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Great work as always! I've enjoyed your ZBrushCentral thread, and this one also has some really clean designs!

I'm interested in the 3dc > ZBrush workflow using decimation master. 3dc's retopology tools are great for making various densities of meshes that retain the voxel sculpt.

I've been doing a low res retopo and exporting it as an obj. Then sub dividing it a bunch and using the retopo brush w/ smooth to clean it up. It vacuums to the voxels perfectly! I export again and append this hi res mesh to the low res in ZBrush, divide the low res the same amount and project all. Viola, subdivisions. I think you can also just use reconstruct subdiv, but haven't tried it.

Those geometry levels adds control in ZBrush, get's the voxel detail in, and allows for a base mesh that modo can work with. I usually get rid of 1-2 of the lower levels because I need more density for the maps to render good in modo. Nevertheless, this has become a sweet way to include voxels in my workflow. Love it already, just bought it.

After checking out your workflow, I've investigated exporting the voxels as an obj. Inspecting the mesh in modo, it's just a bunch of tris. Does decimation master clean this up at all or do you have to do retopo to get quads? Is there a way to export the voxel mesh as quads only? I prefer retopo w/ subdividing over quadrangulate, and don't know of another way. Retopo's easy, but you seem to have success with the Decimation Master. Any tips or are you just working with the triangles?

Thanks for any feedback.

-James

*edit: I just found out that the new version of 3dc has a decimation feature built in for exporting!

I also read that voxels only export as tris, so I guess you're just working with them maybe just for rendering.

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GED, cakeller, thank you very much!

Hey James, thank you too. Youre right, im just going with the tris. Especially for static objects, thats no big deal. The problems start when you want to animate the final mesh. Then I prefer a clean retopo too. As far as sculpting in Zbrush goes, 3.5 is doing just a fine job sculpting tris. So I can sculpt, smooth etc directly on the voxel mesh exported from 3DC. This is a huge step from 3.1 where tris are a no-go. So after all it really depends on the situation which way I take. Maybe the all new quadrangulation that Andrew plans to implement at some point will solve the question once and for all situations. But I guess this will take some time.

cheers

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Thanks for the feedback. Since I don't animate, I may be able to use decimation for certain models instead of retopo. It's all about the path of least resistance.

I'm on OSX, so I'll have to see how 3.2 sculpts on tris. The only reason I've been avoiding tris with ZBrush is because that's the word around the campfire. I haven't a clue what actual problems they cause. I know n-gons cause holes and poles cause weird pointy artifacts.

Either way, thanks for the tips and keep choppin' out those cool designs.

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This is a great thread. I like all these, keep posting.

Its obvious that you used autopo for the last one. Nice. I think the less density in vox room, the more smoothing you have, makes autopo work better. This method includes zbrush too. This is how voxels work better. A zb like room please. The most reasonable way.

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