbow to shoulder length seems way too short, and the legs muscles look off [comparing to human musculature]
i would flesh out the neck/sternal mastoid areas too
but its a good start. keep it up

@bullet1968: Lol, yeah, no teeth no fun!!! :p

@Mayaniac: I was planning on using the model for a nice highpoly render and maybe combine it with a photoshoped environment or matte painting. I', not that good at animating yet.

@septopus: I see what you mean. Wasn't using any ref until now, but as I'm at about 5 Mio. polies now and topology of the model becomes a bit more workable, I might tweak all that.

Here I began with some detailing. Eventually I will make the facial hair kinda seethrough and let it fade into the fur on the head smoothly. I thought it would be a waste to just cover all.

http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/9079/5mio.jpg


TDW ;)

I began with polypainting now, no idea what I'm doing though. Am I supposed to apply only colors or proceed like with a digital painting, like adding shadow and highlights and whatnot? The final model will get some fur in Maya lateron, but I'll expose some parts of the body, like face, chest, abdomen, hands and feet.

Btw, is Maya's fur in anyway dependand on the UVs or could I just scale down such UVs that are covered by fur anyway and have those which are exposed a bit larger???


TDW ;)

Sadly had to end this WIP at this stage. Have some technical issues in ZBrush that I wasn't able to fix. Here's some quick Photoshop edit the Character.


TDW ;)

Wow that is cool mate! Finished! damn....

That's a pretty sweet action pose, wouldn't mind seeing the head a bit lager. The texture screams lizard more than Tiger at the moment. But nice overall.

What technical issues are you having?

I was planning on having most of the body covered wit maya fur, but as the mesh's toplogy got corrupted very badly, it turned out not so nicely.

I made some mistakes on the base mesh, forgot to store morph target and some other things. Now mesh is so bad, that I cannot get any proper UVs done and due to that not texture maps. I made a full retopo of the character and tried to project the details from the highpoly sculpt onto that. It kept destroying my retopo each time. Lately I was told that I have to approach the projection piece by piece instead at once, like I did. I'll try it once again out of curiosity, but several days of troubleshooting got me kinda tired with this project. Guess I'll rather start a new one, paying attention to my recent mistakes.


TDW ;)