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ZBrush <---> Blender?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi! After a LONG hiatus down the wrong career path, I’m trying to recover my long-lost art skills and have reinstalled ZBrush 2.0.

I’m using Blender as my main modelling application as I’m pretty much broke (lol) for a while, and I’m wondering if anyone else here is using ZBrush with Blender? I’m curious if I’m a pioneer…

It’s nice to be back! <img>

#2

I use Blender with Zbrush, works just as good as if you used 3DSMax. (in my case better)
Plus I love the layout of Blender. :smiley:

#3

Excellent! I’m getting ready to start putting together a little home-based production pipeline and I figured I’d use Blender until I can save up for a copy of Lightwave (which really is my weapon of choice, I’m soooooo sorry I sold my LW license, waah!).

Of course, by the time I can afford LW maybe Blender will be better! Argh!

#4

You might want to google around a bit, but long story short is that it’s a far better time to work with with zBrush and blender than just a few months ago. Blender benefitted greatly from the Summer of Code initiative and with the development of Elephant’s Dreams (an open movie made with blender) now has alot of the features people were waiting for. Also, many of the features of SharpConstruct (an open zBrush-ish prog) have now been added to blender so I expect our zBrush way of doing things will play even more heavily in blender’s future.

Nice to hear someone likes the interface. I keep hearing it’s been improved, but always from people who liked it before!

#5

I’m actually finding that I’m liking Blender more than LW (at least, V6)! Scary!

Blender has definitely improved a LOT, and I think I’m going to spend some serious time trying to use a ZBrush<–>Blender setup and maybe write up a little tutorial or something.

Now if only there were Mental Ray integration in Blender… sigh! Can’t have it all!

I’ll use whatever I can get ZBrush to work with. :wink:

#6

Well your wrong in that case… You can have it all.

http://www.blendernation.com/2006/08/14/blental-blender-for-mentalray/

#7

Well I’ll Be Damned. :eek:

That’s an amazing find! I’ll have to dig further into it, but just from a quick scan I’m pretty impressed! :eek:

Thanks for posting that link!

#8

I’m happy to see there are other people that use ZBrush and Blender. After I found out exactly how to import the .obj file correctly into Blender, and figured out how to get the Normal maps right, I decided to use it exclusively. I think Blender has come a very long way since the old days. Back when I started learning 3D, I found Blender, ( because its free), it took me quite a while to get a decent scene. (I worked on 1 alleyway for over 2 weeks) However the new interface allows a heck of a lot more flexibility, then it used to. Thanks to the summer of code project.

The thing I’m waiting for the most, is for them to impliment the auto rigging system. It’s supposed to be released on the next version of Blender. Yeah, anyways… I was just happy to see there are others out there, and I rambled on.
-DED-

#9

another Blender and ZBrush user here.

you may want to just stick with Blender and follow the development. they just announced the 3rd Open movie project, [Durian](http://durian.blender.org/), on blender.org the other day and it's set to add lots of awesome features. [Blender 2.5](http://www.blender.org/development/current-projects/changes-since-248/) is also in development which will be a huge leap forward as far as interface and tools workflows are concerned. The second open movie, Big Buck Bunny, introduced particle Hair and grooming, as well as many many other new features. Version 2.49, now a release candidate, will have projection painting with support for texture nodes. Blender is the fastest developing Open Source app around, and it is my personal opinion that it matches or will soon surpass that which is available commercially as far as modeling, animation, and rendering are concerned. It's already ahead on UV unwrapping, and on par with other particle hair solutions. Keep up to date with it and you won't be disappointed. purchase things in the blender store and support the cause ;)

the auto-rigging system theded is referring to is called etch-a-ton (skel-e-ton) and allows you to freehand draw an armature into your model. it also allows you to insert pre-set rigs into your armature. Very Cool! i don’t know any other program with such a creative way to make armatures.

oh, and one of the GSOC projects this year planned to be in blender 2.5 is the integration of a little something called Illumination Brush. awesome stuff =)

cheers brian
#10

Can anyone help me here, iv followed numerous tutorials about exporting normal maps, texture maps and displacement maps from zbrush and applying them in blender, but no matter what i do, my final render from blender is just a black shape, no detail, no colour nothing.

I really dont know what i’m doing wrong, and i’m at a point with my 3d where i need to be able to produce a nice detailed render.

Any advice or helpful links would be greatly appreciated.render.jpg

#11

It may seem a silly question, but: are you sure there are any lights aimed at your figure?

#12

When you import the obj you may have two material slots. Delete the one that does not have the zbrush texture.