ZBrushCentral

re-linking zbrush/keyshot scenes - how?

First of all, thank you for a great program, a great update and a nice add-on in the form of the keyshot package.

I have a question though, and searches have not provided me with an answer, nor has the tutorial video in zclassroom:

I loaded a project i’m currently working on, a chopper MC, with about 120 subtools and sent it to keyshot. I then started to apply some materials and that was the end of THAT day. Next day I want to pick up where I left off and having saved both the keyshot file and the zproject i opened both programs and loaded the files. What happenes is that if I hit “bpr” in zbrush now, to send changes to keyshot, it will create an entirely new scene with NO materials applied.

The question is: Is there anyway to restore the link between the saved keyshot file and the zbrush project?

Update 1: If i choose to import the “old” keyshot bip file after sending the project to keyshot, then that geometry wil be added to the scene. This does not solve the problem, but it will, at least, allow parts that does not require furter editing in zbrush to be loaded with the assigned keyshot materials. A sideeffect of this is that new zbrush geo from new projects can be added to existing keyshot scenes. That might be useful.

Update 2: It seems that a suffix is added to the name of each subtool when exported to keyshot and that these will change with a new session. For example a subtool saved in the bib file is named “1subd_9F857321” while my attempt to relink results in a file named “1subd_37977321”. (The original subtool is called 1subd). This seems to indicate that this piece is regarded as something else depending on the session. What is needed is something that tells the apps that hey: this is in fact the same subtool as it was yesterday and should be linked as it was then.

Update 3: If geo is sent to keyshot and assigned materials and saved within keyshot. Then Keyshot can be shut down. reopened, have the geo (that has been altered in the meantime) sent over again at which point loading the bip-file will restore the original geo with materials. sending the geo AGAIN from zbrush at this point will result in the re-shaped geo appearing in keyshot WITH the materials assigned. If zbrush has been closed this will NOT happen and the connection seems to be forever broken.

Did you ever find a solution to this? I’m having the same problem.

You need to create Keyshot templates.

See this post:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?195248-Update-a-Keyshot-previously-created-project-in-bridge&p=1149276#post1149276

And that will work for a scene with over 100 subtools in it? Seems an extremely fiddly and laborious procedure. Hopefully there’ll be an upgrade that fixes this so that keyshot will be able to recognise it’s the same scene whenever a new session begins. Seems like a pretty basic flaw to me. I am loving keyshot though.

Seems an extremely fiddly and laborious procedure.

Oh, it is without a doubt.

Add to that, Keyshot’s ridiculous MouseOver/MouseOut behavior and it can be very frustrating. I’ve seen entire templates just disappear as I was working on them - with no way to get them back. :mad:

I really like the RESULTS of Keyshot… but the program itself definitely has some issues (at least the Zbrush/bridge version on my Mac).

Yikes, I would not be happy if that happened.

Let’s hope the bridge elves are working on a fix for this, it’s a fundamental problem.

I never did find a solution. After a while of messing around with keyshot i ended up deciding that I would just use it for previwing and stick to Octane for my final renders.

Thanx for the info on templates, Thor.

I have to agree that this should be fixed - it should be possible to get the two programs to interact in a way that eliminates this problem.