ZBrushCentral

Hard crashes importing OBJs

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’m using OSX primarily, and need to kick out normal maps for a model I’m using in a still. I’ve exported 3 sdiv levels in OBJ from 3.12 and am trying to rebuild my tool on XP so I can use zmapper.

When I try to import the sdiv2 (500k), or sdiv3 (2mil) zBrush hard quits. Using XP SP2 on dedicated hardware (2.33Ghz Core2 Duo, 3gb RAM). Given the system specs I wouldn’t expect this kind of poly count to be problematic, wondering if there is something wrong with the way the OBJs are being exported, or if there is some kind of soft tuning I need to do in zB to support this.

I haven’t tried this through fusion on the mac yet, just figured if it wasn’t working native there’d be no positive changes running it virtually - but now that I’m having issues I will.

Anyrate, any and all help is much appreciated.
Thanks,
~sG~

#2

I sometimes have this problem. Loading it into another application and welding any loose vertices and re-exporting sometimes helps . . . not good for point order preservation, but from time-to-time I hit upon .obj’s that ZB just doesn’t like.

-K

#3

I was hoping you’d chime in :wink: . Will make some freshies with Maya and see if that helps… I’ll post the results either way. thanks~

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Update:
Yeah, so no luck with that. I tried opening and merging verts in maya, then rexporting as OBJ, tried exporting DXF out of ZB, tried rebuilding the tool in zBrush 2 OSX from OBJs and taking that tool to Win, tried exporting OBJs from z2, notbing! I can get as far as sdiv5, but that 6th is just out of reach. What a drag…

What’s the deal with the normal map function in 3.12? Has anyone had luck with that?

Also, in 3.12 when you make a big canvas, what’s up with the redraw? It glitches black and is pretty much unuseable. oogles of RAM here…

#4

Another thing to do is to make sure that the drive ZBrush is installed on has a good amount of free space and is well defragmented.

#5

What kind of UV map is on the model (if any)? Consider putting a UV map, even a “tile” one on there and see what happens. I’ve noticed that ZB’s .obj import function (and Reconstruct SubD for that matter) are sensitive to the UV map.

If all else fails, since you’re already going to Windows to load up your objects, consider xNormal (the viewer only works in Bootcamp, but the main map generating functions work without needing to invoke the viewer if you use Parallels or VMware.)

Xnormal will make good displacement & height maps and a Mac version is coming. I use it in bootcamp quite a bit with stubborn Zbrush models. Be sure to put UV map on the base mesh and load those UV’s into your hires model (if possible–sometimes ZB 3.12 is fussy about loading UVs). You can then use “UV match” in xNormal which will use the UV space to map Hires point to Low-res points, improving the verticallity (essentially the normal alignment) of the scan.

I don’t do any map work in OSX anymore–Zmapper (PC ZB 3.1) and xNormal (PC-only right now) do better jobs for the normal map.

HTH,
-K

#6

Aurick: fresh install on a relatively fresh drive, 400gb free atm. just finished making the rounds again in vmware fusion and got the same behavior.
Kerwin: uvs are adaptive tiled, for this model I’m trying to round trip it in z (scultp, uv, paint etc) and just drop into my scene in maya for some mental ray action later.

Just checked out xNormal, looks awesome (and it’s the right price, ha!). Going to give it a shot now.

Thanks again for your time and help guys~ :+1:
your insights are invaluable