ZBrushCentral

Smooth UVs?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I never quite understood how the smoothing UVs option in zbrush is supposed to work.

I have modeled a very simple object in Modo. Imported it into Zbrush4, created UVs using UV Master, and subdivided it a couple of times with the “Suv” button in the Geometry menu activated. As far as I understand it Zbrush will then smooth the UVs when the geometry is subdivided. Right?

I painted a color map for the object in zbrush4 using the new spotlight features. Created a texture from it.

When I display this texture on the object in Zbrush everything looks fine, although from the texture thumbnail I can already see that the UVs obviously have not been smoothed at all but have been subdivided linearly.

Why? Is it possible to smooth the UVs in Zbrush after I have already subdivided the object? How? Activating the “Suv” (Smooth UV) option does not seem to do the trick. The texture has to fit the smoothed UVs (because it will be assigned to the low resolution object in XSI which will then be converted to a subdivision surface), not the initial linear ones.

Any hints?

#2

Hmm, so this still hasn’t been fixed? I was hoping when 3.5 came out it would, but not even version 4 aftr all this time?

With testing, you might find it is smoothing the UVs when you divide with Suv on, but the moment you go to lower divisions and back up, or reload the tool, it reverts back to the non-smoothed uvs. So it does it at first, but then nothing you can do to prevent it from losing it.

Check out this thread where I posted some images showing this:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=75048

I can’t recall if exporting the UVs as an obj just after dividing with the smooth Uvs to load later worked at all before say transfering polypaint to texture.

#3

I have the same thing in Zbrush 4 going on. Is there any fix for this yet???

Thanks

#4

Smooth UV gets dropped when you change subdivision levels, reopen files or look at the monitor in a funny way. Yes it is totally bugged for a long time now.

The temporary fix for that is to go to “morph target” rollout in your tool pallete. Store highest level, then go to level 1, delete all higher levels, subdivide mesh with SUV on back to the same highest level it was before and click on switch morph target button.

Of course the moment you will reopen file or change levels or make that funny look again SUV will be gone.

#5

Thanks for the reply. This has clearly been an issue for some time. Are there any plans to resolve this bug in the near future?

Thanks