ZBrushCentral

Retopologize my head in Zbrush

I am pretty much new to Zbrush but I know it’s possible to do some retopology.
I have a medium high resolution scan of my face (without topology, just a square raster), and I have a model with good topology that resembles my head (generated from photographs).
The idea is to project the topology of the model on the scanned data (I have both as a Zbrush tool).
[attach=110509]k0g9hg.jpg[/attach]
Of course I’d love to know how to do it, but since I suspect that for advanced users this is a piece of cake I want to make the files available, in the hope that someone fuse scan and model for me!
The cleaning up of the model afterwards I can do myself of course.
Any help and info is welcome and of course I will show any progress here.

Attachments

face_scan.zip (446 KB)

head_model.zip (140 KB)

k0g9hg.jpg

I took your files and aligned the models as best as I could in ZBrush and used the ZProject brush, which in this case, basically pulls the faces from one model (your clean mesh) and lays them on top of the correctly detailed model (your face scan)

Unfortunately, it didnt work too well. What I suggest you do is take your scan and try to line the center of your face up as close to the y axis as you can, and from there, just redraw your topology right on top of your face scan. Turn on x-symmetry and it will save you some time. You’ll probably need to tweak some vertices here and there though. After you redraw your base mesh over the old one, do a “project all” and it will take all the details from your scan.

Here’s the topology and flow lap thread…
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=44876

If you want a .ztl of what I did with your clean mesh, message me with your email & I’ll send it to you. The projected mesh is too big to upload here. Its about 3 MB.

It a forum moderator is reading this, they might want to move this thread to the appropriate forum too.

ZBrush-Document.jpg

Thank you very much for that attempt!
I was already suspecting that it would be tough in areas like the mouth and nose. Still it captured the shape of cheeks and forehead etc.
I will further explore the technique of drawing topology on a model with the thread you referred to.
I guess it’s not really an option to retry the projection after first tweaking the head model to be closer to the scan?
Thanks again :slight_smile:

Have started trying it manually… am not too happy with the interface, but result so far looks good, though very smooth. I assume that will be fixed when the final topology is applied (?).
29zwh78.jpg

hey, good effort so far. Your best bet is to manually retopologise the scan as you’re doing (i’d recommend somthing like topogun but you can do it in zbrush too). Just make sure you get the major features more or less right (mouth, eyes, nose, etc).

You could probably do a much lower poly mesh over the scan, then just divide the retopo mesh until it’s got roughly the same number of polys in the face, then just project the scan onto the retopo face. Might need some tweaking around where the holes are in the scan but it should match it really well (provided you divided the retopo mesh enough).

Hope that made sense and good luck with it, looks cool so far.

edit: just projected the scan face onto your original head divided a couple of times… i think the retopo pass would definitley help :stuck_out_tongue:
[Untitled-1.jpg]

Wow, this is pretty good already! The eyes are worse of course but the mouth and nose are perfect it seems. If the topology is OK I might be able to fix the eyes manually… am curious! :slight_smile:

emailed, tho as i said i think it’d still be best to do a very low poly retopo over the scan face then just dividing heaps and projecting, would produce the same result only much better i’d imagine.

anyways, post what you get, interested to see how it turns out :smiley:

also, how’d you get the scan in (looks really cool)?

If you (or others) do more projections, I have filled the holes, trimmed and aligned the scan in this single obj file. -S

EDIT: Got a morph state with the projection applied, now brushing to feather it in a bit… always wanted to try that…
Here is that file if you want to brush the blending. Morph state should be in the file.

Thanks for your work and the fixed .obj-file!
Not sure I understand the part about the morph state, but I am curious about the outcome of your attempts :slight_smile:

Just a suggestion… If you are going to retopologize you might want to get used to edge loops or “proper” edge flow. Proper being used loosely of course, as there is no right or wrong way to model a face. There are some general guidelines to follow though…
There are some circular motions to follow around the mouth, eyes, nose and face when placing geometry. Some of it works good for animation, some just for features a face has.

Heres a model Im working on that might help illustrate this. As nizza_waaarg also suggested, you might also be able to lighten up on the poly count if this is a base mesh.

Edge Flow.jpg

Finally got back to this during my vacation. Tried it with Topogun now, which works quite nicely. Pity it seems to have been discontinued (for a long time at least) and lacks a manual. Screencap from Topogun:
[topogun1.jpg]retopo-zbrush.jpg
Am only a bit worried about the holes… probably should have fixed those before doing the retopology, instead of risking having to do it again!
I think the edgeflow is quite OK :smiley:

my god this thread pisses me of, how long can you take to project a scan ? ;f
Heres a quick projection on one of my base meshesh, sculpt tyhe rest using photos.
[2009-08-18_024658.jpg](javascript:zb_insimg(‘153548’,‘2009-08-18_024658.jpg’,1,0))
http://rapidshare.com/files/268565881/scan****2.ZTL.html

nice work here. But topology is still a problem for me.

Attachments

retopozbrushUP.jpg

Slocik, that’s great! Am not sure if you overestimate what a total beginner can do or underestimate your own skills and time invested, but that looks really nice :slight_smile:
The link to the model file doesn’t work though, could you let me know the correct one?
Thank you so much!!

Hi,

Can you say me how did you scan your face?

Is it a professionnal 3d scan,
or something like David 3d scanner software?

:wink:

@Fouad:
It was scanned with a professional laser scanner, years ago. Might have been a Minolta non-contact 3D digitizer.

@Michalis:
Topology tends to have a couple of those somewhere when you try to get a flow around eyes, nose, mouth, and face as a whole; think I have less of them than in the example of darkmessiah (shown above). It’s definitely good enough for me.

“Topology tends to have a couple of those somewhere when you try to get a flow…”
I agree, but this will cause some artifacts on a sensitive place of the face.

the forum censored the link, heres a working one.
http://rapidshare.com/files/268791869/wtf.ZTL.html
Also why do you guys worry about topology ? When you gain some more experience with zbrush, you will notice that starting with a box always works, for even the most complex models, its all about the poly distribution, not the edge flow.