I’ve read about the scale/location issue some people have had when appending subtools from another app, but never experienced them myself until now. I work in a studio where we make very complex models, often consisting of 100 subtools. We reuse these files as the bases for new projects all the time, adding new pieces, creating different characters, going back and forth to maya dozens of times a day. We were all very excited with the idea of GoZ, as this would drastically improve our workflow. When I heard that R3 incorporated some GoZ features, I jumped right in. Here’s my problem: I can easily append obj’s to my existing tools, I do it every day, but when I try to append a .ma file (the exact same mesh I just imported successfully as an obj) it comes in at the wrong size and wrong place. The .ma mesh has been stripped of history, ungrouped and transforms frozen (as I discovered that any of these may also affect scale/positoion). Still no luck. The new pieces come in okay relative to each other, but not in relation to the old. However, if I re-export those same new meshes to maya, they are returned to the correct position there. Since ZBrush has an export offset, but no import one, how do i fix this? And what exactly is going on here? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Has anyone else played around with these new features? GoZ is so awesome in theory, I can’t help myself from continuing to experiment. Still no luck. The pieces just keep coming in at the wrong place and scale. I’ve tried everything I can think of. Scale offset in Subtool Master helps a little, sometimes, but it destroys my ability to go back to old tools conveniently. I can get things to go back and forth in correct relation to each other, but not in relation to what I started with. I have to reassemble each of the files piece by piece. To reiterate, the studio where I work has many sculptors sharing files that are very complex. We can’t just tweak a few without affecting their compatability with older ones. This is a huge issue. I considered taking a weekend and exporting each of the hundreds of subtools from each of the hundreds of files as .ma, bringing them into maya and somehow getting everything to synch up again. However, in my experiments, when I try to export certain meshes back into ZBrush, or add new pieces I create in Maya, I get an error saying that they are “missing vertex xyz data” and the import is aborted. Huh? Some of the documentation about R3 suggests we can export subtools in .GoZ format. But Maya can’t read these. I’m assuming we will eventually get some kind of plugin for Maya.
Has anyone been able to develop a workflow between Maya and ZBrush other than the old import/export of .obj’s? According to the “What’s new in ZBrush 3.5R3” Page:
GoZ is composed of two parts, one is within ZBrush, the other is within the target application. ZBrush 3.5R3 already contains the ZBrush side of GoZ which allows you to…
Export Import GoZ file format. This is faster, smaller file size, more reliable and contain much more ZBrush data than OBJ format. So whenever you need to export a file with the intention of importing it back to ZBrush, use GoZ.
- GoZ introduced a more reliable way of transfering high res details to an imported mesh, even if the imported mesh has new topology. You can already make use of this in R3. Export a low res of your sculpted mesh , import it in another application, modify the topology and import it back into the same ZBrush tool. You’ll be asked if you want to transfer the details to the new mesh, click yes and you’ll have you high res details (including PolyPaint) transferred to a new mesh.
- Import export templates. Almost any text file format can be created with the GoZ import export templates. See the ZStartup ExportImport templates for examples.
Has Anyone gotten this to work?
Thanks for you time.