Zbrush Workflow Question

[L04D3D]

Hi, I am having difficulty understanding the workflow from zbrush to udk, basically i've got some high poly models 4 or 5 million polys that i'm trying to somehow convert to use in udk, first problem I run into is the uv mapping, zbrush uv mapping isn't very good, so do you have to uv map in 3ds max? cause i'm not sure how i can take a 5 mil poly model to 3ds max, it crashes at anything over 150k faces. so anyway thats the first problem. once that is sorted out i still have a 5 mil poly character that i can't use with udk which leads me to the second question, how do you get details from your high poly mesh onto a low poly mesh, i've tried so many different methods that i'm starting to burn out. basically decimation master isn't recommended, right? cause you end up with bad topology. then you have dynamesh wich can more or less evenly distribute polygons throughout your model, ok so then you dynamesh and project all to get the detail, sounds good, but it doesn't work cause you end up with a mesh that looks like it was made by a two year old, ok so that doesn't work, third method-- you retopologize manually in zbrush and then project all, but this ends up with the same results as the dynamesh method, basically your model ends up looking ****, so basically active points in zbrush converts into roughly double the amount of faces in 3ds max or udk, but the problem i have is that any mesh i make that has less than 300k activepoints looks terrible, which means that it would be roughly a 600k faces in max or udk, i'm just trying to figure out how they make current gen games look so good when models with less than that amount look absolutley terrible, i know the normal mapping can add a lot of the detail to the model, but anytime i've messed around with normal maps in udk, they don't seem to do that much, sure they add some detail but not that much, so could someone please explain to me how it's supposed to be done, cause i've read hundreds of tutorials at this stage and none of them seem to go over the proper workflow from zbrush to udk. thanks for reading my rant

[darthviper107]

Don't try unwrapping a 5 million poly mesh.

Usually what you'd do is create a low-quality base mesh in 3ds Max (it can even be the model you'll end up exporting to UDK). Then you would export that to Zbrush and sculpt your details. You can UV unwrap your base mesh before sending it to Zbrush, or you can go back to the lowest subdivision level in Zbrush and export that back to Max and unwrap it then. After that you would reimport the base mesh back to Zbrush so that it would replace the lowest subdivision and have the correct UV mapping.

If your base mesh isn't something that would be good for using in UDK, then you'd need to retopologize it. You can do that in Zbrush, or you can decimate the mesh to a more managable size and then export it to 3ds Max and use the modeling tools there to retopologize it. Then of course you would then export it back to Zbrush and project the mesh onto your new topology. After that again make sure you have your mesh unwrapped and you can render your normal maps in Zbrush.

Zbrush also has tools for painting textures, but it's probably better to use Photoshop, or even 3ds Max now has texture painting tools. After that you export to UDK, or if it's a character you would need to rig it for animation.

[L04D3D]

thanks for the speedy response, i will try this tomorrow, am busy getting drunk now, due to frustration lol