Here is a tutorial of the creation of The Hunt. I´ll not go into every stage of the creation but i´ll focus on the "3DSMax to Zbrush to 3DSMax" topic.. If you feel that something is not good explained or simply you need more help, contact me and i´ll try to be more clear.

I used a main mesh I did some time ago. This helps me a lot to see beyond the biped on what i´m gonna work. Almost every poly will suffer under the mouse, so i do not worry on how good or bad is the basic skin. For the skinning i recommend SkinOrDie from André Hotz. A must!

Here is what i have before going to zbrush. I have to say that here i made a mistake that i´d pay for later. I let the hands and the head very detailed and attached to the main mesh instead of doing it. I´ll try to explain why this is not good.
What i´m doing here is to clean the mesh as much as i can so in Zbrush i could have more control over its subdivisions. A clean mesh should be all four-sided polygons (quads) and with a good distribution. My problem is that in Zbrush i had to use a lot of subdivisions to create the muscles and veins in the torso, but since the hands and the head are attached to the torso, they get the same divisions, and well, at the end it will become a terrible and slowly mesh. Later in the tutorial you will see more on this topic.

 

Next step is the exportation of the object. I did this process for almost every mesh in the scene. I could have done the 3dsmax part all in one step (torso, head, hands, legs, props...) and later all zbrush, but i like to work going from one software to another to see how it all progresses. This is up to you.
In the image you can see my settings for the exportation. I really do not know if those are the best, but for me it works. Look closely because this is one is a big unknown fron the process. Also, notice that i´m using Export Selected, not Export. That is because I only export whan i´m optimizing. If you use export, all of your meshes will be exported, and that is not what we want.

Now, ZFun!

Open Zbrush and before you do anything, go to Document and enlarge the canvas size. A bigger canvas means more space to move your 3d objects. Not important but useful.

Go to the big pencil on the left (TOOL), click it and Import the mesh. It is important to remember that when you work in Zbrush for this kind of workflow, you need to save you tool, not the document. I´ll not go in depth on basic Zbrush concepts, but remember that is the tool what is 3d, not the document itself! Probably when you work on a mesh in your 3d software, you save with incremental numbers, something like warrior01, warrior02, etc... Well, in Zbrush there are several zscripts that can handle that too. Just head on Pixologic forums and use their wonderful search engine.

 

Draw the tool on the canvas, press T (edit mode) and under Tool/Geometry press Divide as many times as you wish (or your computer wishes...). Now, with D and Shift+D you can travel between the subdivision states of the mesh

The next images show the real fun of Zbrush.

Now I have an ultra high-res 3d object no other software can handle as smooth as Zbrush. Well, remember my problem with the head and the hands? Here it is in all its glory!! Read a bit more to see the light!

When I have all the modeling i want, i go to the level 1 of the subdivisions. Not the 0 level but the upper one. Then hit the button Del Lower (Geometry). I´m going to explain why i do this.

First, you should know what a displacement is and how to work with it. A displacement is a grayscale image that Zbrush can create and 3dsmax can use to deform the mesh we exported at the first stage and make it look almost exactly as the Zbrushed one. BUT the quality of the displacement in 3dsmax will depend a lot on how many polys your main mesh has, so, if you have done a lot of modeling under Zbrush, probably 3dsmax will need a lot of subdivisions to accomodate the displacement map that we will create in zbrush, and even with a lot of divisions it won't look as it should. So that is why I delete the first stage. I´m not going to use the displacement that we are going to create on the next stage in the mesh that awaits in 3dsmax (remember export selected?). I´m going to betray that mesh and substitute it with the first level of Zbrush, so the displacement accomodates better to the map. Of course this method is good for static images or if your scene does not have too much polys. As you will see, we will put some more polys into 3dsmax as we repeat the process, and well, we all know how this could end!

I hope this does not sound too strange. Keep on reading before punish my explanations!

Then, after deleting the first level we should have the first level as the main object, and that is what we are going to export.

I do not want to forget to say something important here. You need to create a texture map for your model for later painting. Zbrush has the great Projection Master that we will use later for texturing. Go to Texture (upper right of the screen) and put a value that accomodates the size of your object. Always use power of 2 values, that is something like 128x128, 256x256, 512x512, etc... Here I used 2048x2048. At the moment of writting this tutorial aurick (a moderator of the Zbrush forums) has released a Zplugin to make this even faster. Just take a look at it here.

Also, you should create the uvmapping for your object. Tool/Texture and press AUVTiles. This should be done at the lowest level of the geometry. If not, Zbrush will tell you.

Now generate the displacement.

Remember, this should be done at the first level. If not, Zbrush will tell you :)
DPRes to 2048 maybe is a bit big, but hey, we have enough ram, haven't? By default is at 1024, and probably it is enough for main details. If your model has veins and microdetails in the skin, maybe 4096 is the best option.
Adaptive MUST be checked, and SmoothUV should be. Sometimes with it on i had problems, sometimes not. If you do the next stages exactly as i do and it does not work, probably here is the problem.
Mode must be ON too.
If you want a better explanation of what those buttons do, hold on the Ctrl key and put the mouse cursor over the button to get a very detailed explanation about it. This works for almost every button into Zbrush!

After pressing Create DispMap, Zbrush will start to calculating the displacement map. Go to Alpha button, select the map, enter the Alpha button again and press Export.

I always use a Tiff file for the exportation.

Now, export the mad geometry. Just be sure to be on the lowest level of subdivisions (press Shift+D several times) and click on tool/export (Tool should look like a mini version of your model) OBJ must be the format chosen.

Well, now we have a Tiff file that it is the displacement, a base mesh that will substitute the mesh that awaits in 3dsmax and a lot of hungry...

(Grpmf, grmpf, grmpf...)...uh, sorry... much better now :)

Before going to 3dsmax, we need to make TWO tweaks to the displacement. Open Photoshop and open the displacement map. Image / Mode and select Color RGB. The image comes in Grayscale and that is not what we want, we need it on Color RGB. Also, FLIP it vertically. Save overwritting and...

Head on to 3dsmax! Open your previous scene where our flat and boring mesh awaits. Go to File / Import and take the zbrushed mesh into the scene. The imported mesh should look much better than the previous one. Show no mercy and delete the old one. Be sure that the imported mesh is exactly where it should be.

Look closely at that image... ok... I´ll zoom it for you...

Well, I hope this explains what i said before. Too much polys where they are not needed does not taste good my preciousss...

Well, to be honest I solved that by the good old way. Doing it all again. Yes, I get back to the first mesh, detached the hands and the head and exported again to sculpt in Zbrush. I decided to keep it on the tutorial because i think that a very good method to learn (if you are reading this maybe you are learning something!) is to analyze mistakes. Do not be afraid to remake something if you know you have done it bad, maybe that could be boring and time consuming, but after doing it the good way you would sleep again :)

So, because i´m a good guy, i´ll show you the good way.

First, convert to EDITABLE MESH. This will speed up thigs a lot! Editable poly is great when you are working on the mesh but Editable Mesh is faster in the viewport.

Second, put a Turbosmooth modifier. Do not use Meshmooth. Turbosmooth is a lot faster. Make sure that you put 2 or 3 subdivisions but ONLY at render time.

At last, the Big Monkey of the Wonder Hill!... uhhhh... Displace Modifier.
Do not forget to check "Use Existing Mapping" or it will look very crappy. Switch on Luminance Center and put some strength.

Remember that displacement map we created? Now it is its time.

Just take it from the deeps of your hard disk and give it fifteen minutes of glory. Drag and drop into the Displace Modifier and look how the mesh changes to accomodate to the bitmap.

My render looks like this now.

There are lots of details lost or is the jpg compression? A bit of each :) Veins and very small details need a lot of subdivisions to be seen, but this is not the end of the world. I get them back using the good old bump.

Here they are. Simply use the same bitmap of the displacement into the bump slot of your material. Also, put it on the Specular Level slot at a low level. Here it is at 30. You should paint your specular map, but this works good for rendering tests.

I have found that the Fast Skin Material (available with mental ray) does a very good job with the Bump. At this stage of bumping, maybe you could end up with some strange boxes cracking the mesh. This is an strange thing i have solved playing with antialiasing and filtering of the bitmap. By default Pyramidal does a good job, but if the damn boxes appear, try Summed Area or None. Also, try to lower the bump map and use more divisions on the mesh. In the image above it is Pyramidal.

 

Here is a very basic fast skin material with the displace map used in the bump slot.

I´ll go faster from here. Almost everything from now on is repeating the same process explained before. I model basic geometry using my skinned mesh as a base and zbrush-it the same way i did with the torso. Other things like the hair or the fur are topics from other tutorials. The hair was made using alpha maps.

The "jabbar" (how i like to call the lovely beast) was made with the same process explained before. Modeling the muscles allowed the fur to distribute over the mesh in a cool way.

Also, I used Projection Master from Zbrush to paint the colors on the skin.

I hope this tutorial will have show you a clear way to put your zbrushed dreams in 3dsmax.
More coming soon!