Sculptris to ZBrush to Messiah

[trancer65]

Testing/learning a workflow from originally sculpting in Sculptris to retopologizing in ZBrush to point animation in Messiah.

Attachments:

[wasa]

lol I just love to see a $600 sculpting app turned into a topo tool for a free sculpting app
reminds me of Taron turning $900 Lightwave into a low poly modeler lol (I'm sure he uses it for more than just that)

[polyhertz]

Must have a lot of free time on your hands to use ZBrush for retopolozing...Well, its mesh projection is nice at least

[crispy4004]

The projection has its problems, but you can always bake a displacement map or normal map out of xnormal instead.

The real problem with Zbrush's retopo is that it's plan and simple terrible to work with. I'd even take Maya's live function over Zbrush topo, which is by no means a good alternative. I've been using NEX tools quad draw for a while now and I'm satisfied, though topogun would be good to pickup.

[taron]

LOL, nope I don't use Lightwave for more than that... but I do truely love it for that, too! ;D

Zbrush's retopo isn't bad at all. I've just taken a quick look at it and it worked beautifully. Some people just can't contain themselves when they are not happy with something. Crispy, you can say that you don't like it, that's perfectly fine, but it's not exactly a sign of wisdom to decide what the rest of the world has to think about it. I normally wouldn't be too bothered by it, but in that case it's just not true.

Just on a personal note, it's always a good move to separate personal opinion from generalized statement. You can say that Zbrush is different then most applications and that's a general statement that is correct. But you should not make one that claims Zbrush to be bad or terrible. That's your personal take and only shows that you were expecting something easier for your way of working.

By the way, I've heard great things about blender's retopo tools. Never used them myself, but they seem to be very likable.

[sanc]

I am not very used to retopology, but i confirm that Blender retopo is extremely easy to use and very capable with multiple retopo method appliable (project subdivided planes, extrude projected edges, faces , vertice or just paint edge that will project on the mesh).
I found it a very intuitive part of Blender.

Even with my little Blender skill and my extremely small experience in retopology i was able to retopo with Blender a full body sculpted from Sculptris without much problems.

Here is a video i found about Blender retopo that shows several of the retopo methods offered :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGPwdqENWJo

[markjoel60]

Well, I usually use Silo to retopo... but that is more because I know it well and am used to it. I guess if you like laying down a new retopology -- point by point -- zBrush is OK. Certainly if your end result is to use zBrush to create a bump or normal map, it makes sense. The mesh projection is cool, because you can see how the underlying mesh supports the higher detail.

But, of all of the things zBrush does well, I think it is safe to say that retopology is not one of their better features. It feels very much like a bolt-on.

As for Blender... actually, I think the shrink-wrap modifier -- combined with an ultra low poly mesh like Taron builds -- would probably be really fast. Just take the mesh, and wrap it over the model...

Also, the new Blender 2.5 has a grease pencil that has a lot of possibilities. Here is a video that shows how it can be used to draw in new retopology lines... Of course, this is still in Alpha, but some really exciting possibilities are coming in the Blender world, that's for sure:
vimeo.com/10715723