ZBrushCentral

Question about ZBrush to XNormal Pipeline

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

In an excellent tutorial on ZBrush to XNormal pipeline (http://eat3d.com/free_zbrush_xnormal_pipe; made in 2009 for ZBrush 3.3), the presenter goes through a thorough description of each step of the workflow . Below is the list from the first half of the tutorial delineating each step for preparing to export from Zbrush into XNormal. I added step 8 to update for 4R6.

  1. Under Tool- Geometry, drop to lowest division.
  2. Under Tool-Texture Map click on GUV Tiles.
  3. make certain you select white as a color in the color box.
  4. Change the Texture width/height size setting in Texture-Palette to 2048 respectively.
  5. Click on New in Tool-Texture Map.
  6. In Tool-Geometry, raise to highest level.
  7. In Tool-Texture Map, Click on Create and then New from Polypaint.
  8. In Tool-Texture Map, click on Clone Txtr for the texture map to appear in the Texture Palette.
  9. In Texture-Palette click on the Flip V (vertically).
  10. In Texture-Palette click on Export.
  11. Turn texture off in Texture-Palette.
  12. Export high division subtool as obj in the Tool Palette.

My noob question: When exporting the texture map in step 10, How does the texture map, which apparently is a PSD. file. - seemingly at least - “replaced” into a low poly obj. after being placed in “ZBrush Export Image” in a “Bake” folder. Thereafter he exports the high division tool creating the second, high poly obj. in the “Bake” folder, both obj. now ready to be open in XNormal. Somehow I’m not able to do this, i.e. change the PSD. file to a low poly object. Clearly I’m missing a step or simply don’t understand what is being done or what necessarily constitutes a texture map. Btw, I’m trying to ascertain all this in order to render ZBrush objects in Blender. Any advice or suggestions is most welcome.

Thank you,

Kevin

#2

About one month after that video was created, xnormal was updated to support polypaint in OBJs (which makes the entire tutorial mostly irrelevant and unnecessarily complicated). All you need to do now is:


  1. Export the highpoly sculpt with polypaint visible (it doesnt need UVs or any texture maps created in zbrush)
  2. In xnormal under the highpoly’s options: make sure “Ignore per-vertex color” is OFF
  3. Under baking options: check the option “Bake Highpoly’s vertex colors”
  4. Load your UV’d lowpoly mesh into xnormal, and bake.

Thats it. It’ll then bake out a nice texture map for the lowpoly mesh.

You’ll probably need to turn ‘Ignore per-vertex color’ back on before baking any other kind of maps such as ambient occlusion, as the option can sometimes mess with their results.

#3

Cryrid, Thank you so much for the XNormal update! It will save me a lot of time and heartache. I’m still on a steep learning curve regarding generating textures, but slowly - no doubt - it will become much clearer to me. Nonetheless, I will heed your suggestions once I begin in XNormal. Thanks again!