ZBrushCentral

Exporting movie from zbrush. WHere are the compression and codec option gone?!

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

If I want to export a turntable from Zbrush for compositing in nuke or photoshop I would normally use the quicktime with a codec how give me a no compression output (animation preset was ok)… that was the thing I use to do prior to 4r7.
Now in 4r7 where are the movie exportation format gone? I only have mpg and with no compression option. It’s basically useless. For artistic approval I can not send that to my artistic director, the output is way to compress and we just don’t see enough detail! Let’s not talk about compositing with this kind of output.

I know you can use turntable plus made by Marcus… And is what I use at home. But most of the time I can not put extra stuff in the studio’s PC where I work with out asking an IT guy. So not a solution either.

But most of all : why? It was working fine before.

Maybe it’s just me bitching… don’t know maybe the option for compression moved… some where. If so I will be glad to hear about it.

#2

Im seeing the same thing, horrid compression artifacts in my video.
As much as I am thrilled to be rid of Apple, I still want lossless output and this isnt that…
So far I haven’t found mention of this in the documentation.

There is still a codec doing the mpg-ing but I have no idea how to fix this.
Presumably we need a better mpg codec, but where that comes from, and where we are supposed to put it I haven’t a clue.

#3

The big issue is that there is no other way to bring animation out of Zbrush… Meanwhile we can still do a turn of a model with turntable plus, we don’t have this possibility to do that for video tutorials!
I’m personally use video I make for my students directly out of Zbrush , so they can see my workflow and some technic I use while modeling in production. But now with the output from Zbrush, projecting those videos on a big screen is just useless … You don’t see clearly the menu or options.
Has they say… If is not broken… Don’t fixe it!
Please guys at pixologic… Give us a solution?

#4

A fix for the codec?

#5

just aware of this too… i was saving uncompressed and now you can only export horrible mpeg with a lot of artifacts… maybe export frames as images with turntable plus works but i need re-render all turntable again.

please fix this

#6

Me too, just MPEG, no option for QuickTime.
QuickTime please.

#7

Please we need uncompressed movies! Mpgs are awful! Export to stills, uncompressed avi, ANYTHING!

#8

Alright, I couldnt take it anymore so I had a look myself to see if I could script my way out of a paper bag. I created this script due to lossless movie exporting no longer being an option with 4R7’s loss of Quicktime as an export and the substandard MPEG replacement.

Thanks to a script I found by marcus_civis originally intended to export OBJ sequences I got enough of a handle on scripting in Zbrush to create this Frame Sequence Exporter macro. It exports PNG or TIF renders and TIF alpha masks since thats what I required of it, but adding extra renderpasses to the output should be trivial.

Installation:
Save to ZBrush Directory\ZStartup\Macros\Misc
Start Zbrush or Macro>Reload All Macros.

To use:
Macro>Misc>FrameSequenceExporter

You’ll want to set up your Movie Timeline Duration and FPS before running the macro! Thanks to marcus_civis again for the original source and his permission to post this derivative macro!

#9

Ho!! Thanks for that one. It’s very helpful.