ZBrushCentral

Plugin idea/request

I was wondering, could anyone tell me how difficult it would be to develop a Max plugin that would link ZBrush to Max more closely than it is now?

I’m thinking of something along the lines of how Deep Paint works. You select your model in Max, hit a button, and it launches ZBrush with your model drawn on the canvas in Edit mode, ready for texturing. Even if it doesn’t update the texture afterwards, to be able to get the model into ZBrush without having to export first as an OBJ, set your import settings in ZBrush, load your texture, flip it vertically, etc, would be a HUGE timesaver. Anyone?

That would be possible but would probably require a plugin for Max and a plugin for ZBrush. There are plenty of people here that would be able to write the ZBrush plugin (Zscript) but I do not know who would do the Max part.

If you can suffer the Max .obj export process it might be enough to write a ZBrush zplugin to load a .obj ready for texturing. There are however some questions. Does the Max .obj exporter also save a .mat file? If so then check the .mat file for any reference to the texture you assigned in Max. We need some way of telling zbrush which texture to load. All the other import settings and texture flipping is easy enough to implement.

Hi TVEyes, and thanks for getting back to me. Yes, you can get an mtl file from Max with the export (using Guruware’s obj exporter anyway), so that’s definitely possible. Even a script for the obj to be imported with assigned texture loaded, flipped and ready to be worked on would be a great help.

hello i already make an obj export for max in max script, but i serach a solution for zbrush can read the smoothing group array in obj for do an automatic crease at the import.
when i find the solution, i’ll share the export module for 3ds max.

I do not think it is possible to automatically assign creases to multiple sets of geometry using zscript. However Pixologic could possibly create a plugin that would accomplish that.

Although not completely automatic you could export group tags in the .obj file. This would make it easy to select the groups in ZBrush (polygroups) and add creases. Maya and Modo selection sets are exported as .obj groups which are imported into ZBrush as polygroups. Can 3DSmax export groups according to materials or selections ?

If you know your way around 3DSmax modules perhaps you could add ‘g’ tags for the smoothing group polygons and for regular polygons.

For example, in the following .obj polygon definition list the ‘g’ tells the .obj importer that the following polygons belong to group default. You can add ‘g’ tags anywhere you want in the polygon definition list, it does not have to be next to a ‘usemtl’ tag.

usemtl left
g Default
f 3/7 15/26 9/16 13/22
f 4/8 17/28 9/16 15/26
f 7/14 23/46 12/21 22/43
f 3/7 13/23 12/21 23/46
f 7/14 24/47 14/25 23/46
f 8/15 25/48 14/25 24/47
f 4/8 15/26 14/25 25/48
f 3/7 23/46 14/25 15/26
f 8/15 26/49 16/27 25/48
f 4/8 25/48 16/27 17/29
f 8/15 24/47 18/31 26/50
f 7/14 22/44 18/31 24/47
usemtl right
f 1/1 11/18 9/16 17/28
f 2/4 13/22 9/16 11/18
f 5/9 19/32 10/17 21/39
f 6/12 20/35 10/17 19/32
f 2/5 11/19 10/17 20/36
f 1/2 21/40 10/17 11/20
f 6/12 22/43 12/21 20/37
f 2/6 20/38 12/21 13/24
f 5/10 21/41 16/27 26/51
f 1/3 17/30 16/27 21/42
f 5/11 26/52 18/31 19/33
f 6/13 19/34 18/31 22/45

polygons: 24