Hello! I’ve owned ZBrush for a while, but only recently I’ve fell in love with it. I think the new transform tool in R8 made me a happy convert. I can’t imagine modeling in max now!
I hope I won’t sound whiny when detailing my problems here, I would really appreciate some pointers.
I’m right in the middle of a large project for a client who needs to visualize gloves. I’m rendering in FStorm, and animating using 3ds max. I have made some neat images, and zbrush is working great, except I can’t really figure ut an effective workflow between zbrush and 3ds max. Small stuff and big stuff. My model is comprised of many subtools, mostly the textile and rubber “panels” that make up the glove, and small details such as seams, that I make using an InsertMesh brush with curves.
See attached images for my current state on one of five gloves, to be delivered in nine days.
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When I export, the scale is all over the place. I have read some tutorials, but all of them seem to use hack-y things like exporting with the 3d print plugin. Is this really the only way?
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Polygroups end up as separate objects when I export. I would like to keep the polygroups in my zbrush model for administrative purposes and export the mesh as intact welded hulls. The UVW plugin works best if I can keep the polygroups in the model. The client might need to adjust some parts, and re-doing the whole thing from a previous save just because the export requires me to flatten the model is really tedious.
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Placement. Similar to scale, this is really unpredictable. I would like to change for example just the thumb of the glove, and then export it to 3ds max and have it show up on the same place the old thumb was. Now I have to both re-scale (which 3ds max HATES by the way) and re-position the objects in a very inexact way.
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Curves. I have a single stitch in my InsertMesh brush. I would like to draw a zig-zag pattern with my brush. Zbrush smooths my brush strokes after I’ve drawn them.
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UVW vertices are not welded upon import to max! Very strange. When I open the uv-editor in max, the imported UVWs are not welded. The polygons are in the correct place though. I have to open each and every model that I import, select all vertices and weld them to make things like displacement work correctly in FStorm, and pretty certainly any other renderer.
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Dynamic subdivision levels do not seem to really play nice with UVW-maps and exporting. But I can’t UV-map anything with subdivisions? I need to completely flatten the subtool at its highest subdivision level and uv-map it? It looks much simpler when the pro’s do it.
I’ve watched pretty much every tutorial on scaling, uv-mapping and such, but none of them really focus on an iterative workflow with Zbrush as the modeler and 3ds max as the renderer/animation package. Does anyone else use zbrush this way? Any quick tips for a freelance with a tight deadline?
I’m off to install GOZ, which is my last resort.
Edit: Ok, so GOZ reset all the render settings in my scene and changed the renderer to Mental Ray(!) and did lord knows what else.
(I use R8 on windows 10)
/Anders
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