Zbrush noob seeking help in making models ready for a game engine.

Deadman1020

Hi my name is Fabian Els and I am learning Zbrush though Digital tutors, I can make decent looking models I'm told but they are so high poly I doubt they would be usable in a game engine so I was hoping some kind knowledgeable individual might be willing to have a chat with me on skype, if you have the patience here is my skype name, Fabian Els.

Here are some models I've made so you can judge for yourself.

http://www.makegamessa.com/utility/thumbnail/1958/FileUpload/0c/27ecf6ee6cf15e048d90d4b6d1cbe6.jpg

http://www.makegamessa.com/utility/thumbnail/1959/FileUpload/2b/1b421d735ed45c20d481630dfc7489.jpg

http://www.makegamessa.com/utility/thumbnail/1960/FileUpload/cb/f55f1f1a30f8232839ba18689dc585.jpg

http://www.makegamessa.com/utility/thumbnail/1961/FileUpload/e7/460a998cbc8c32205b4d87493430a7.jpg

shanemarks

If I may ask, how long have you been sculpting for? Your work shows promise, but I think your time would be better spent focusing on anatomy studies, and general design principles. Focusing on learning how to retopologise will only detract you from your end goal, if you are really keen on creating character art.

As for "decent" models,have a look at this artist: https://www.facebook.com/chevonleoart He is a South African zbrush artist (currently working for a AAA studio in the states now I think). This is kind of the benchmark you should be aiming for. Note that to get to this point takes YEARS of practice (also working with real clay helps

Elyaradine

If the only thing you use is ZBrush, you're going to have quite a lot of trouble getting your models to be ready for use in a game engine.

• Game engines don't read ZBrush polypaint. You'll have to transfer your polypaint to a texture using some kind of baking process.
  
• ZBrush does an okay job creating lower-polygon models via ZRemesher, but unless you're targeting a super high-end machine, you're likely going to have to do this manually. ZBrush does offer retopology tools (it's some process that uses drawing of ZSpheres for each vert you want to place), but it's really slow, and to my knowledge it's one of the slowest ways to do it. (Other programs do it better, like the tools in 3ds Max, 3D Coat and Topogun, although I imagine there are free alternatives.) You may be tempted to use ZRemesher, but that gives you topology for sculpting; the mesh you get from that is, in most cases, still too high to be used in a game engine. Decimation Master is pretty great for static objects, but you can't use that on the in-engine game characters.
  
• ZBrush sort of does UVs for you via UVMaster, but their algorithm prioritises having low distortion and few seams over optimizing your usage of texture space. I'd pretty strongly recommend learning to UV properly, i.e. not using ZBrush and it's automatic UVs.
  
• If you're only doing characters, a bit of experience rigging and animating could be beneficial for helping you learn what your topology should look like for clean deformations.

All in all, if you're going to be making game-ready models, you'll probably have to pick up another piece of software that's more focused on polymodelling, because that's really not what ZBrush's strength is. Blender, 3ds Max, Maya, modo, etc. Learn to retopologise, learn to UV, and learn to bake your details from your sculpt onto your lowpoly mesh.

Having said all of that, if you're enjoying sculpting, I'd recommend that you just keep sculpting, but keep studying anatomy, doing studies of classical sculpts, studies of cloth, studies of animals, and just include a whole lot of studying as the majority of your practising. Another useful thing is to look for concept art that's already been done by professional concept artists that they've released for free, and just do sculpts of their work, transferring their 2D designs into the 3D space. That still requires some artistic interpretation, but it frees you up a bit in that a lot of the design work of making things appealing has already been done for you, and practising that can give you a better feel for what "good" and "bad" design looks like, that you can eventually carry across into your own work.

You will have to learn the lowpoly+baking stuff at some point, but I wouldn't want you to lose yourself in these technical details and being distracted from practising being an artist.

--
An example of one of my better anatomy studies:


And a study from one of my co-workers:
http://alifarsangi.blogspot.com/2015/02/blog-post.html

Deadman1020

Thanks for the advice!