ZBrushCentral

Please help, divide/exporting question

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello, I am new to the Zbrush world, and so far it has been a lot of fun. But I have a very important question to ask about a product that I have made. If any one could please help me through this, I would really appreciate it.

So I took an OBJ low mesh(made in maya), and imported in Z-brush, then I worked on it, made the divisions higher and finished my piece.

By the end(and I don’t understand why), the lower # of divide dissapeared(and I did choose the option to erase the low end of the divide). My goal is to take the high res, and imported back in maya as a normal map, or displacement map. Have I messed up to the point that I need to do this again?

If there is a way to save my piece I would LOVE so. I got it JUST how I wanted it to look, so I don’t want to sacrifice.

Is there ANY other way? Even if it takes extra render time, it’s worth it to me.

Thanks again :slight_smile:

#2

Hello, its usually a good idea to leave the lower division levels on the tool, unless you absolutely must delete them (mirroring a subtool for instance). To render a normal map inside of ZBrush, the tool must have a low division against which to project the higher rez normals. But all is not lost. Here are a few things that you can try:

  1. Reconstruct Subdivisions - Tool>Geometry>ReconstructSubDiv - This will attempt to reconstruct a lower rez model each time the button is pressed. It will reconstruct and add lower subdivisions. This should get your divisions back for you. It does not like models with tris in them though and will not reconstruct them.
    2)If that does not work you can try to use decimation master and make a version of your high rez that you can then bring in to maya and have it be a tri count that is workable. From here you can re-topo and get a low rez version. With a new low rez that fits your high rez model, export the low rez as an .obj from maya and export your high rez as .obj from ZBrush. Get XNormal and use that to generate your normal map. Its free and is a great program.
  2. You could retopo inside zbrush and make a low rez.

Just a few suggestions on what i would try. Good luck!

#3

Thank you so much for these options! It worked. It’s awesome that I got the support so fast!

Thanks again, Z brush is such an amazing tool! I'll be back for more noobish questions soon :p