marvin

Hello, My name is Marvin. I currently reside in Oklahoma City. Through earning my Associates Degree in Computer Science/Game Development I learned the in & outs of polygon modeling, texturing, and level/environment design. As a child I was always drawing something that I would study and add my own artistic touch through shading/detail but I actually started getting more interested in games around the time Toy Story came out. I just remember thinking "games will be a huge thing when they look like that someday" This is very much my "coming out party" and to give a bit of history- after earning my degree the 'ol chip on my shoulder reared it's ugly head and basically my work was literally crap and I was aware of that much, heck I didn't even know how to bake normals from high poly, my textures always looked low res on my models even though there were 2048x2048, specular/gloss maps were a moot point[metal never looked like metal anyway] and I would just never get the results I wanted.I wanted it to look realistic and just felt something was missing. After playing falling in love with the beauty Crysis 3 I came across a few PDF that Crytek release that showed their approach to developing the game. They briefly touched on creating diffuse and specular in a more physically based manner, not long after I came across a post-mortem for Killzone Shadowfall where they fully detailed that their materials were created for PBR. My first experience in PBR was with substance designer but prior to that I had remembered seeing someone doing amazing texturing directly on a model using this incredible program called 3DCoat. I was most likely just downright intimidated by the 'technical/elite' programs like 3D Coat and ZBrush. But as my skills improved I couldn't stop contemplating the possibilities. I was actually looking for a more advanced UV mapping tool, and although what improvements Maya has done in that area is great, I wanted the perks of a more dedicated tool. 3D Coat fits the need perfectly and then adds a ton more. I purchased the educational license and plan on upgrading. I'll be using it religiously for my more complex models. It is a bit more on the restrictive side due to it's different modes so I want to make sure I'm in line with what "can and can't" be done. So I do have a few questions: 1) If I want to bring in a high poly mesh from zbrush is fbx or obj preferred? 2) The axis orientation is completely off, I export as Y=up but the model imports as laying flat instead of standing up. What setting an I missing to import it with proper orientation? 3) I use the import object option, is this correct? 4) If I've created a model and its comprised of multiple layers, some surface/some voxel, what must be done so I can export the model as a single mesh for future endeavors[like texturing]. Thank in advance for welcoming me and for any valuable tips to help things so smoother.