ZBrushCentral

3.5R3 (Import/export Scale issues with subtools and transpose master)

ZBrush Usage Questions
#101

Thats exactly how I thought this bug worked. Your imported object is
scaled and offset by its placement and size to fit the sculptable yeild that
Zbrush is capable of, would that be right? Thats the whole reason of the
scale and offset values?

For some reason when I ran the script my subtools would get smaller. Also
does this script paste the values into the current subtool only? or does it
paste the values into each subtool. The reason I ask is because:

I noticed on several occasions that after you have entered the correct
values for the 1st subtool, those values cascade down through your other 4
subtools. Which makes sense. BUT something makes me think that each
subtool has its own independant scale/offset values. Because as I entered
the values for lets say the 3rd subtool in my list (which could be the
problem subtool), I noticed that as I clicked in the textbox of the scale it
quickly changed from 1 to 14.8945 (this can be different depending on the
volume of your object). Which also makes me think that the prolem comes
from a cloned/duplicated/imported/merged/mirrored subtool. But I’m not
certain of this because I am usually doing everything I can to avoid the
issue and get on with the job. HEHE!

Just what I have seen…

#102

From what I found, this is another bug with the export dialog. When you change the value in say, your top subtool then select another subtool, it looks like the value is the same but what is happening is the value is just not updating in the export options. To test this, try changing the value in the top subtool, save, then init zbrush. Re-open the tool and select one of the subtools to see if the value cascaded down. For me this wasn’t the case. I had to use the script to copy the correct value > select the next subtool down > paste value > copy value > select next subtool down > paste value… and so on. I don’t think the value stores in memory so I had to keep copying and pasting.

#103

Is this a problem with zbrush units? There must be some type of unit system in zbrush now. I created a sphere in maya, my unit grid is set to meters so this sphere is about 6.5 tall. When i bring it into zbrush the scale is 327.416351. Zbrush didn’t used to have a unit system, Is this causing problems now?

#104

mucky_wet_noodle - Makes me think that the export dialog box was meant
to be for each subtool, but parts of the program still thinks that its for the
whole tool. A really common programming problem. Variables that are
supposed to be local are global and are being unessesarily shared by certain
functions.

kind of like this:

for n = 1 to 100
gosub boing
next n

boing:
print “hello”
n = n + 1 '<-- whoops, this line is not supposed to be here.
return

Excuse my old lame ass basic programming language but here in this
program you would expect 100 hello’s down the screen, instead only 50
appear. because n’s value is getting added by 1 without us knowing. Just
think of how long the program of the function that is the export palette
would be, and how a simple error like this can have you tearing out your
hair trying to find where n gets added by 1 (or something similar).
Unfortunately there looks like theres quite a bit of this throughout Zbrush,
Which makes me tempted to take note on every little thing I come across
like this, and present it on youtube in one of the threads here. For example,
when you have not saved your tool and you decide to quit zbrush, and it
asks you if you want to save your document. So you click YES! instead it
saves a .ZBR instead of a .ZTL. And you lose that 45 mins of work on your
object, whoops! Very simple mistake and every newbie has to go through it.
But nevermind Z4 looks like they are getting closer to release :lol:.

nwargasm - Zbrush halves the size of your objects bounding box. BUT it
doesn’t do exactly half (but pretty close). Import a 1000x1000x1000 cube,
the number should be 500, instead its 499.999969. I have no real idea why
it has units in Zbrush when everything is relative. Which means they should
be all be behind the scenes OR if there was some consistency. Like scale
staying at 1, It’s cool that Zbrush is all organic, but maybe a bit too
organic. Now its time to work on the other end of its spectrum. Make it so
that Zbrush can have modelling tools to the point where you can leave
maya for just animating and rendering.

#105

OK, I think I read this somewhere else or it could have been someone in
here. So I’m just going to confirm what I read somewhere:lol:. If you save
your to subtool partially hidden then you have basically screwed your
scale/offset.

The link that Paul has put on here to a script that fixes the scale offset by
using a previous tool with correct values works great! (post #93).

When you are ready to start appending sutools I’d totally recommend to
save your values to a file either by writing them down or using that
script(use the script use the script!).

I guess when you are making a character you would start off with the body
which would be your top subtool. Then you would add clothing. Eventually
your clothing would coverup everything but the head and hands. So you
would just polygroup your character, and just have the head and hands
visible. Thats when you save your work and screw up your import/export
values. AND this will happen to any other subtool that you have partially
hidden too.

I’m also gussing that in Nickz case he must have been detailing a hand
perhaps, with the rest of the body hidden at about 3am :lol:. saved it at the
point where he was at, and went to bed. several days later trying out his
rig or whatnot in Maya and finding his exported character all messed up.

Short answer don’t save your work with partially hidden subtools.

I just had a good test session with subtools. Hiding, saving then intializing,
reloading and checking, reseting values. with values coming out as 0,0,0,0
for any subtool that was hidden when saving.

So it would be good that behind the scenes the object is saved to the file
as if it was completely visible. That would eradicate this problem.

#106

I have just solved my scaling issue. The mistake (if you can call it that eh pixologic?) was that I decimated my largest object (which was the body of my chr). In order to do this I deleted it from my subtools and loaded it in seperately in order to decimate it (it kept crashing with all the other sub tools). Then I re-appended it back into the main sculpt -big mistake as this obviously change the scaling.

How I sorted it was by deleting the body subtool in the bad sculpt, saving the rest of the subtools as a fresh ztl. Going back to a version of the body I knew was correct scale, then use sub tool master to multi append from the file i saved (the one minus the “bad” body). This worked.

I am glad, I had just spent weeks rigging the chr up in max with morph target skinning, the full monty etc, so I had to get the original scale back lol

#107

This is happening to me too!