Maya 2012 Weight Painting and Zbrush 4 drama... Help Please!! +pics

[Ngozi Faith]

Hello, I'm closer to understanding mesh but I keep hitting road blocks that are driving me crazy. I've searched for solutions and came up with nothing..

 

Issue #1.)

I make the model/uv's in Maya 2012 then i export it to Zbrush 4 for sculpting then back to Maya for rigging. I lower the divisions down to 1 before exporting the model back to Maya otherwise it takes forever to export to .dae and wont it upload to SL.

 When I import the model to Maya when i try using the smooth option the model looks jagged after exporting, so I use the soften edges option. The model smooths out but loses all details (stitching seams, ect.)

 

 

this is how it looks after exporting the model to maya.

 

this is how it looks after softening the edges, notice how it lost all detail

 

What I could be doing wrong to lose all the sculpting details. I've searched for a solution and came up with nothing.

 

Issue # 2.) After I rig a model and start painting the weights I've noticed these specks in the mesh that cant be painted. They look like gaps in the mesh that I cant paint and even when i try to erase areas that Maya pre weighed I still cant seem to erase completely.

Has this happened to anyone and if so whats the best solution? I'm afraid this will be the 20th mesh model that I'll have to discard since I cant figure out whats going on.

 

Thanks in advanced and Happy Holidays :]

 

[Rahkis Andel]

Stop completely.

Your shirt is a jagged mess of triangles, and without ALL it's Subdivisions it is always going to look and act exactly like a jagged mess of triangles no matter what you do.

You haven't found an answer to your problem, because what you are experencing is exactly the expected behavior of Zbrush: You make an incredibly dense mesh and sculpt equally incredible detail into it. The end product is something beautiful that you can render out and admire, but is patently useless for anything else.

Just because Zbrush requires no foreknowledge to use doesn't mean you can use it to spit out game-ready models at will.

Topology is the key. Learn it anyway you can. Don't try this again until you understand what you did wrong.

[Ngozi Faith]

Thanks for your reply. So are you suggesting that I stop using Zbrush all together? Unfortunately I still don't know exactly what I'm doing wrong... but I guess I'll continue to search for solutions.

[Dilbert Dilweg]

He/she is Not suggesting that at all. A lot of designers design using high poly like you do. But you have to learn retopology and make your mesh more feasable for game assets. .. low poly... It is best pratice to make the mesh high poly then create a low poly game asset from the high poly mesh .

Learn how to decimate and use Zbrushes retopology tools

I use blender but this video will give you an idea about retopology

 

and in this thread you will see on this page this user created a mesh and had a lot of triangles on this page http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Mesh/PROBLEM-MESH-HELP-ME/td-p/1768087

and on this image  another user retopologised it

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/102095i3A50420CA08B412C/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&px=-1

 

Topology and low poly is important for game asset building

[Dilbert Dilweg]

Something Also I think you should see is how this girl made this dress. She did an awesome Job Keeping Topology in mind. Using somewhat of a retopology method to model, keeping it low poly and very nice. Very intuitive

Modeling like this eliminates your need of retopo. Zbrush can do this and Maya should also be able to .

 

 

[Ngozi Faith]

Thank you! I'll definitely look through these tutorials/threads.

[Nacy Nightfire]

You can also avoid retopologizing by creating a very low, but organized all quad poly mesh in Maya and then exporting that as an obj to import into Zbrush.  From there you can subdivide the mesh to get the density you need for sculpting details  and then make a displacement map to capture the details you've created.  I don't use Maya so I can't give you instructions on the next step which is applying the displacement map back in Maya, but check out Zbrush Central's forum, that will be a goldmine of info for just what you want to do.  Try using the search "low poly game assets".

[Ngozi Faith]

Thanks for the tip! I hear people say 3ds Max is easier to work with Zbrush than Maya but my pc wont let me install it. Anyone had issues installing 3ds 2012/2013? I'll continue searching for a solution.

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Ngozi Faith wrote:

Anyone had issues installing 3ds 2012/2013? I'll continue searching for a solution.

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No idea where you'd get the 2012 version in a legal way. To my best knowledge Autodesk only offers the latest version and licenses normally aren't transferrable.

If you are having problems installing 3ds Max 2013, contact Autodesk 3ds Max Services & Support, top of the screen.

[Porky Gorky]

You should definetely contact support if you have spent $3000 to $4000 USD on a piece of software that you cannot instal properly! That would definitely have have been my first port of call rather than asking here.

I had a license problem when I had to transfer a copy of Max from one computer to another and their customer support bent over backwards to help me, I was extremely impressed with them.