ZBrushCentral

Smoothing groups import on 4R6

Hi,

I used to work with the SmoothGroupImport plugin to crease my mesh at school, and I’m trying to install it at home (for PC).
But the only plugin I found was for Zbrush 3.5. It was said to work fine with later versions, so I put the files into /Zstartup/Zplugs/, but Zbrush then just crashes everytime I open it.

I did search for later versions, but didn’t find anything. Any idea to install this plugin properly ? Or another way to crease my mesh using smoothing groups on 4R6 ? (GoZ didn’t export my SM)

Thanks =)

Hi,

The smooth group plugin does work. Just install it the same way you did in the older version.
You just have to export your object as an OBJ instead of using GoZ. Then click on the Crease Smooth Groups option under Zplugins and choose import. Hope that helps.

anyone have a working link to it??
pixologic link no longer works…

Hi,

I was searching for a newer update of the plugin, and ended up here. As you can guess, I couldn’t find any. I am working with 3DsMax 2011 and ZBrush 4R6. It is true, that the plugin has been released back then with 3.5, and it still serves me.
Difficult to find the file out there, so here ya go! :slight_smile:

Download ->

http://www.file-upload.net/download-8795211/SmoothGroupImport_PC_35.zip.html

Installation ->

Place the (SmoothGroupData) Folder and (Smoothgroupimport_PC.35.zsc) File under following location:
…\Pixologic\ZBrush 4R6\ZStartup\ZPlugs

Restart ZBrush and you should have a new submenu called ‘Crease Groups’ in the ZPlugin palette.

Happy Zbrushing,

M.

Download should work.

Hi, I’m wondering, as there’s no new versions of the plugin, isn’t it because maybe the functionality is now supported with GoZ ??? In maya it’s little different there’s no smoothing groups but instead you can directly apply creasing to edges, and GoZ gets them correctly. I also think when you import a .ma file - maya ascii format that zBrush supports - zBrush also imports creased edges seamlessly. Jaydehei I think I remember having read about smoothing groups in zBrush, and I’m pretty sure it is not so long ago (not zB3.5 era) - but I can be remembering wrongly.

I worked mostly on maya for the last 5 years or so, and I’m getting back into 3DsMax too. So I’m very interested about all that smoothing group import process, can somebody confirm if the plugin is the only way to import those ?

By the way, thanks to ActionM for taking it back online. I’ll download it and try it little later and then will come back to tell if it worked for me.

Have a nice zDay everyone !!!

One trick that can be useful to get smoothing groups or anything like that (polygroups etc…) : Split your mesh’s UVs (don’t forget to backup your mesh with the good UVs if you have done it), one UV island by smoothing group. Then in zBrush, go to Polygroups > Auto groups with UV. This will make one polygroup per UV island, then you can crease by polygroups and you’re done. Then if you want to get back your good UV layout, transfer your backup mesh with good UVs as another subtool in zBrush, and use UV Master to copy / paste the UVs.

This trick certainly could have some other applications.

Hope it helps.

Cheers from belgium !!!

Hi Everyone, I downloaded the pulgin, is working well. I can import my obj and it says it created my smoothgroup but on my model I still have those hard edges which I smoothed in maya. Do I need to do something else after using the plugin to import my obj?
Cheers,
Brian

For those interested this plugin works in R7 32 bit but NOT R7 64 bit.

Not too bad though, as we can just import in R7 32 then go back to R7 64 to work…

New version for ZBrush 4R7 here:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?199290-SmoothGroup-Import-for-4R7&p=1172347#post1172347