ZBrushCentral

Can't I get HD geometry and into Keyshot?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#7

The Bridge turns polypaint into a texture automatically, and can recreate the appearance of Zbrush objects with a high degree of fidelity. It can handle reasonably high polycounts (depending on system capability), so as long as a feature is converted into geometry, it can render it. It can be as simple as sculpt, paint, send.

Keyshot doesn’t do displacement maps, but since it can handle double digit millions of polygons depending on system capability, displacement would be moot. Simply send a high poly object, or send a mid poly object to capture the silhouette, and make up the finest detail with a normal map.

This object in Keyshot is all polypaint and geo. No Uvs or textures. Made mostly with nanomesh:

newdoughouse.jpg

#8

Elemmanuel wrote: And what about polypaint with keyshot? Does it transfer from Zbrush or does it use textures?..

Both textures and polypaint (materials also) will transfer to Keyshot.

#9

Personally I don’t think KeyShot was a good choice for me, but that me, I make weird stuff and most of it crashes KeyShot.
What I thought it would do is replace Blender, it does not, it makes me appreciate Blender more which is interesting as I basicly despise the bloody thing.
That it isn’t what I was after does not in any way mean that its not fantastic, it is, and in fact what it does do will have me doing new things and thinking about new projects, ones that won’t crash it.
Looking at it that way Im sort of thrilled!

#10

Obviously it is subject to system stability and capability. I’ve sent 20 million polygon models to Keyshot and not crashed it. Zbrush itself crashes far more often.

Zbrush 4 r7 has a lot of new features and changes to become familiar with. Add Keyshot on top, and you’ve got a learning curve that most people cannot be expected to process in a week. I’d say give yourself more time to get the hang of it. Blender has more features, and more capacity for fine tuning complex scenes, but I can’t see anyone preferring it to KS for simple object renders. KS is objectively faster and easier to use, for superior results vs time invested.

#11

I agree, but so far all I have done is crash KeyShot, and it doesn’t just crash, it takes my whole computer with it.
It simply can’t cope with the things Im trying to get it to do, Blender can and while its is far harder to use, and one hell of a lot less fun its what I am stuck with.
The ZBrush version of KeyShot is great for what it is, but its something I actually will have to change what I make in order to use.

#12

Yeah.
I have a lot of like / dislike experience as well.
Some things work fine and I do like the skin material.

But somewhat I wished I used the money for 16Gb extra memory or a second VideoCard to get faster renders with Octane instead.

With Octane I’m limited to 4Gb VRAM (as I think VideoCards with more memory than that getts silly expensive).
That was the reason for buying Keyshoot, using RAM instead and not having to worry about if a scene would fit in memory or not.

But I have found that some simple things can take forever to transfer and waste all of my 16Gb RAM.

I have posted the below example at the Keyshot forum.

I suppose there is a bug or something because it makes no sense to me.

As Keyshot don’t support HD geometry from zBrush I did some tests to instead go higher on ordinary in subdivision in zBrush as it now supports 64bit, it should be possible.

So I transferred a close to 20Mil polygon model and while it took a long time to transfer it worked really well once it was finished.
Both Keyshot and zBrush running along just fine.
Memory usage run at about 10Gb with a peek up to 15Gb (I have 16Gb) and after completed transfer it leveled out at about 13Gb.

So I tried another model.

Just as the previous model it had fibers, about twice as much but the total model was of modest 2,8Mil polygons.

This transfer took even longer and in the end Keyshot crashed with an out of memory message.

How can a 2,8Mil polygon model run out of memory when a 20Mil polygon model worked fine?

In order to figure out how much resources are used, I loaded the same parts into my Octane render engine, expecting it to crash as I only have 4Gb VRAM. But, it loaded the models in no time. I can see that the polygon data only uses 0,5Gb VRAM.
I understand that in the transfer to Keyshot textures are created as well but that can hardly explain why so much more memory is used. If I consider the almost 4Gb RAM that zBrush used then the bridge and / or Keyshot is using more than 12Gb.
Any ideas?

It could of course be that the bridge or zBrush are generating extra geometry or something that not is obvious when sending over the bridge to Keyshot, in comparison to exporting the model to obj and import into Octane.

Gonna have to wait and see what they say.

#13

Yes, models with higher polycounts and larger files with many objects will take longer to load into Keyshot. This is to be expected. Once there they tend to perform fairly well, although this varies with system capability.

There’s not really much need for HD GEO displacement in Keyshot. Just load a medium res poly model that is high enough resolution to capture the model’s contour, and apply the fine surface detail as a normal map, same as you would in any other program. The point of displacement is to actually change the model silhouette for programs that cant comfortably handle the amount of raw polygons it would take to accurately convey those curves. If the program can handle those polys comfortably, then displacement is just another costly render time process that doesn’t really serve much point.

Keep in mind If you are running both 64 bit ZB and 64 bit Keyshot simultaneously, and have high poly models/large files loaded in both, they are going to be competing for system resources.

If you are already well served by another renderer (that costs twice as much as the KS for ZB Special Ed), then yes, the mileage you get out of it might not be as much as some.

#14

Keep in mind If you are running both 64 bit ZB and 64 bit Keyshot simultaneously, and have high poly models/large files loaded in both, they are going to be competing for system resources.

This is seriously true, switching to the 32 bit version of ZBrush can help a lot with KeyShots performance, it just gives it more room to play in so to speak.

Something you will seriously want to avoid is getting KeyShot into swap, once that happens life becomes hell for your computer.

#15

If transfer speeds and use of huge amount of memory during transfer is fixed I will probaly grow into liking Keyshot a lot.
It handles my 20Mil Poygon / 50Mil Triangles lightning fast once in there.

My standpoint at the momen is that there must be some bug or bad coding on some part and that it can and will be fixed.

#16

It’s not really something to be fixed, except by more powerful CPU and faster hard drive. Large files/more complex models take longer to move around than smaller ones. If it’s a problem for you, send lower poly models with textures applied like you would in most other render engines, rather than dense high poly models with polypaint. You can also reduce the “Max faces” slider in the Zbrush Render> External Renderer menu to reduce the number of polygons Zbrush has to send to Keyshot for dense models.

#17

I think your missing something.

The model I’m currently try to send over is not that big.

It’s just 3.3Mil polygons.

Before trying to send this one over I successfully transferred a 20Mil polygon model.

There is no logic in a model so much smaller eating up more memory than the big model did.

And the Max Faces slider has been tested but made no difference.

I will not comment on this matter any more in this thread.
Partly because the discussion no longer matches the subject of the thread, partly because I want to see what Keyshot says about the issue.

I post a new more correctly named thread later on if and when I get any new info.

#18

Wallan, does the thing you are having trouble with have FiberMesh?
I know you are starting another thread, but Im curious now…

#19

I sent you a message.

#20

Had not planned to post here but as there is some interest.

Fibers generating a massive amount of polygons is a reason for models being heavy.

Got the following comment from the people at Keyshot

Fibermeshes will be optimized soon. We do have native curve and hair rendering in KeyShot.

That would be excellent :slight_smile:

They are also interested in continue to investigate the memory peek.
It might not have to be a bad thing to use all available memory, in case that is what they do.
That’s just making god use of the resources.
As long as it’s not taken to far…
With a little luck there is some glitch in the transfer that can be fixed as well.

:slight_smile:

#21

Keyshot has confirmed the problem with memory peeks in usage of large single mesh models.
It will be optimized in Keyshot 6.

:slight_smile:

#22

Yep… Well I will keep using isotropix Clarisse. I have no problem sending 80 millions mesh to it … For me keyshot is nice but it’s too oriented to product design rendering. It’s easy and everything but I don’t feel at home with it. And anyway when you stated to test the power of isotropix, is hard to go back to something else.

#23

I agree with Keyshot beeing more of a digital photo studio.

I took a look at Clarisse and it looks great, except for beeing a bit out of my pricerange.
Downloaded the PLE version to play with.

First impression is that the interface feels very responsive.

I’m gonna play around with it.
It has scatter, and other stuff that makes me think that maybe it can do lanscapes god enough to replace Vue as well.
If so, maybe the application can replace several and justify the cost. :slight_smile:

#24

I’m using Isotropix Clarisse (well in fact I’m using the 2.0 RC10 call Hyperion…) since a little while now in production too… and it’s much more responsive than vue!
Vue is not interactive in many ways. It’s really worse the try, and, if you are teacher or student they have a very advantageous price for it.

#25

Not a teacher or student, just my hobby so it will be quite expensive.

Is 2.0 Out, when I check the pricelist I only see 1.X?

Also I find the licence handling to be harsh.
If one has the very bad luck of needing to repair or upgrade the computer more than twice one year you will have to buy a full licence again.
Not likely to happen but if one has such bad luck with the computer then they are really hitting on someone allready laying down :frowning:

#26

You have access to 2.0 when you have subscribed to the maintenance subscription.
For the license handling , there is nothing to worry about. If you have troubles, you just contact the team and they react very kindly and most of all quickly. The 2 reinstall imitation is not an issue.