ZBrushCentral

Preserving Smoothing Groups going from Max to Zbrush to Max

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi. I was wondering if it was possible to preserve smoothing groups on an object in max that I have brought into Zbrush, pulled a few things around with like the move tool etc… and then brought back into Max.

If not built in perhaps a Plugin?

Thanks!

#2

this hasn’t worked since 3.5.

You can however unwrap based on smoothing groups and offset each smoothing group. Basically, you’ll be using your UVs as a place holder for information that a .obj file doesn’t maintain.

Hope that makes sense

#3

Yes! I was trying to think of the best workaround for getting my smoothing groups back and I was thinking that same thing.

At worst I was thinking this.

  1. Select By Smoothing Group. Unwrap. Move chunk to its own area (or pack all of it after the individual chunks are broken out)
  2. Do zbrush stuff.
  3. Back in max I just select whole chunks in UV. Collapse. Give them smoothing groups.
  4. Hand blend any of the areas that I originally had blended. (But atleast 90% of the work would be done easy)

If you know of a way to speed this up such as an auto-map-by-smoothing groups… Or anything else. I’m happy to hear it!

Thanks.

#4

auto map in Max? Just select by smoothing group and do a planar projection. It doesn’t have to bee neat, it can be overlapping and all that crap. Quick and dirty, as it were.