Just thought I’d post the settings (which are subject to change) I use for exporting models from Max to ZB, and then back again so that XYZ always stays XYZ. Hope it helps someone out there. Feel free to comment on my mistakes or anything that could be better. 
PS: Remember, texture/displacement/normal/alpha maps will probably still need to be flipped vertically manually when importing and exporting them from Zbrush.
I’ve been doing some tests with ZBrush and I’m generally very impressed with it. I’ve got a fast question though about whether or not you’ve had any luck importing any of these models back into Max. I haven’t had any trouble with smaller models (ie. less than 2 million triangles) but whenever I try and use my full rez models the .obj importer seems to die.
On the latest model I’m working on I’ve come across a weird error but only when exporting at the full resolution. If I drop my subdivision level one step the model exports and imports fine. If I leave it at the full resolution I get an error saying that there are a number of verts in the same location. Pressing okay just locks up max with an out of memory error.
Has anyone else come across this? I’m curious if anybody else has had any problems importing larger models (ie. 5 or 6 million triangles) I’ve tried importing this into several versions of max on several different high end machines with no luck. Any help with this would be appreciated. Thx in advance,
Michael Trottier
Hi,
I have the same problem I’m afraid. Max is not very good at handling single meshes above a million polys.
Cheers
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever exported anything greater than 10,000 quads myself for exactly the reason Stephen stated. Max just isn’t very good with high poly meshes. I’ve never actually tested the limits of this process though, so it might be interesting to try.
The most I’ve tried is the 1.5 million poly mark, this is on a 1.5Gig Machine.
I think the error message is down to accuracy in Max or the importer, if you scale the object on import it seems to fix that particular problem.
At the 1.5 million poly level I’ve had some better results using X-refs, so the high poly models are rendered but only proxy low-res geometry is displayed. I just tried copying the objects and got 22 million faces without much fuss.
Of course this all depends on actually being able to get the model in and saved without Max crashing first.
Cheers
Update…
I got a shade over 3 million through the Max importer, and managed to save it before I got a ‘Max has run out of memory and will now close’ message. I then x-reffed them and instanced them and got 44 million polys out of Max.
One suggestion, if you are using Direct3D, try switching to OpenGL - D3D optionally caches the mesh to speed up redraw and I’ve got a feeling it chokes on meshes that are too large. I switched to OGL and Max didn’t run out of memory like it did when I was using D3D.
Cheers
Thanks for the help with all this. I was starting to wonder if this was somehow a personal curse. The xref idea isn’t something I’d originally considered. I’ll do some tests later to see if that works with our existing tools.
I’ve been running some tests and so far I haven’t had any luck with any model over the 2 million poly mark. I’m also still getting the ‘identical points in face’ error regarless of what I set the vertex scale setting to.
I guess I’m really disappointed with this because I’m using Zbrush for normal map creation and it’s disappointing to have a quality piece of source art downsized just for the sake of a bad import/export process.
Has anyone else tried importing larger files into other packages (ie. Maya or XSI ? )
Anyways, thanks for the responses. I’ll keep everybody posted if I have any success with other methods.
Michael Trottier
And just for some further info…
I’ve got a 64 bit Athlon machine with 3 gigs of ram and it doesn’t do any better than my older machine I tested just prior to this. I just thought I’d post this in case anybody was considering purchasing any hardware in hopes of fixing this problem. Don’t bother…
Hi
I seem to recall that Max can only use 3GB+ if a) you’re running XP Pro, and b) you have a the /3GB switch on in the boot.ini file. Otherwise Max won’t even use that extra Gig.
Have you got all that set up so Max can use it?
Cheers
Well, I was going to see how Maya handled the larger meshes, but… I tried exporting a 7 million poly mesh to obj files and Zbrush ran out of memory on that.
I tried taking the undo buffers right down, but I don’t know if 1.5 Gig is enough to export a mesh that size or if I need to fiddle with some settings.
Cheers
I’ve had some success with a few things and I thought I’d post my results if they’re of use to anyone. Exporting from ZBrush had a few catches I needed to figure out so I’ll start with those. I’ve only had any luck with larger models by doing two things:
Importing this back into max was a bit difficult at first so I needed to get a hold of discreet. I wasn’t aware of the /3gb flag in your boot.ini up until recently so that was something I needed to turn on.
My latest model I created in Max and detailed in ZBrush. The model’s final rez being 7.8 million triangles (4 +/- million quads). I haven’t had any troubles getting the model back and forth now so I’m pretty happy. Thanks for everyone’s help.
Hi,
Glad to hear your good news - and that you’ve got Max to utilise the extra RAM.
Thanks for the tip on the compact mem settings and the texture co-ordinates, yeah I guess if you’re baking normals externally they’re redundant, I didn’t know you could turn it off, I thought the txr was the map rather than the UVs themselves.
Cheers
Thank you very much for the tutorial.
I’ve had zbrush for a few months and after taking a break i have finally found time to play again. Just rendering up a zbrush model in 3dsmax, looks awesome. Cheers,
matt
Just a question, When you imported the model to zbrush was it previously textured on max? The thing is that i did a model, wich I unwrapped on 3dmax6 and the exported to zbrush. But on zbrush there is no sign of my mapping
Any clues>?
Thanks
What did you enter at the OBJ export dialog in the “# of digits” field? There was my problem…
I solved the problem putting 6 on the number of digits
Thanks
Thanks! That helped me a lot. 
Hello there,
I have a problem with the Obj2Max and Max2Obj plugin: I can export my mesh from Max, but I can’t import it in ZBrush. My Max version is 5.1. I’ve already tried every option from the export plugin pop-up menu. I’m getting desperate with this.
Anybody please help me?
Thanks a lot
Hi guys - maybe some fellow 3ds maxers can help me out here.
I have no problem getting my model between max and zb, but i learnt from aurick the other week that if you export your low level model, you can change things such as uv mapping in another program and reimport it, and the new stuff will apply. Pretty cool. I can remap the UVs! Trouble is, can’t get it to work
Whenever I try to import the obj over my old one, zb says the number of points is different. In fact, even if I import into max and export straight away, it still reports this. aurick says this is because the number of points (or possibly the point order) is different. Points are being merged (or broken up) giving it a different vertex count
Anyone got any good ideas? Can anyone find the right settings in zb and max to successfully export and reimport their low level subdiv?
cheers
Dan
I wrote a script because the Zbrush to Max to Zbrush geometry updating didn’t work correctly
Export a mesh from Zbrush and modify it in Max, then export it and run the script.The script will generate a new .obj file.
(it needs the original .obj exported from Zbrush and the new .obj from Max)
Refresh the model in Zbrush(import tool in edit mode)===>and the Zbrush will use the updated geometry correctly on all subdiv levels!!
(useful in making a new UV for a model or Applying a new pose in max after the Zsculpting )