Hi, we all have seen beautiful very high resolution meshes on line from many terrific artists-I know that C4D as an example, needs a moderate poly count t( all relative) in order to render-although Zbrush can create a model with several million polys, how low can I go polymesh-wise in order to export to C4D ? If I create, as an example , a ten million poly model in ZB, how low a poly count can I go to export? if I go too low, the details will not show up in a Displacement. map, correct? I can not find a satisfactory answer anywhere on line -any sage advice would be awesome, Thank you, CZ
Hi Craig !
The problem, as always, is people want there to be one specific answer to something, when there may be many. 
I can’t speak to CD4’s optimal range --a CD4 resource would be better for that–but in the most general terms:
Displacement maps on organic meshes tend to do better with somewhat higher polycounts. There’s only so much work you should expect a displacement map to do. Try to limit its workload to surface detail as much as possible, and not major form. If your program can handle it, working with a mesh dense enough to accurately reproduce the high rez mesh silhouette and relying on normal maps for the surface details can be one way to bypass the need for displacement (and all its associated issues) in some circumstances.
Hard surface meshes can often do better with fewer polygons. Setting up smoothing/creasing and UV islands for HS is easier with lower poly. UVs for HS meshes with a lot of mechanical detail in the texture can be much less forgiving in terms of distortion than organic meshes. You may need to take extra care refining the UVs, and this gets more complicated the more polygons there are. Displacement needs are often minimal–sometimes easily replaced by bump / normal maps.
People creating content for specialized environments, like a video game, may be under strict limits in polycount. If you dont have any output concerns limiting your polycounts, then you are limited only by the performance of the target program, and how much extra time you are willing to add to a render. Programs have gotten much better at rendering higher polycounts over the years, but generally speaking, higher polycounts still = longer renders to varying extents.
Thank you, you are very helpful, as always, Best, Craig
BTW, I realized after I posted my question, yes, I will contact Maxon tomorrow, I just thought that you may have additional insight-I see many beautiful, multi-million poly models on line, and I think to myself, “how in the world can a dedicated 3D program render this?”, with textures, GI, lights, etc, anyway, I hope that you don’t feel I’ve wasted your time, not my intention, at all, Best, CZ
I can be verbose, so it’s usually me wasting people’s time. Educated Zbrush users serve all of our interests, so I’m happy to give what info I can, even if it’s going to be mostly limited to the Zbrush side of things.
Each program is different. For instance, Keyshot can handle reasonably dense meshes from Zbrush, and this lets me be really lazy in getting a quick render. You can just a dump a model with a few million polygons into it, rely on polypaint rather than color textures, and still keep performance acceptable. Other programs may require far more discipline and restraint.