ZBrushCentral

2 quick questions

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

hi, 2 questions i had

1.quick edit-
where is this button in zb3?
it used to turn on/off the switch to low res look when you rotate.

2.morph target-
in my tutorial it said this is important for people that rig first,
so this time around i made my semi low res mesh in maya and rigged it
before i started to texture and color in zbrush.
now that im finished in zbrush, when i switch back to my morph target
to the low res pre-morphed obj and make my displacement and normal maps,
i get little to no displacement in maya and my normal map is semi decent.
but when i dont switch back to my original morph after texturing and i make displacement and normal maps,
i get a far better quality in maya.
so the question is what is this exactly for?

thanks.

#2

  1. Transform menu – it’s usually on by default.

  2. Depends on exactly what you’re doing. ZB is a multi-res modeling technique, which means that at use adjust higher levels, the lower level also adjusts. Usually, this is just fine and you export the adjusted level 1, which geometrically a lot closer to your finished, high-res sculpt. The resulting maps should look better because your base mesh is better (i.e. geometically closer) to the displaced detail.

So why would you save your original base mesh as a morph and use that instead? (As is suggested by your tutorial . . .) The answer involves pipelines and how some teams get things done. If your original base mesh was handed over to the rigger (for animation) or the game engine guys (for optimization), while you are creating detail at the same time in Zbrush, they don’t want you messing with the base mesh. They want the maps (normal, displacement, texture, etc.) to fit the base mesh you started with. That’s why you save the morph at the beginning, so when you generate your maps, they can be generated exactly for the base mesh you started with, thus not interfering with their work. In your own shop, you can change or retopologize your original base mesh as much as you want since you’re not bound to it.

However, once you have it rigged, and perhaps want to “Tweak” someting in Zbrush, then you’ll want to save your base mesh to you don’t have to re-load and re-rig to accept new maps.

HTH,
-K

#3

1-that quick edit didnt seem to fix it,
is there a way to keep the model looking normal when you rotate?
looking normal as in a smoothed object not unsmoothing from
a rotate while your mouse button is still held.

2-what you explained is pretty much what the digital tutors video guy said,
helpfull though, but maybe i wasnt precise in my explanation.
im useing my altered geometry to get maps instead of my original geometry, because im getting far better results from it.
meaning, i didnt need a morph target, even though in maya im still useing
the un altered mesh and applying the maps made from the altered geometry.
this just a freak occurance?
say i Rig’d in maya and already setup a XNA construct for my original model
i used in maya and made a morph target. i then use zbrush and sculpt to Div5 then color it to my liking. i then go to div1 on that altered model, and make a normal/disp map from that altered geometry. and it works perfect on my already rigged model in maya, better than if i used a morph target back to my original maya shaped geometry in zbrush to get the maps.
so what brought me to the question was, if i am useing my old geometry, and applying maps made from a new geometry and it works perfect, and didnt need a morph target, to me it doesnt seem essential to make a morph target, or was this just a weird occurance?
hope that wasnt too confussing to read :ex:

#4

Answer to 1) Preferences>Performance>QTransThreshold1

It’s a slider that sets the maximum polycount shown when rotating the model. It’s set pretty low by default to accommodate for less than awesome systems. In fact, ZBrush as a whole is made to be usable on any system, which is what makes it so powerful, especially on good systems!

Other dude thought you meant “edit” mode.

#5

ah perfect, exactly what i was looking for, thanks!