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ZBrush Scale Messed Up Between Tools

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello - I’m working on a character inside a ZPR file.

I appended some items to work inside a different subtool list inside the same ZPR file.

After finishing, I tried to resume by appending my tools ‘back’ into the original subtool list.

For some mysterious reason my entire set of subtools is now out of whack with the original objects inside the same ZPR file.

I tried a fresh scene, and loaded each subtool set as a ZTL , and still they do not match.

I’ve tried the zscale plugin, which does me zero good and does not match each scene at all properly. It just auto scans everything and does not rematch the two.

All I did is take a subtool, uv map it in maya and reimport it as obj. Now the entire ztools scale is skewed and changed from the original ? How is that possible, as I only exported / reimported one subtool. Why would it re-skew / ruin the scale for absolutely all of my subtools in the list ? The ones that were not exported at all ?

Why is it a landmine to simply export an obj, map and reimport?

#2

Okay hopefully this helps somebody - who runs into this as well.

While working in my ZPR file, my export settings were ‘automatically’ reset to 1 scale, 0 0 0 offsets in my new working subtool list (specifically the second subtool list I was creating new parts in, but inside the same ZBrush Project ZPR file).

For some reason in my original subtool list, the export settings were scale 44.866 / offset x = 0 / offset y = 0.9984 / offset z = 0.00431.

I never touched those settings at any time. Not sure why it was set to those numbers.

So while working inside the same ZPR file, one list of subtools remained at the scale 44.866 . The other list of subtools export settings at some point while importing obj files I’m assuming - was auto set to scale 1.0 .

I say this because my first export of ‘tubes’ for the character came into Maya correctly. But the second exported subtool (for tube ports) using the 'insert mesh brush ’ , followed by ’ split hidden ’ then merged to one subtool, those then exported to Maya, had suddenly set my export settings (without alerting me) to 1.0 instead. Causing the scale problems.

At which point the two different subtools lists became scale ‘incompatible’.

I’d like to suggest that ZBrush keeps a locked down export scale settings, because I don’t know where the scale 44.86 came from. This is just a clean ZPR file that I’ve been working from. Yay found the weird problem ! :o

1 Like
#3

Another helpful tidbit -

When you are appending a subtool from one overall tool, to another (inside your ZPR ZBrush project) … it uses the export settings (scale settings) of that specific TOOL when appending.

So you have to manually match the two different tools ‘export scale settings’ inside your same ZPR project to make sure your appending subtools match in scale between each other.

ZBrush appeared to original match the export scale settings at first while working , but at some point they can become -unmatched- in scale while you work / while you merge / separate items… or while you import objs from Maya etc.