ZBrushCentral

Saving camera views between Zbrush and other packages?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey all, I’ve had this thought for awhile now and I can’t seem to figure it out. I know the perspective is a little different between ZB and other 3d packages, but I was wondering if there was a way to save camera data between Zbrush and any other 3d package (Maya, in my case)? It would be really amazing to be able to render Hair&Fur in Maya and composite it together with a multi-map Zbrush render, or render a beauty pass in Maya and use an AO/cavity/specular/any other map, but I can’t think of a way to reliably do that without the camera data being able to sync together perfectly. GoZ has done a fantastic job so far of doing the same thing with displacement and texture maps, not sure if that works with camera view though.

Thanks!
-polaroid

#2

In a word. No.

Zbrush’s camera never changes, the model does.
Think of it as holding the object in your hand and rotating it, rather than moving around the object.

You can however camera match pretty easily in any software. Just build a ground plane that has a perfect grid texture applied to it and place it in your scene at the “ground” for a single render. You can also make your ground plane have a couple of boxes on (makes it easier to camera match). If you build a perfect cube or retain the dimensions of the box that will also help you camera match.

Render out your shot then camera match it.

Hope that helps.

#3

Hey beta, that does help a lot man, thanks.

Just to clarify the process, I would use a ground plane with something maybe like the checkerboard texture perfectly tiled on it, and use that as an indicator as where the object is placed? How would you match the zoom between the packages so they’re same distance to the camera also?

#4

Camera matching is a pretty simple process but very detailed. You’re better looking for a camera matching tutorial in whatever package you’re using. Once you get the process it will be smooth, but probably a little bumpy to start off with.

Knowing distance and size helps (hence the 1m box or something similar so you can gauge size/scale.)