ZBrushCentral

Melanin

Hi Joe…this thread is so old, you might not even get to read this, as you may have unsubscribed to it and moved on. But I hope you do see it. Aside from telling you how awesome the character is and how much I loved watching the animation, I mainly want to thank you for helping make weight mapping clear to me.

I saw this Melanin character while lurking in ZBC a couple of years ago, but the thread at that time was too confusing to me. After reading it again today, from start to finish, I actually learned a few things. I never understood what weight maps were intended to do. I use Lightwave as my “traditional” 3d app and there are many references to creating weight maps to go with your morphs. Could never understand the point. Now I do. It helps to control stretching of the mesh during animation! Thank you so much. I don’t think you were even intending to teach there, but you did.

Brian

Hi.

This is such a great thread, I felt it needed to be resurrected.

Joe!

Great work, man. If possible, could you clarify some blend shape issues for me?

Okay:

I guess one of the big questions I have is about building my meshes and sculptures in ZBrush.

If I have a fully modeled character in ZBrush, with multiple SubD levels, how do I use this with Maya’s blend shape animation?

Here is my understanding:

  1. Export Neutral Pose ZBrush .OBJ

  2. Enter Maya > Import ZBrush .OBJ

  3. Save as .MB

  4. Duplicate Neutral Pose Model in Maya > Offset in ‘X’ > Rename Copy > Export as .OBJ

  5. Enter ZBrush > Import Maya .OBJ > Sculpt New Blend Shape > Export .OBJ (to overwrite Maya import)

  6. Enter Maya > Import Modified ZBrush .OBJ > Offset in ‘X’ > Continue

However: am I dealing with whole bodies or just heads that can be attached to a key framed body? Questions. Questions.

I have seen tutorials that show whole bodies and tutorials that show heads only. I have done several ‘head only’ blend shape exercises but I am ready to go further.

Thoughts?

~S.~