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But yeah, your workflow makes sense, do you ever work like this in a production envirnment? I mean, have you come across anythingm, or heard of anything set up like this "real world" sort-a-speak, or is this more of a personal work setup? I'm currious how much Zbrush has made it past the art communitity and into the production pipelines yet.
I like to think this workflow has been around for awhile now. Except instead of high-res digital meshes you had high-res scan data from sculptures. So it's basically the same ideas, it's just now it can all be done completely digital.
I personally have come to dislike the whole xyshrinkwrap thing. I'd much rather go ahead and build a mesh that is more representative of the higher-res sculpt rather than leaving too many details for displacements. In theory this would actually provide a better mesh anyway, especially if you want to create muscle sims with it. So using Silo I like to build a mesh that is really, really close to the high-res sculpt so there won't be a need for lot's of displacement. This also leaves you the advantage of using triangles or other n-gon polygons, which the xyShrinkWrap/Zbrush method doesn't.
But the way I work is probably a bit different than how most people work in Zbrush. I rarely get my initial high-res mesh past 150,000 polys, for an entire figure. IMO there isn't a need to go further than that, without getting into minute details that will probably not make it into your base cage anyway. Then once you have your new base cage ready to go, xyshrinkwrapped if you prefer, you can then subdivide your model and make those minute details that aren't essential for the base mesh.
But to me, the real trick is figuring out what kind of details needs to be in the base mesh.
The jury is still out on wether or not this is going to make it in my workplace. I'm optomistic, but I'm thinking I really shouldn't be! HAHA
