ZBrushCentral

Help, before I murder!...Just kidding, but help is needed.

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I have a simple sculpture I am working on. It is one piece no sub-tools and is very straight forward. I retopologized the mesh a little over half way through the sculpt to get some better edge flow and to re-adjust the mesh density. I did it using ZBrushes re-topo tools and had no problems. I checked the retopologized mesh by using the GoZ feature and slid it over to Maya. I then exported it as an .obj file out of Zbrush and opened that up in Maya just for good measure. So, with everything checking out ok, I proceeded to make scuplting adjustment to the new mesh in ZBrush. After a few hours, I decided to check the piece out using the GoZ feature, but this time it wouldn’t open up in Maya. I tried to export it as an .obj and that failed as well. After this, I went back to the original un-sculpted retopologized mesh opened it in Maya and noticed there were some very slight imperfections in the poly flow due to odd projection of the high-res details. No big deal, as I just simply smoothed it out in Zbrush. There were no bad poly’s that I could see and no unconnected points. Since the file I had been working on was no longer viable, I decided to start over from the newly “fixed/smoothed” mesh. Once again, I went through the checks over to Maya, and everything was looking good. After several hours of sculpting I decided to check my work in Maya again and I ran into the same problem as before. An error opening out of GoZ or exported .obj. All I did was sculpt on the piece using default ZBrush brushes, also I didn’t add any geometry by subdividing. In fact, the changes made to the model couldn’t be more routine. The only change at all, other than sculpting, was that I preformed a save as and re-named the file. Anybody out there run into this or have any ideas. Help would be greatly appreciated.

Using: Mac Dual 2.8 GHz Tower
Quad Core Intel Xeon
14 gigabytes Ram
Nividia Geoforce 8800GT Graphics

p.s Also, I am noticing instabilities with the Zbrush software. It crashes at unpredictable times ranging from a standard operation to sitting idle. It happens way to often and I have more than adequate horsepower to run the software effectively. Also, ever since the update to 3.5, the program hangs on start up, and I have to click the about Zbrush menu in the tool bar to get it to open. Not cool so far. :mad:

#2

Well at some point in all of this, you should have a tool in zbrush that represents your latest sculpt work, and in Maya you should have a basemesh that’s water tight and has the edge loops you want. Import your base mesh into ZBrush and project your detail on it. Just make absolutely certain beforehand that all your verts are welded and you don’t have any double edges or double faces or anything else wonky happening with the basemesh or its UVs before you bring it in to ZBrush.

You really have to be meticulous with your basemesh, checking it for problems, because all your other work is based on it. Problems with the basemesh will rear their ugly head in all sorts of nasty ways later in the process, as you’ve discovered.

When I start something with ZSpheres, as soon as I convert it to a mesh I bring it in to Max (or in your case Maya) to set the scale of the thing. Once scale is set I can bring it back in to ZBrush to sculpt. This prevents complications later.

#3

Dustin, thanks for the quick response. I’m working through your suggestions and checking over the mesh.

#4

Still working on it with negative results. Question, how would the base mesh be affect the “retopologized mesh”? Maybe I am missing something here, but by my understanding, a retopo’d mesh is it’s own entity so to speak. Once you retopo, isn’t the base mesh no longer relevent?