Zbrush and DAZ Studio workflow questions
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,641
I have some questions about using Zbrush with DAZ Studio, and since we still do not have a Zbrush forum, I figured I'd try and ask them all in one shot and hope someone more familiar with the workflow might be able to make suggestions. Thank you in advance for any help.
TEXTURES: In order to retain a DAZ texture on a mesh that's edited in Zbrush, would the following work?:
- Export from Studio using GoZ, subdivide to 12 million or so polygons in Zbrush, load the texture in Zbrush, then bake to Polypaint. When editing is complete, bake the Polypaint back to a texture before reducing the mesh's resolution. I know this will not create a texture that will work with other DAZ figures, but is it a workaround to retaining an existing texture on an edited Zbrush mesh?
CONFORMING: If clothing or other conforming items are made in Zbrush based on an imported DAZ figure, can the item be rigged and fitted properly (or made into a dForce item) *completely* within DAZ Studio? From what I understand, it can, but I have never done it myself.
DETAILS: Similar to the texture question above, if a DAZ figure is sent to Zbrush via GoZ and its resolution drastically increased, can *sculpted* skin detail be baked into a normal map that will be compatible with similar figures back in DAZ Studio? I know normals can be baked from geometry, but I don't remember at which point in the editing process do the UVs become incompatible.
ADDONS: If you want to create high-resolution but small edits to a figure, such as adding spikes or bones protruding from the skin, webbed hands, or such, can they be created on a high-res mesh and then be saved as detailed IMMs that can at least be fairly seamlessly added onto other figures brought into Zbrush? Is this done by masking the area containing what you want saved as the IMM or can it be created as a separate subtool from the figure?
Thanks again for any confirmation or corrections.
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Comments
Which figure? It would work (though you need to reverse the V coordinates to use maps in ZBrush compared to other applications - there is a button for this) with flat mapped items, but soemthing with stacked or UDIMed UVs you would want the original groups and GoZ from DS loses all grouping. Export to OBJ, then on import to ZBrush use the Mats as Groups option to get the model split into its original surface groups. You then need to hide all but one group before baking to or from PolyPaint.
Yes, if it's a morphed figure then you would need to set the Source Shape to match and enable Reverse Source From Target in the Transfer Utility.
Yes, just set the divisions back to 0 and bake to normals/displacement. The comments about flipping the V and hiding groups apply here too.
Not a feature I have used (pooor ZBrush is in the neglected applications corner, along with too many others). I'm not sure how well Zbrush would work for creating GeoGrafts.
My knowledge of ZBrush is limited but I would assume that Zbrush does not allow you to assign materials based on UV shells, but keeps the UV data of each mesh you import there intact ... since it's a sculpting app and not a 3D modelling or texturing app. What you can do is: You can import your subdivided mesh in Zbrush as obj which keeps the multi tile UV set intact. You can load the obj in a 3D modelling app of your choice, anything that can handle UV shells should suffice. You assign a material to every UV shell or group of UV shells as needed (ideally same as Studio does with G8, although you will notice eyemoisture and Cornea share the same UV shell) and export the obj. If you re-import to Studio, the assigned materials should be imported into Studio as individual material zones.
I know you asked whether you can bake a new texture from Zbrush but I think you will need DAZ textures as a source, right? I'm not sure whether this is practical when you want to texture your subdivided mesh for rendering purposes in Studio. Therefore wouldn't it be easier for you to stick with the original UV layout and use the original maps and shaders? I assume you only subdivided the mesh and did not add additional vertices or change the UV layout.
Thanks for replying. I've been sick for more than three weeks now and haven't actually experimented with these ideas much yet, they were mostly ideas I had while just lying around. :) I did try the texture one today on a G8F (create polygroups from UVs, merge similar polygroups, then subdivide to at least 4 million polygons, apply a texture one polygroup at a time, and then bake to polypaint) and that seemed to work. There still is no other way to assign separate textures to each polygroup? With all that Zbrush can do, I'm surprised that limitation still exists.
edit: do you happen to have a link to any tutorials showing the steps for taking simple clothing simple created in Zbrush and getting it to fit a G8/8.1 figure? Like I said, it's something I know can be done, but I've never tried it myself. Thanks.
I thought you had to keep the subdivision at it's highest before baking normal maps? Guess I need to take better notes.
Asari: Actually, I do want to heavily edit the mesh at some point, which is why I thought the baking to polypaint would be the only way to retain a DAZ texture map once geometry started changing.
I think Mec4D had a tutorial on using ZBrush for clothing creation, but it isn't a common choice - as far as I can tell people who don't use Marvellous Designer tend to use a polygon modeller. But the fact that the model came from ZBrush shouldn't change the steps in Daz Studio.
When baking you lower the divisions as it is the stuff that is in the unused divisions that gets baked to the map.
Is Marvelous Designer the primary clothing creation tool for PAs now? Because, and while I don't mean any disrespect...most of what I see come out of MD seems quite a bit more detailed than most of the clothing I have purchased here (and certainly elsewhere).
Thanks to you both for the information so far.
Marvellous Designer has features, such as stitching, which it can add live but which would be impractical to export to mesh for use in dForce. I think quite a lot of people use it, whether it is the primary tool I wouldn't care to guess.
I do have another question if you have time, probably an easy one but I'm not able to test it myself at the moment.
- If you want to work on a DAZ mesh in Zbrush that relies heavily on normal or displacement maps for it's look (like some creatures), can those maps be baked into the actual geometry at some point in the workflow between Studio and Zbrush?
I don't think it's possible to go from normal to actual mesh movement, it might be possible to bake a height map to geometry. This might be what you want http://docs.pixologic.com/reference-guide/tool/polymesh/displacement-map/