ZBrushCentral

Smoothing Groups

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I have an in-game model that’s finished, but the guy doing the rigging asked me to make a few quick t-pose edits. First thought was to pop into ZBrush and use Transpose. Problem is, ZBrush doesn’t maintain my smoothing groups, and the normal map I already have baked is based on the current smoothing groups, so I need to keep them in tact.

I know about the smoothing group plug-in, but that just creases the ztool in zbrush where there are hard edges, it doesn’t really maintain smoothing groups.

Even if ZBrush doesn’t support smoothing groups in any kind of interactive capacity, it would be nice if it at least didn’t eradicate the ones I already have in place. Just sayin.

#2

The OBJ tag for smoothing groups is ‘s’. If you don’t have any polygroups in the OBJ you could open in a text editor and do a Find/Replace for 's ’ (with a space after) replacing with 'g ’ (also space after). The file would then import into ZBrush with polygroups instead of smoothing groups.

#3

I think I see what you’re saying. So before I import an OBJ with smoothing groups into ZBrush, do a find-and-replace to supplant all instances of 's ’ with 'g ', which will convert my smoothing groups to poly groups. Then when I export it back out of ZBrush, do the reverse to replace 'g ’ with 's ’ to get my smoothing groups back.

Hope I got that right. I’ll give it a shot, thanks Macus.

#4

Dustin. You could still use z for what you nee but after export you’ll have to re apply the groups. Bit if a pain. But do able. What package do you use? A morphine Target in that package might be a good way to go since smoothing isn’t transferred in a morph Target.