Desperately trying to export sculpted tool.

[system]

First I am setting up a series of stl and rlf files for doing artistic machining similar to what can be found at several 3dvector relief sites but mine are more aimed at the hotrod, motorhead, greaseball,biker, lowrider type crowd. People more like me. Most of what is available is pretty sanitized for your protection type stuff, not the kind of thing one is likely to cnc into a cam cover on a bike or into a pair of billet valve covers. That being said anything I produce from Zbrush will need to be exported as an obj (most likely) and color and texture maps are useless to me.

I was absolutely thrilled to find I could create a beautiful 3d Dia de los Muertos Sugar Skull in about 15 minutes. Attached is a picture of what I mean.

Euphoric feeling faded pretty quick as I realized that I apparently have limited chances of getting it out of Zbrush and into any other program to make it happen.

Right now I am believing that I may be able to make it happen with stencils(or would that mean pixol use and not be exportable?) or by converting the alphas to 3d. If I have to convert them to 3d is there a way to control quality and depth? When I have converted them to 3d I have gotten slop that looks like what I need created while on ludes. If I can control depth and quality please tell me how.

Are there any other ways to go about this? And if Zbrush is not the right product for it does anyone have any suggestions that will get me these results this quick but still be able to export a useful product for machining? I have Rhino, Artcam, Poser, and Mastercam and am willing to get whatever will get the job done with the least amount of time. I am a high school teacher and have an 8 year old daughter, a wife, a 2 year old grandkid, a 10 year old Labrador retriever and a few other things that all vie for my free time so summer is the only time I have for long drawn out projects.

I thank you all in advance for help, ideas, suggestions.

PS, I need some Elvis hair or a rockabilly pompadour as a 3d model any ideas on where to find or how to make one?

Attachments

[Blaine91555]

I’m not entirely sure I understand. If I do, you are needing displacement maps. Check out video’s and tuts on that here or on Pixologic site.

[system]

I am trying to export what I have managed to do in zbrush in a format that can be converted to a usable stl file for machining. I have always worked with meshes and am not knowledgeable at all on displacement maps but was of the impression they are only useful in the rendering of the picture, which is not at all a concern of mine. If I am wrong there I will research displacement maps in detail but as I said my end interest is in machinable products.
I do appreciate your response.

[Bingo_Jackson]

I am trying to export what I have managed to do in zbrush in a format that can be converted to a usable stl file for machining. I have always worked with meshes and am not knowledgeable at all on displacement maps but was of the impression they are only useful in the rendering of the picture, which is not at all a concern of mine. If I am wrong there I will research displacement maps in detail but as I said my end interest is in machinable products.
I do appreciate your response.

Hi. Thank you for not continuing to use black text.

Im not sure what the issue is. Many people use Zbrush for 3d printing/Rapid prototyping. I don’t know much about the process itself, but it must be a matter of finding and application that imports OBJ, and exports the file format you need. Here is a tutorial I found, it may be of help:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=57065

Furthermore, if you are working in ZB 3.1 (it wont work in 3.5 yet) The 3D Print exporter plug in will probably be of interest to you (it exports stl)

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=071266

[system]

First thing sorry about the black text I didnt knotice I was doing that, and second thank you guys for answering. I found my problem and it was a very simple fix although it still seems to be against natural flow. I was of the impression from the videos that you have to drop it to the canvas to do any type of sculpting. I found this to be insanely frustrating since you are seriously limited to what can be done after that. So now I am able to do what I wanted and am happy. However I do find that not being able to reselect your tool is kind of alien.
Thanks guys.

[Bingo_Jackson]

First thing sorry about the black text I didnt knotice I was doing that, and second thank you guys for answering. I found my problem and it was a very simple fix although it still seems to be against natural flow. I was of the impression from the videos that you have to drop it to the canvas to do any type of sculpting. I found this to be insanely frustrating since you are seriously limited to what can be done after that. So now I am able to do what I wanted and am happy. However I do find that not being able to reselect your tool is kind of alien.
Thanks guys.

Sounds like you could benefit from reading the “getting started” section in the program documentation:

http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/TOC

You can continue to work with your tool…it simply needs to be redrawn on the canvas, and the “edit” mode button pressed. And to head off the next common new user issue, remember to a 3D mesh, you save it as a tool not a document.