I’m having trouble opening old zbrush meshes and curious if there’s a way around it. I either get crashes or screwed up meshes(image below).
These files are 5 years old. I’m not sure what steps to take to retrieve them. Any help would be great 
The only solution I’ve found for this problem with old files is to open the file in the old version and export out to .obj. This is not really ideal because how many people still have old versions of ZBrush loaded on their computer?
Since ZBrush has this issue with not being able to open old files, it seems logical that Pixologic would come up with a simple utility program that can read the old file format and either export to .obj or save up to the current version file format. Autodesk has a similar utility for CAD files that can read newer file formats and convert them to older file formats for people using older versions of Autocad.
This issue has been around for quite a while so I don’t know why Pixologic has not addressed it?
yeah. Honestly, I don’t mind reinstalling old versions just to export out these old files. I just didn’t know if that was still possible. Is there a place to download and install older versions? I was planning on creating a new art portfolio and I have a ton of old files that don’t open correctly anymore.
I know that the 64 bit version of ZBrush has a habit of corrupting older meshes (like you have in your screenshot) upon loading. A workaround that has worked for me on some meshes is to load them into the 32 bit version of 4R7 first, save out of the 32 bit version then load into the 64 bit version. Of course, if it doesn’t load into the 32 bit then you would have to try in an older version of ZBrush, but I found that that doesn’t always work either. As far as I know, Pixologic does not offer downloads of older ZBrush.