I was just wondering if anyones ever used ZBrush, and if its possible to use its UV Editor in Blender. I found a site that had a preview of a test done in some other program, and it looks great! But the big selling point is that the entire model is only 300 and something polygons. If the level of detail is anywhere near that in Blender then ZBrush could help alot of Blender users. Heres a link to that site:[http://209.132.69.82/zbrush/zbrush2/Z2Home.html] Thats gallery if anybodies interested.
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blender can import obj files zbrush exports
however, blender can’t make good use of the 16 bit displacement maps zbrush exports [the quicktime loader downsamples 16 bit tiff files to 8 bit…]
Yeah, I downloaded it and was trying to figure out a way to get it to work with Blender, but I’m guessing not. I was thinking the.obj files would have been enough, but thats what I get for thinking. Then, let me change the question…is it concevible to write a python script to import and export to ZBrush. I recently d/l Maya, after paying out the a$$. I was hoping to Model in Blender, (I don’t know if anyone else is like this, but I am dumbfounded with the Maya interface. I suppose thats why its a college course.) and import it to Cinema 4D and then to Maya…(gee I make things complicated), do the texturing, the rigging, and all that good stuff, then do a 180 and end up with the model back in Blender to use Yafray. So as you can see, a Python script (if possible, I know nothing of writing scripts) to import and export to ZBrush would come in quite handy for everybody… Like I said, thats what I get for thinking.
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the obj io scripts from 2.28 or so only export a single object and work just fine
they ought to work fine with maya, but the obj io scripts don’t support many of the features maya could put into an obj file [they only support meshes, and maybe some material settings]
when working in zbrush export the model back out from zbrush to which ever app you use
did I mention before that not being able to use 16 bit displacement maps exported from zbush in blender really is annoying?
[object space normal maps will work though [never tried, would probably take a lot of tweaking in zbrush to get proper output], but will also be down sampled]
Looks pretty good I guess:
http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?p=139444#post139444
http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?p=139393#post139393
@z3r0_d: Is there a visible difference between 8 and 16 bit displacement maps? What detail is lost?
Yeah I was affraid of that part. Damn I suppose that means I’m gonna have to start from scratch and learn Maya… that sucks, because I’m lazy. But thank you for actually writing back. I’m glad someone knows what I’m talking about, no one in the Blender exclussive community knows anything about zbrush.
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Hey Egg… I hadn’t seen those shots before. Yeah I don’t see much detail loss in them either. It would look great for what type of project I’m currently trying to do. I just wish there was a way to simply use ZBrush and Blender together, instead of having to go through thirty seven other programs to get it there. lol… Does anyone know what language ZBrush is written in? Maybe I can track down someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. My limited knowledge of scripts goes as far as knowing C, C++ and Python are all cross platformed nicely, so if ZBrush is written in Python, C++ or C then it would stand to reason you could very well write an import/export script for it.
I just have the feeling that being able to use ZBrush in Blender would save alot of Blenderheads time and trouble being able to just paint the texture right on the mesh. Plus the fact you can have extremely low poly character and have the detail of something close to Hollywood standereds. Wow…I do ramble on don’t I?
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yes, try and see how much detail you can get out of that monkey head [available for download on the zbrush site]
zbrush is not open source [and has annoying copyright protection]
the obj io scripts work just fine
Damn…that figures. Well as long as the obj io will work, I will see what I can do. Hmmm… Does anyone know of any programs that might be a “freeware” or “shareware” program that can do what zbrush does. For some reason I remember someone on here talking about a free program thats like ZBrush and works for Blender. Or maybe I dreamed it.
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Ya dreamed it… There is nothing like Zbrush yet.; The fact that blender can not take in the higher depth image just sucks. But there is also something wrong when exporting a mesh anyway, the UV map get reversed every time I export from Blender into Zbrush…
there are options in zbrush to fix that, and there are similiar issues with many exporters [like for example the exporter converting to left-handed coordinates and the importing app not converting back]
iirc it just gets mirrored across the y axis
I have been using Zbrush for a few months now at work. I use models that I have made in Blender as the base model. In my opinion Zbrushes UV features are pretty worthless as textures the UVs produce aren’t usable in software like Photoshop. However I haven’t used the highres output for much in Blender yet. I have to send that stuff to max to use its render to texture features (which are awesome). There is another Zbrush like software available
http://sharp3d.sourceforge.net/
I haven’t used it yet but hope to when I get Linux running again.
Any chance to get a copy of sharp3d for windows OS?
How so for the texture not being able to see in photoshop ? Mine works fine thought Zbrushes UV unwrap method is a mess Squares squares everywhere theres squares !
How so for the texture not being able to see in photoshop ? Mine works fine thought Zbrushes UV unwrap method is a mess Squares squares everywhere theres squares ![/quote]
yes, that’s exactly what he was saying
the resulting uvmapping isn’t useful for painting on directly, for example in photoshop