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Scan to Models

Name: Scan to Models
Availability: InStock

Take a 2-million-polygon scan down to under 30,000 without losing the detail. The full workflow across Maya, ZBrush and Substance ... Show more

Instructor

Cristian Spagnuolo

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Description
Curriculum
Reviews

1 Lesson

One video, the whole workflow end to end, nothing held back.

8 Minutes

Short enough to watch before you start, complete enough to follow along.

Multiple Software

Maya, ZBrush and Substance Painter, each doing the part it is best at.

Free No charge

Free to watch with an account.

Beginner

Scan to production-ready

Bake, don't rebuild

A scan is not an asset. Two million triangles, no edge flow, no UVs, and no hope of being rigged, animated or rendered efficiently. This takes it to under thirty thousand polygons with the high-resolution detail preserved as baked maps, in about eight minutes.

The order is the lesson. Check the scale first, fix the geometry before remeshing rather than after, let ZRemesher do the topology, let Substance Painter do the UVs, and only then bake.

Project files

Download the whole model library

Twenty-plus production-ready models with 8K maps – every one of them built with exactly the technique in this lesson. Free, and yours to pull apart.

Download the library →

The toolset

Software we will be using.

The curriculum

Module by module.

One module, one video, the whole workflow end to end, and all of it is free to watch.

Scan to production-ready

1 lesson

Quick Retopo any Complex Model

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Check the full course details

What you’ll need

Mayascale check, the STL plugin, and the final shader
ZBrushGoZ to get there, ZRemesher to do the retopology
Substance Painterauto-unwrap for UVs, and the bake
A scan to practise on, threedscans.com is free and is what the video uses

The principle transfers. If you use 3ds Max, Blender or Cinema 4D, the steps are the same and each application has its own remesher, auto-unwrap and bake.

What happens, in order

The source scanWhere the model comes from, a free scan from threedscans.com. (0:30)
Scale and proportions in MayaImport and resize so the asset is at real-world scale from the start, with the STL plugin enabled. (0:48)
Why the topology mattersThe short version of what makes a scan unusable, and what you are actually fixing. (1:10)
GoZ into ZBrushMoving the asset across without an export/import round trip. (1:55)
ZRemesherWhat it does, and the settings that matter. (2:09)
Fixing the geometry firstThe quick clean-up in ZBrush that decides whether the remesh succeeds. (2:44)
Remeshing the assetThe actual retopology pass. (3:15)
Back in Maya to checkReading the new mesh before committing to it. (4:20)
Auto-unwrap in Substance PainterGetting usable UVs without laying them out by hand. (4:40)
Baking the detail downProjecting the high-resolution surface onto the low-poly mesh, normals and occlusion. (5:20)
ExportMesh and baked textures out. (6:08)
Shader in MayaBringing the UV'd model back and building the material. (6:35)
The comparisonSide by side: what was kept, and what it cost. (7:04)