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Is there any compatible file extension between ZBrush & Matrix 8 ?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Dear All,

Greetings from Mauritius!

I am a jeweler designer and am used to work on Matrix 8 for jewellery creation and prototype making. It is a Rhinoceros based software dedicated to jewellery, using specialized tools.
As our collections mostly and realistically represent fauna & flora, I would like to work from Zbrush to create the organic shape basis and then use Matrix to integrate jewel details as pavé settings, bezels, stones, jump rings, bails and various other elements.
For that process, I need to know if I can export from Zbrush in a file extension that can still be “workable” by Matrix 8. I need to be able to extract surfaces or poly-surfaces because mesh or poly-meshes are readable but not workable by Matrix. For information, the basic extension used by Matrix is *.3dm

Is there anybody that could help me find a solution?

Thank you in advance for you kind assistance :wink:

Chloé

#2

Since Matrix is basically a plug-in for McNeel’s Rhino3D, the 3DM format is a Rhino nURBs file. Geometry created in Rhino can be thought of as vectors for 3D in the rough equivalent that Adobe Illustrator is to 2D artwork. Grow or shrink the 3D nURBs model and the surface smoothness stays intact. As far as I know, 3DM stays mostly to Rhino3D & Matrix.

When it comes time to prototype, the 3DM model needs to be exported to an STL (polygon mesh) before most SLA 3D printers will ingest it. Scale up an STL model too much and you’ll start seeing the polygon facets in the print. Further reason to manipulate & model in 3DM, but export to STL as a last-mile distribution format.

How ZBrush plays into this is that it’s a sculpting program that permits directly manipulating a polygon mesh. Import polygon meshes like SLA, OBJ, PLY and ZBrush happily moves/sculpts/smooths the vertices that make up its surface. Likewise, it’ll easily export back out to those popular polygon mesh formats. It WILL NOT export to a nURBs format – about as much sense as unbaking a cake.

Rhino/Matrix will IMPORT a polygon mesh file like STL and OBJ, but once in that environment, it’ll only permit rudimentary changes to that mesh: transform scale in 1/2/3 axes, rotate, and maybe some boolean operations. (No, I don’t consider Rhino’s Cage Editing a viable workflow) There’s no sculpting/smoothing. As you mentioned, Matrix won’t be able to do much with a polygon mesh.

If a high-detail leaf was sculpted in ZBrush, instead of bringing it into Rhino, one alternative would be to bring the rest of the ring (shank, settings) into ZBrush and try things like nanomesh / array-mesh to pavee a region. If thought out cleverly, a Dynamesh Boolean operation may be done to add prongs and cut the pavee settings.

The other alternative is to use the ZBrush sculpted leaf as a reference mesh in Rhino. If TSplines is still bundled into Matrix, it can be deployed to manually retopologize and generate a viable nURBs surface that Matrix will recognize. You’ll likely lose a portion of high detail that was initially sculpted while in ZBrush.

#3

Dear Carter,

Thank you so much for your clear and precise explanations. That 's exactly what I feared… :confused:

There is a way but it will not be easy or simple as I hoped. I will not be able to keep the organic-like and high resolution aspect of a Zbrush sculpt if I want to use a nURBs model and the Matrix tools, or inverse, will have to replace the Matrix tools by some Zbrush options which might be quite ok but more complicated and less precise. Well, too bad for me!

Thank you again for making earn time :wink: