I've been learning ZBrush for the past six months to create characters for my indie game project, but I'm hitting a wall with my digital sculpting workflow. My high-poly models look decent in ZBrush, but they become a complete mess when I try to retopologize them in Blender for animation. I lose all the fine details and the mesh gets distorted. I'm not sure if my issue is with my ZBrush subtools, my decimation process, or my retopology technique in Blender. Has anyone successfully integrated these two programs for a game-ready character pipeline? I'd really appreciate some advice on preserving detail while creating a clean, animatable low-poly mesh.
You're close to a common pitfall in game work where you sculpt in detail and then fight the retopology. The fix is to split the task build clean low poly topology in blender first then capture the high res detail as maps in a bake. In ZBrush use a simple base mesh as your retopo guide and keep edge loops aligned with joints. Bake normals and ambient occlusion and keep UVs tidy before painting. This helps preserve the look without the mesh exploding during animation.
That can work but keep expectations in check. Round tripping can introduce small mismatches and bake results may look off if you push too hard with compression. Start simple and test a short animation to see how fine details hold up.
I switched to a similar method on a recent character and found that keeping the low poly edge flow clean around elbows and eyes paid off. Project the high res onto the low poly and bake a tight normal map then use a few clean texture maps.
Not sure if your issue is subtools or decimation. Try merging subtools into a single mesh before retopo to avoid drift and check scale before baking. If you post a quick screenshot of your topology and a few bake results we can troubleshoot.