How come Zbrush can’t blend the edges in a low poly model that’s been imported into Zbrush? All smooth does is temporarily subdivide the geometry which distorts the mesh. Not a desired quality. Will the next version have a better smoothing feature for imported objects?
Distorts the mesh? Is your low poly model made of triangles? If so, then yes the smoothing function would have the effect of distorting the mesh. ZBrush is optimized for working with quads. One possible approach is to create your low poly model with quads, bring it into ZBrush to do your additional modeling and texturing, and then triangulate the mesh after exporting it from ZBrush again.
Seriously Aurick,
Not to be a wise guy but do you know how hard it is to model a 2000 poly model without using triangles and make it look good?
Anyway, Unless I’m doing something wrong I don’t think Zbrush will blur out the polygon edges on an imported mesh. In my experience, the Zbrush smooth only multiplies the geometry to round it out. It seems it’s acting like the subdivide option in the transform modifier panel in the tools palette but isn’t actually adding geometry and more verticies. The smooth just seems to be a preview of what subdivide would look like. Even if Smooth did blur the edges I don’t think I would want smooth to give me a representation of what my model looks like with more polygons added to it. Does this make sense? Have you ever used Max, Maya, or Lightwave? They give the illusion of smoothing by eliminating the hard edges without adding more polygons, obviously I haven’t been able to get Zbrush to do this for a more accurate description of what the model will look like another program while I’m painting on it. I guess I’ll just have to keep jumping between Zbrush and my other software which is cool by me!
Thanks for the reply. 
I have the same problem importing obj from Amorphium but I guess not all programes are compatible in every way.
We have to use our own evaluation method to get the best of it, I am grateful to be able to affort Zbrush for its groundbreaking features and will have to look for other ways if I wanted more.
It is not a defect just features and functions at this point of time, two years ago I thought Zbrush is a 3d toying programe. 
What epiginosis is talking about is smoothing/averaging the normals of the polygons to help hide the sharp edges of the connection. In Maya, this is something I use sometimes for lowpoly work, but in Zbrush there isn’t a way to do this.
But I must ask, why is it that you need to do this anyway? I’m pretty sure you aren’t trying to use Zbrush 100% to create your game/lowpoly model, so I’m curious why you need to do this in Zbrush. It won’t make it easier to paint, because Texture Master automatically Subdivides the mesh when you drop it to canvas. I’m just curios as to why you would need this feature in Zbrush.
Hi wchamlet – just in case you didn’t know, TextureMaster will only change the value to 1 if it is currently at 0. So you can override the fact that TM subdivides the mesh by setting a Tool>Modifiers>Smooth value of .01 (or any other low number) before dropping the model.
I think I’ve played with that before. Doesn’t it reset every time you pick your texture though? Or is it everytime you load the Texture Master Script? I can’t remember.
Anyway, setting the smooth to that low still wouldn’t help him out with smoothing out the normals. Or would it?
The setting applies to each model, and must be reset each time you load that model.
You’re right, it doesn’t help with what he’s looking for. I just wanted to point it out for your benefit and so that anyone else reading the thread doesn’t become confused by accident. 
What Aurick said,
I can set the smoothing feature to .01 and therefore my imported model will be a faceted, non-distorted model with the exact same polycount to paint on. This faceted model acts as a really nice grid-like view to paint on but doesn’t give me a completely accurate depiction of what the model will look like in another program that has a completely different smoothing feature.
However, to see exactly what my model will look like I can just as easily load the painted texture into the diffuse (color) channel in another 3D package and use the same exact model to see what the texture looks like with the desired smoothing effect. Jumping between programs while texturing is a step that I hoped Zbrush would eliminate for me but so far it hasn’t. I think Max has got the best smoothing features using ‘smoothing groups’ but so far that feature and the editable poly cut tools are the only features in Max I wish were present within Zbrush, Lightwave and Maya.
So don’t get me wrong.
For painting wrinkles in clothing and armor Zbrush has saved me a lot of time. And for the price you can’t have a more sophisticated piece of software