maya zbrush hard surface workflow

6 replies [Last post]
User offline. Last seen 1 year 31 weeks ago.
Posts: 11

Hello friends,

I am really going to freak out because of this workflow. The main problem is how to keep harder edges, while maintaining evenly distributed polygons. I watched tens of tutorials, read guides etc about this topic but i cant figured it out exactly. I need some really good hints. For example last night i watched a tutorial about preserving the hard edges with the crease tool in zbrush. It really worked well in zbrush. I did my sculpting exactly like what i want but the problem occured in the maya part. When i exported my creased low level object in maya , put disp map on it, created mr approximation etc. render was horrible. Here my workflow with pictures;

Zbrush everything looks fine;

Image preview

My polygroups with creases around them in Zbrush looks fine too;

Image preview

And this is the bad Maya Render;

Image preview

 

Also here are some of the workflows i tried in this hard surface sculpting situation and didnt get any good results;
1-It is so much easier to use edge loops to define my hard(ish) edges. Out of the box, this method doesn't work with ZBrush very well, because you end up with unevenly distributed geometry.
2-I have experimented with turning smooth off when subdividing the mesh for the first couple of times, but sometimes it leads to hard edges (or sudden transitions in surface) in places where I didn't mean to have them. Also this method affects all the visible hard edges on the object so you cant decide which edges you want to keep hard on your own.
3-The last method is the method i told in the above paragraph; polygroups with creases.

I am really looking for your tips and tricks. Thank you in advance.

User offline. Last seen 2 years 23 weeks ago.
Posts: 5

Nvm I see what it's doing now.... Delete history. freeze transforms. export it out as an OBJ then reopen it. it seems like it's exploding the models based off of your poly groups. first i've seen this so i'm not honestly sure what'll fix it.

Also what did your base mesh look like?

User offline. Last seen 8 weeks 6 days ago.
Posts: 18

i think you should check this out...http://vimeo.com/9473973

User offline. Last seen 4 hours 21 min ago.
Administrator
Posts: 4182

To preserve hard edges you can either add control loops close to the edges the mesh that you want them stay hard when subdivided or you can import using the the SmoothGroup Import plugin for ZBrush (though its not availiable for Z4 yet)

 

Hope that helps

hard_edges.jpg
User offline. Last seen 1 year 31 weeks ago.
Posts: 11

metalliandy wrote:

To preserve hard edges you can either add control loops close to the edges the mesh that you want them stay hard when subdivided or you can import using the the SmoothGroup Import plugin for ZBrush (though its not availiable for Z4 yet)

 

Hope that helps

 

this method doesn't work with ZBrush very well, because you end up with unevenly distributed geometry.

User offline. Last seen 8 weeks 6 days ago.
Posts: 18

have you checked my link above? its by far the most practical

User offline. Last seen 1 year 31 weeks ago.
Posts: 11

yes i checked it and ill try it. it looks good. thank you strontium.

This Post needs Your Comment!

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
CAPTCHA
Are you human?