Zbrush

Has anyone used ZBrush with Unity and can you please provide example projects where you've used this application with Unity and how you would rate your overall experience?

We are exploring different 3D apps from Zbrush, Maya, 3D Studio Max, Blender, etc and then exporting/importing to Unity.

Any info you have would be great!

 

Zbrush is to be used in conjunction with a modeling program. I make the base mesh in Maya, then bring it into zbrush for detail work on the high poly version. Then generate a normal which I apply to the low poly model in Maya. Then I export the model into Unity. Therefore Zbrush never interacts with Unity directly. And Unity/Maya integration is great.

However, some people model their base meshes in Zbrush using zspheres, but I think that is really difficult and wouldn't recommend that approach.

 

That sounds like a really great technique. Do you have a sample of your work at all?

Also, is it Maya Complete or Unlimited that you are using? Would you recommend Maya over Max? Thanks

This has been very helpful.

 

I love Zbrush for painting textures and displacement maps, although it's kindof a pain since they haven't yet released the mac version of v3 (I run it in Parallels), they say it's coming out next month.

I use Blender for everything else. If you're not already invested in licenses and/or skills in Maya/3DS/etc.., do yourself a favor and jump into Blender. You can always buy into the commercial apps later, but you'll always find Blender a useful tool in your kit.

 

I am by no means a Zbrush expert, but I liked the way that you could take a quick snapshot of your Zbrush model, paint on that using Painter (or any other image editing program), and quickly see the result in Zbrush itself. Now, using a 2D paint tool to paint a model completely in this fashion is totally impractical, but you can get an idea of what the overall result will look like by getting some ideas down.

Now, I'd love to do all the painting in 3D to avoid having to deal with UV map distortion, but I haven't seen the natural results that Painter can provide in any 3D paint app yet. However, this makes me think that perhaps we'll be seeing more of that in the near future...

http://www.luxology.com/trymodo/landing/paint.aspx

That's about the most realistic render I've ever seen.