ZBrushCentral

Texturing from MAX to 3.5 R2 and Back

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I started out with a base mesh from MAX which is nothing special…roughly 500 polys with a basic UV unwrap on it which is used in a old game engine (Jupiter). My sculpt ended up being around 600,000 polys although I could really get away with 1 subdivision lower at 150,000 if I needed to. I wanted to use the ZProject method of texturing but I couldn’t figure out how to paint on the model until I deleted all my lower subdivision levels and this is what I ended up with:

[test01.jpg]

This would work, but my UVs got deleted somewhere in the process and I was looking into what the best way would be to get my texture map and normal map out of Zbrush and back into 3DSMAX. I always save multiple iterations of a file so I opened another version of the head that is completely untextured in an attempt to use ZProject from the fully textured head (using a Flat Color Material) to the other head, but it won’t let me use ZProject while I have lower subdivision levels. I feel like I’m missing something crucial here, but all of the tutorials on the topic are for 3.1 so I’m limited in my references. Has anyone run into this issue and if they have how did you get around it?

#2

You can get your subdivisions back with the Reconstruct SubDiv feature. I believe the stipulations for this to work are 1) you need to have UVs enabled, and 2) you can’t have any tris in your model.

If you’re just learning ZBrush, I can’t recommend enough that you use 3.1 to learn on for now since there is WAY more educational material for it on the interwebs. I’m sure 3.5 is great fun if you already know how 3.1 works, because you have a point of reference to fall on. But I can’t imagine trying to learn ZBrush for the first time in 3.5 and only have 3.1 tutorials to go on - I’d pull my friggin hair out. I don’t care what Pixologic’s marketing videos say about how easy ZBrush is to just pick up and start creating with - The learning curve for ZBrush is pretty steep, because it’s workflows are so unconventional and because half of the learning process is learning how to work within ZBrush’s idiosyncrasies. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great tool and I enjoy using it now that I know how, but let’s call a spade a spade - ZBrush is a strange bird and it takes some major getting used to.

I recently made a video that covers this stuff for 3.1, it may help shed some light and perhaps you can convert that info to 3.5 if you like.

http://www.vimeo.com/6674655

#3

Thanks for the feedback Dustin and the video that I’ll check as soon as I get home (my work blocks streaming video :cry:)! I’ve been dabbling in Zbrush for a little while now, but I just never tried to texture anything inside of Zbrush so all of this stuff is new to me. It didn’t help that in the 3.5 release a lot of the stuff used for texturing has been “revamped” which is leaving me a little lost and confused.

I’ll definitely look into the Reconstruct SubDiv feature that you mention because I never even knew that Zbrush had something like that! I’ll look over the base mesh to ensure there are no triangles and then I’ll probably try to re-texture without deleting the UVs so I could reconstruct the lower sub-d levels at the end. If that doesn’t work then I guess I’ll just write off ZProject as a feature that isn’t useful for what I’m currently trying to do and do it the old fashioned way. :lol: