Digital Art Zone

Hi,

I’m quite a novice at 3D art, but technically savvy enough to get up and running.  I commissioned a professional 3D artist to create a head for a character based on my specifications.  The work is done and I have Zbrush and 3DS exports of the mesh and a basic skin map baked into the Zbrush project as well as in a separate PSD file.

I’d like to now take that bust and weld it to a body that I can customize on my own in DAZ, ideally using the full suite of morphs, textures, wardrobe, etc with a Genesis base model.  I’m out of money to hire a pro so I’d like to figure out how to do this myself, but I’m pretty stumped on what steps to take next.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

many thanks,
W

That probably isn’t going to be fully possible - if the head is new mesh then it won’t be mapped to take any of the textures Genesis can use, and its vertex count won’t match the genesis head presumably so morphs won’t transfer. If you can get the mesh to match exactly (number and position of vertices) on a line around some part of Genesis (neck, say) then you could use GeoGrafting to replace the Genesis head etc. - though you’d then need to do your own rigging for the mouth and eyes.

Many thanks for the reply, Richard!  I guess the question is: what would be the best thing to do: figure out out to GeoGraft the head onto Genesis with your suggestions, use another base model altogether, or just try to complete the head with it’s own fully custom body?

Thanks again!

Wow, that’s a really interesting question.  Richard will have more answers for you, but this is something you have to do a lot of planning for.  3D work always, always, always goes better if you have a full plan have a good idea how the final product is going to be accomplished.

What I would consider is this: you could take your new head from zbrush, and used that as a template to morph the Genesis head…  You could do this in ZBrush should you choose to using its layers feature.  IMHO, this will probably be the easiest option.

Geografting requires that polygons and vertexes fit to existing polygons and verts.  I don’t know how many polygons your new head has, but IF it has more polygons around the neck than does Genesis, this will be a daunting affair.

Do remember this: everything you do with Genesis in this project has to be at base resolution, not subdivided.  Base resolution is not quite 19,000 polygons.

Before we go any further, are you aware subdivision settings for Genesis in DAZ Studio?  It’s something you need to know about for this project.

Do it in ZBRUSH…

Make your ZB Head into a Mesh insert Brush…
Then bring in Genesis complete with Clothes and such,Make the clothes subtools then hide the clothes and have Genesis selected/Isolated,Mask off the area where the ZB head goes and make the mask into a new Polygroup,Use your new Head insert Brush and hover over the mask and drag out your head then place where you want and then click and drag twice outside the model and ZB will Geograft your head on Genesis…Then add your subtool clothes and pose inside of ZB useing transpose tools….

The unfortunate thing is that you wont be able to pose in DS or Poser unless you make different Morphs of your posed Character and then import into either Poser or DS and re-rig the mesh…

Would be alot easier in ZB but can be done in DS where you would only have to add a few ghost bones to the new head…

You could also export out of ZB your head and in Hex or MAX or tS or Cpro you can then import the head and a base copy of Genesis and rework or Move the vertices at the neck area on your head to match the area on Genesis you want to put the head…Good luck…

Since you have the ZBrush file you may be able to dial the subdivision back to its original low level and export that as an OBJ - that may be close enough to Genesis to make GeoGrafting, with a bit of fiddling, practical as long as you can find a stage at which the two shapes are close. As long as you do the fiddling in a modeller that preerves UVs (Blender should work) you can then bake a displacement map from ZBrush to get the correct final shape. However, whichever approach you take it’s clearly going to take some doing.

foleypro - 15 December 2012 09:54 AM

Do it in ZBRUSH…

Make your ZB Head into a Mesh insert Brush…
Then bring in Genesis complete with Clothes and such,Make the clothes subtools then hide the clothes and have Genesis selected/Isolated,Mask off the area where the ZB head goes and make the mask into a new Polygroup,Use your new Head insert Brush and hover over the mask and drag out your head then place where you want and then click and drag twice outside the model and ZB will Geograft your head on Genesis…Then add your subtool clothes and pose inside of ZB useing transpose tools….

The unfortunate thing is that you wont be able to pose in DS or Poser unless you make different Morphs of your posed Character and then import into either Poser or DS and re-rig the mesh…

Would be alot easier in ZB but can be done in DS where you would only have to add a few ghost bones to the new head…

You could also export out of ZB your head and in Hex or MAX or tS or Cpro you can then import the head and a base copy of Genesis and rework or Move the vertices at the neck area on your head to match the area on Genesis you want to put the head…Good luck…

any video tutorials about this?

There are plenty of videos on using the ZBrush posing tools. If you want a tutorial on this particular process, using Genesis, you will probably be out of luck - a tutorial is not a substitute for gumption but a means to give the metal tools required for the task.

Richard Haseltine - 16 December 2012 08:08 AM

There are plenty of videos on using the ZBrush posing tools. If you want a tutorial on this particular process, using Genesis, you will probably be out of luck - a tutorial is not a substitute for gumption but a means to give the metal tools required for the task.

I want to give you a round of applause for this one.  I have read so many tutorials and expected them to give me skills, and failed because all they’ve given me is knowledge!

Practice is key.