Human Modeling: Zbrush over conventional technique

[stage-gr]

if your model is about to be animated you can't avoid topology issues...
but yes, you can model (sculpt to be exact) a full human figure in a sculpting software such as zbrush without paying the least attention to loops and stuff. Even the simplest base mesh can be turned into a figure.

...and you can retopo once you're done with it :D

[PorkpieSamurai]

I find you need to have decent topology (ie minimal tris and 5 sided faces) to avoid poles and spikes in your zbrush model.

[Baothebuff]

It's a mix of both. You can sculpt and not worry about topology but having a good topology makes it easier to sculpt. Ie, keeping the poly's consistent and staying away from triangles or thin long polys give you a cleaner mesh to work on and yeild less artifacts. This is true when you can't subdivide your mesh to super high res to power through all those artifacts. In the end, if you want to do something with your model, such as rigging or animating, you need some pretty decent loops. So you can't forget your traditional modeling techniques entirely. You just don't have to do as much pre-planning when you're starting your model as you can just re-topo later on.

[A.Baroody]

Having good topology from the start is always a good idea. It can be difficult to repoto after a mesh gets very detailed... especially in tight crevaces such as in between toes, fingers, inner mouth, armpits, and situations where fat over laps. Reprojecting new topology can cause more work than its woth sometimes.

It is always best to start with good topology.

Of course as with everything, a bit of both is more ideal. You can start with a fairly well thought out topology, and still find yourself wanting more out of your geometry. The best is to start out with good topo from the start, rough sculpt it close to the final shape without overly detailing areas and creating fatty overlaps or overly tight or hard to get into areas. Retopo that... and then keep sculpting, creating those fatty overlaps etc.

[NickCaligo42]

Yeah, no, you still need to worry. Zbrush can detail models beautifully and crank out concepts and digital makettes REALLY fast, but in pure technical terms to make an animatable character you need the precise technical control that a program like Maya gives you over the mesh.

To give you an idea, I did a modeling experiment for one of my game classes testing the practicality of using ZBrush as a "shortcut" for modeling organic characters. I made a REALLY basic basemesh of an alien duck in Maya (like 500 polys, maybe even less), UV Mapped it, then took it into ZBrush, subdivided it, and sculpted it into roughly what I wanted to see. I painted a texture on the highest subdivision level, exported it, and applied it to one of the lower levels--such that the model ended up having 2000 triangles and showed all the geometric detail of the duck I wanted. I then took the 2000 poly duck back into Maya, made sure the texture worked, and exported it to my game.

The undesirable results:
-The duck's texture was screwed up because of the way the subdivided version worked with ZBrush's painted texture and the original UV map. It ended up leaving a small amount of space that was just enough to put visible seams in the model's texture.
-The topology was, to say the least, lousy. Those 2000 polys didn't make much difference as far as the game's performance went, but they also didn't make any difference as far as the quality of the model went either. I eventually re-made it in Maya and achieved the same level of topological detail with just 730 polygons. It was also FASTER to achieve that level of detail just off the bat than it was to sculpt it in ZBrush.

Even if you CAN substitute ZBrush sculpting for a lot of vertex pulling, it doesn't make it a good idea. I don't know what your goals with ZBrush'd be, but I'd hoped to nail down a Maya-ZBrush workflow that'd yield exactly the poly count I wanted, and no matter what it doesn't ever work out exactly the way you intend. For all ZBrush's power it can't give you the ability to make cuts exactly where you want on the mesh.

Hope this was informative.

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