How can I get my Zbrush model into Maya?

Felippo Murico, UK Francis-xavier replies I’m going to show you how I got my Grumpy Link model from Zbrush into Maya for rendering. (I created the model a little while ago and the concept is by Matthew Armstrong.)

There are a few ways of doing this, you could create some quick UVS in Zbrush using the Uvmaster plug-in, then decimate the mesh, but keep the UV option on so when you export into Maya you can render without having to worry about retopology and precise UVS. This option will not work for production though as you need clean topology for animation. It is fine for still images and look development though.

Another way would be to get your high-resolution model retopologised. You could use retopology programs like Topogun or 3d Coat, or use the native tools in Maya. Quad Draw has improved greatly and is more than adequate for retopology.

When creating retopology, it is important to keep the texture pipeline in mind. If the production is using displacement maps and skin shaders, it’s a good idea to keep the scale of the model in line with world units. This will help the shader calculate the sub-surface amount properly. If you don’t use world units, you’ll need to spend a lot of time tinkering with values trying to get your shaders looking right.

Try and keep your quads square and avoid n-gons, this will help when it’s time to UV your model and eliminate stretching and texture distortion. Once you’re done with retopology, it will be time to UV the model. It is important to keep the texel density constant. So if you have cotton detail on the shirt, it has to be the same scale for the trousers or it will look odd. Using a chequered pattern will help with this. Layout your UVS, try to use as much space as possible, make sure parts that won’t be seen often like soles and under the hair have less priority. If you plan to group models together, it’s a good idea to have them grouped by material type, clothes, leather, skin, that kind of thing.

Once you have laid out all your UVS, you can bring your model back into Zbrush to generate the displacement maps and the textures by projecting from the high-res sculpt onto the model with UVS. The Multi Map Exporter in Zbrush is very handy for this.

You can tweak your textures using Photoshop, Zbrush or Mari, creating bump and specular maps and then use them in your final render.