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normal map messed up - reimporting sdv level 1 issue

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

hi,

firstly I would like to take advantatge of this thread to say hello to the community since this is my first post since I first started checking this amazing forum. I´ve been around for the last few months when I started using zbrush for some testing and now I am really into it I am going to try to be even more involved with the community. So then, hello everyone :smiley:

What I am going to talk about is something I´ve seen it has been discussed quite a lot in some threads but is not exactly the same and as I couldn´t find the exact solution after checking lots of posts I´ve decided to ask about it.

my big issue is with the normal map creation. i´m using zmapper and everything is fine except an area which I thought was ok but after checking my uv mapping again in max I found out I did something wrong which wasn´t shown by the checker when I tested it.

now I would need to reassign a new uv map to be used in the normal map creation but my problem is my tool has already a huge subdivision and detailling history. I´ve been reading in the posts there is a way to export the first level and once in max reassign a new uv map to it but what I can´t find is the way to import it in zbrush again as the first level of all my history.

If it helps, the uv map has exactly the same amount of vertex with the same information in them since I just changed their positions but nothing else (so it can be applied to the model from zbrush). On the other hand I did a morph target of the original models at the very beginning as well. I don´t know if that is important or not but I´ve read in some threads that could be usefull.

if someone could help me with some kind of workflow or simply a tip that would be great because I´m kind of stuck with this.

sorry for the endless post and for my english skills :stuck_out_tongue:

thanks a lot to everyone!!

#2

hi again,

after some testing I found out the way to import the lowest subdivision level. however once I go back to higher levels the mesh explodes.

at the beginning I thought it had something to do with the uv layout editing. I´ve been doing lots of test merging vertices, without doing it, with the vertices merged by Z´s exporter… but the mesh kept exploding.

at the end, I just tried to export the mesh, import it again and try it and it works fine but if I export it, open it in max and export it again even without any change, the mesh explodes once I import it in Zbrush and I go to higher levels.

I assume this means there is and issue with max importer or exporter since the obj size gets increased with no apparent reason.

If someone could let me know if there is a setting or an option that has to be modified that would be great because I know what the problem is but not how to solve it out :cry:

Thanks a lot!! :wink:

#3

OK!! it´s fixed!!

at the end the solution was the most strange one :stuck_out_tongue: exporting twice in max :confused:

if you have the same problem and want to check the procedure here is the link

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?p=508245&posted=1#post508245

I hope it helps!!

cheers!!