ZBrushCentral

Some silly noob questions with regards to workflow,procedures and navigations

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,all

A relative noob here. Been dabbling around Zbrush for a while now and roughly able to grasp certain elements and concepts within Zbrush. Now being a seasoned 3ds max user, some things are kinda alien to me.


  • I have exported a mesh obj which comprises several seperate meshes. I did an Auto Group with UV and the seperate meshes grouped up in polygroups nicely.So now how do I go about isolating and applying textures to the different polygroup meshes on my obj? Obviously, I didn’t have a problem with a single mesh obj.


  • Also, is there no way to select and subdivide individual polygroups?
  • How do I assign a normal map onto a textured model? The normal maps being exported sculpted details from Zbrush.
  • How do I get a nice high res render of my model with all these maps mapped nicely onto my model?I’m familiar with adding lights and doing a Best Render.I’ve also read about double sizing your Zbrush document to get the highest and best possible quality render?
  • Also how can I render in purely wireframe and/or textured wireframe? Can I also render turntable movies with these settings enabled?

Apologies in advance if these noob questions have been asked before.But I’ve scoured the entire forum and can’t seem to find any help with these issues I’m facing.

The reason I’m asking all these is cos I’m currently in the midst of preparing my portfolio/demo reel. So thanks in advance for your replies.

Appreciate if someone and point me in the right direction or post some steps/explanations.Many thanks.

Cheers

#2

Hi.

Once you have your groups simply hold Ctrl+Shift and click on the group you require to be visable. Repeating the same key combination on the visable group will hide that group and make all over groups visable. To bring all groups back use same key combo again, but click anywhere on the canvas, all will be visable again. When you generate these textures make sure only the desired groups are visable.

You Can split the groups into seperate sub tools. You can quickly select sub tools by pressing the Alt key and clicking on that sub tool in the canvas. By having thes groups as sub tools it also means you can then sub devide each sub tool as you choose, also each sub tool can hold its own texture maps. Remember to store a morph target at level 0 for each sub tool and restore this prior to producing the texture maps. You may also wish to have smooth Uvs for your maps, if this is the case turn on Suv from the Geometry menu, and ress ReUv at the highest sub d level.

To produce a wire map, turn on (PolyF) Shift +F, then open Texture map menu from the right of the Ui, and pres “New from Uv check” make sure your at the lowest sub d level. You can render a turn table or movie with these textures applied. You may also at some point wish to look at the multi map exporter plugin found in the Zplugin menu, top right of Ui.

#3

Hi

Thanks for your reply. I’ve managed to split my polygroups into individual subtools now.

Another question about normal maps.I managed to export normal maps out to Photoshop.

Now the question is how will do I re-import my normal map back into Zbrush and mapped together with my texture?