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Appending SubTool results in mesh disappearance.

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Okay, here’s the situation. I’m running ZBrush 3.2 on OSX 10.6.2 on a MacBook Pro with 8GB of ram.
Sculpted a human head in ZBrush, made some outer Eyes in SoftImage 2010 sp1 and exported these out as an .OBJ file. In ZBrush I clear my canvas and exit ‘edit’ mode so I can import the outer eyes .OBJ. So far so good.
Now I re-draw the human head Tool on the canvas, re-enter ‘edit’ mode and open the SubTools menu. I click on ‘Append’ and select the outer Eyes tool.
Result? My human head tool disappears from the viewport, but is still visible in the SubTool menu as a small icon. It’s also still visible in the little viewport in the ‘Draw’ menu. The SubTool icon for the appended eyes is blank, but when hovered over with the mouse it does report the correct number of points and polygons. Framing doesn’t bring anything into the viewport, nor does ‘Unifying’ the SubTools (I don’t see how it could since head and eyes are correctly scaled when present in SI2010 with all transform coordinates correctly frozen).

Furthermore, both tools work correctly when drawn independently on the canvas. So it only goes wrong the moment I try to append one to the other as a SubTool.

Any ideas??

#2

Hi Lone Deranger :lol:

you are experiencing the oh so famous scaling issues. Your meshes are terribly off scale. As i am not an XSI User i can’t really help you, but maybe this thread can: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=78098&highlight=max+scale

I am really happy with my Lightwave guys not a single problem here. No Scaling trouble, no unwelded points … :stuck_out_tongue:

Hope that thread helps

#3

Hi dsoellbuster!

Thank you for replying and posting that link. Just read through that thread… what a mess. How did that slip through the beta testing?? :confused:

Anyway, it gave me some ideas and I think I’ve managed to find some work arounds. At least the eyes are now showing up (turns out they were in a wholly different place and scale than the head was).

Thanks again!

#4

Yep that’s what i thought … but again never happened to me.

Good luck finding your meshes … hey easter is coming up … well you still got some time to search for the goodies :smiley:

#5

Hello Lone Deranger

I have a couple of quick questions for you that may cause the issue.

Is the mesh that is coming out of XSI a part of a node? If so there are people having this issue because the default setting in XSI will use the node’s scale and offset not the mesh that is with in the node. There is a setting that you can select in XSI to turn this off so on export it uses the meshes scale and offset.

The other thing I would need you to try is append the polymesh star first to the tool you are trying to append to. Then import the obj on top of the polymesh star. Does that work?

The last question I have is this. Can you select the polymesh star first and then import the obj on that. Now append that obj to the head. Does that work?

Before you do this though what do the export values say in the export sub-palette of the obj and the head?

Paul

#6

Hi Paul. Thank you for replying to this thread and chipping in with some helpful information.
By reading through the information in the thread dsoellbuster linked, I managed to get things working. Here’s where I think things went awry.
When I initially started exporting parts of my ZTool from ZB3.2 as OBJ’s for use in SoftImage I noticed that the Export Scale and Offset numbers where all containing the ‘nan’ value. This resulted in the exported geometry not being visible (I suppose because it was infinitesimally small). From a thread here on ZBC I learned to set these values to 1, 0, 0, 0 respectively. Which indeed yielded a visible mesh in SI2010. However it was rather small.
Lining up eyeball geometry done in SoftImage and importing those into ZBrush would cause the scaling/offset problem upon appending them as a SubTool.

I managed to find an older version of the ZTool that still contained the specific Export Scale & Offset values. I used the Scale value (131.54789 in my case) to scale up the geometry in SoftImage. I froze all transforms and brought it back to ZBrush. I then recreated and reimported the higher subdivision levels (which I had saved out as OBJ’s separately) to ensure the sculptural detail was preserved. When I appended the eyes as a SubTool it all lined up perfectly.

Regarding your questions, I’m not sure what SoftImage node you are refering to.
When using the OBJ import function of SoftImage, I specify to import the mesh into a ‘Model’ node. A way for SoftImage to deal with the hierarchy of an entire character.
When re-exporting the OBJ from SoftImage I always made certain the mesh was on it’s own, with the modeling construction mode (history) and transforms frozen. So no double/hidden transforms were present.

I did manage at one point to get both the head and eyes imported and appended underneath Cube3DPolyMesh. Although the eyes were huge compared to the head, it did work.

Anyway, the problem has been solved thankfully. Moral of the story? Don’t go messing with the Export values.
I would like to know however why ZB3.2 swaps out those values with those dreaded 'nan’s…?

Thanks Paul! :+1:

#7

Hello

You did all of that correct? The nan value is an issue that pops up from time to time. Like you did as long as you have the values of the other subtools you can input that into the export values of the subtool that has the nan.

Small note for you. The 3.2 version will give the same export values on all subtools. So when you get a nan just go to another subtool to get the export values, then export and re-import. It will be fixed then.

Do not import ontop of something like the cube because ZBrush will change the export values to the cube’s value and that is why it was large. The best workflow that is the fastest is to append a polymesh star to your working tool and then import ontop of that. (like your eyes)

Talk to you later and I hope all is going well at Weta.

What is your real name?

Paul

#8

Hi Paul,

thanks for all these tips. My name is Danny, we e-mailed a few times back in the summer of 2008 regarding beta testing.
Actually, I might drop you another mail again at some point regarding some very persistent RMB-navigation bugs if you don’t mind?

I’ve actually left Weta some weeks after Avatar was completed to avoid working on Weta’s next big show, which I had no interest in at all. Which reminds me to change my signature. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
D.

#9

Hey Danny

I do remember. Do you still have my email? You can always send me any information. I need to speak with you anyway.

Paul