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3.5 importing obj's from maya

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

heya

I’ve exported my mesh to an obj, opened in maya and built some new shapes around it (without changing the size/position etc). Then I want to import the new shapes as subtools. In 3.1 I did this by appending the polymesh3D shape and then importing my obj’s and they would be placed exactly where I put them in maya.

Now however my imported obj’s are placed in the center of the scene (the same position as the polymes3D star). I’m sure there’s some new options somewhere but I’ve looked at the import/export tabs and can’t find anything useful.

thanx :+1:

#2

I did some more testing and all my imported obj’s seem to have different scale. Even if I import the same mesh that I exported from zbrush it comes in smaller than original. anybody got any ideas?

#3

This was happening in 3.1, 3.12, and 3.2 as well in my experience both personally and with my students. My work around is this:

-export your level 1 obj
-immediately reimport your level 1 obj into the open subtool that you exported from, which will resize your object
-do what you need to in maya with that obj
-when you reimport from maya, your obj scale should now be the same (because we have already shrunk it down).

This has worked for me many times, especially when sending retopo’d objects into maya when I need to UV them or add parts, before I bring it back into zbrush and want to keep my previous sculpt data.

#4

thanx slorp but that doesn’t quite do it. I remember having some problems in 3.2 wich you seem to have the solution for.

It seems like the imported mesh is connected to the polymesh3D’s scale and position rather than the obj’s scale and position relative to the master tool.

#5

I had the same problem. On my end, for some reason, the objects scale and offsets were wiped out. I carried the tool over from 3.1 which actually helped me. Under Tool->Export there is now scale and xyz offset info. The obj i had trouble with was set to a scale of 1 (another had 0??) and the xyz offsets were all 0. All my other subtools had compleetly different values (and those exported/imported properly). So on the problem subtool i changed the Scale and Offset values to match those subtools which worked for improt/export and that seemed to fix my problem. One thing that is odd though, is that same problem subtool imports/exports fine out of 3.1. When i save it as a tool in 3.1 and append it in 3.5, its fine…no problems. When i export the obj out of 3.1 and then import it into 3.5, its the improper scale again. Try the above and see if it helps you as well. Good luck!

#6

thanx fosterchris, sounds like you might be on to something. I recreated my scene with the subtools in 3.1 and opened that one in 3.5 to try and append the subtools onto my original but with no luck.
scale and offset were set to 0 even though the they had real values on the tool I got from 3.1, and ofc same thing if I export/import them as obj.

How did you change the settings manually on the imported obj? nothing happens when I change the export settings and the deformation sliders doesn’t work lite that.

I went back into maya to see if the translation values would somehow match with the xyz values in zbrush but the didn’t, so no luck there either.

would be good to get an official word on this, if theres a workaround or fix in the pipe.

#7

Try unify after importing. To me that solved the issue

#8

that didn’t do it either I’m afraid. It rescaled the object but not to where it was supposed to be and the position is still off. Thanx though