Keyshot Bridge

[system]

Hi everybody, I have been playing for a while with keyshot and with the bridge. I am trying to imagine the workflow and have got the impression that once you export your model with subtools to Keyshot, build your scene there , you need to finish your work in the same session because even if you save it as a bip file , once you close the program you lose the live linking to your model. this means that the next time you will want to refine your model and render it with keyshot you will need to re position it an assign materials again . Did I get it right? If it is so it seems like a drawback to me. If I am right is there a workaround?

Another thing that looks like a drawback to me is the fact that it places the model ( or a subtool) in the center of the scene without the ability to decide if I want it in the center (or locked to the ground) or if I want it to retain the position in the scene. When you import an OBJ into keyshot (not the specific one for Zbrush) there is a dialog box that lets you decide if you want to center the geometry, snap it to ground or keep the original location. The way it feels in the bridge is like the camera adjusts itself to the size and of the object moves even if you locked it.

This is particularly annoying when working with a model (a tool) with various subtools. If you want to render the whole tool it will place it in the center. if you only want to render a subtool it will place that in the center, moving it from the original position in respect to the tool . This makes it difficult to build an retain a scene while updating your subtools , unless you always want to render (import them to keyshot) them all (wich takes more time with complex models).

Is there something I am missing? Is there a way to resolve this?

Thanks in advance

Mario

Attachments

[dillster]

…if you only want to render a subtool it will place that in the center, moving it from the original position in respect to the tool …

Not if you first import a couple of subtools, and in the import settings for the second subtool choose position “keep original” and for scale “same as last”.

You can then delete the unwanted subtool.

[dillster]

…this means that the next time you will want to refine your model and render it with keyshot you will need to re position it an assign materials again . Did I get it right? If it is so it seems like a drawback to me. If I am right is there a workaround?..

Save both the ZBrush scene and the Keyshot bip file. Next time you want to work on them, open both of them up. Then edit the subtool or subtools in ZBrush and only have them visible when you hit the Render button.
Over in Keyshot, the subtools will come over in the same position as in ZBrush. This will mean you have duplicate subtools in Keyshot, then you can delete the originals. The materials you had applied to the originals in Keyshot will still be in the materials palette and can be dragged from there onto the newly imported subtools.

[system]

Thank you Dillster I ended up purchasing the bundle. This version of Keyshot does not have an import option (except from a bip file) therefore you can not manipulate those options while rendering a file from Zbrush.

[system]

“Save both the ZBrush scene and the Keyshot bip file. Next time you want to work on them, open both of them up. Then edit the subtool or subtools in ZBrush and only have them visible when you hit the Render button.
Over in Keyshot, the subtools will come over in the same position as in ZBrush. This will mean you have duplicate subtools in Keyshot, then you can delete the originals. The materials you had applied to the originals in Keyshot will still be in the materials palette and can be dragged from there onto the newly imported subtools.”

I wish you were right , It does not behave like that to me. I just tried right now to make sure I was right. Now it retained the material but not the position in respect to the ground. It changed dramatically. And was only working with one subtool this time.

To be more specific: In the last session I re positioned the object after rendering it from Zbrush. now in this session , after re opening the bip file and the ZPR file i would expect that a new render would give me the same result as in the last session. instead the object (the Zbrush tool) gets positioned in a different way . probably the original one, as if it has forgotten what I did in the session before.

[system]

I did find a workaround now but it is still annoying. I manually entered the old position data . I presume it should not work like that.

[system]

Ok, what I found so far is that if you want to retain the position of a subtool in space in keyshot in a consistent way you have to scale and rotate your model within zbrush and not in keyshot. And also, since keyshot will always snap your tool or subtools lowest point to the ground , to retain its height in space you should always have another subtool in your ground height. say a ground plane. You can make it invisible in keyshot.
Anyhow, I re tried the process of closing and re opening both programs. This time it forgot the material I assigned and I had to reassign it.

[Thor]

I have not experienced any movement of subtools between sessions, or between renders.

If I turn on or off visibility of subtools and render, they are positioned correctly in the scene for me.

For material assignment, I’m looking into the material template feature in Keyshot…
Using wildcards in a material template should work — as long as you don’t rename your subtools.
So far, so good in my testing.

Example: in the template for the above, I used Octo-pauldron for the metal shoulder.
Now I can apply this template to any keyshot scene. Keyshot will use the material I specified in the template to anything I send to Keyshot with “Octo-pauldron” in the subtool name. The wildcard is necessary because the bridge will add random strings to the subtool names which will generate new zbrush textures each time.

So if I create a new Zbrush scene with just a default sphere, but name the subtool “Octo-pauldron”, when I render in keyshot, I can choose my template and apply it to the new scene, and the sphere will render with the metal texture.

This will be a lot easier than messing around with deleting duplicate subtools in Keyshot.

[Thor]

Okay so I just re-read some of the earlier posts in this thread…

I’m not doing ANY importing of geometry at all. Just using the bridge to render in Keyshot.
I’m not sure why you would want to import/export when the bridge does this automatically, and keeps everything in place.

Save the .zpr and .bip
Open them both, work in Zbrush, and click BPR to send to Keyshot.

Am I missing something?

[system]

Thor Thank you. I did not play with templates. I will try. are they supported by Keyshot for Zbrush?

I noticed in the renderings you sent that your lowest subtool always touches the ground , therefore everything remains in place.
Did you try to render only the octopus? even without closing and reopening the programs it should suddenly render on the ground . You can see that happening even in the demo by Joseph Drust http://pixologic.com/zbrush/features/ZBrush-to-KeyShot/

And one more thing I noticed, that if you change the position of your subtool in Keyshot , the modified position will not be remembered by Keyshot in your next session after a new render. If you change it in Zbrush there is no problem .

The only advantage of the import option is the import dialog but if everything would remain in its place and keep its materials there would be no need for that.

[system]

Another weird manifestation of the same problem can be seen in these two renderings. Why would suddenly the camera change it`s height in respect to the floor when I render the man with it? I hope things like that will not happen with zbrush subtools

Attachments

[Thor]

Mario,

Thor Thank you. I did not play with templates. I will try. are they supported by Keyshot for Zbrush?

Yes. That’s what I’m using. I don’t have Keyshot 5.

I noticed in the renderings you sent that your lowest subtool always touches the ground , therefore everything remains in place.
Did you try to render only the octopus? even without closing and reopening the programs it should suddenly render on the ground . You can see that happening even in the demo by Joseph Drust http://pixologic.com/zbrush/features/ZBrush-to-KeyShot/

Yeah, I do see that now.

However, I don’t think this is really a big issue for me (until you brought it up, it wasn’t even something I noticed).

Since all of your subtools WILL retain their relative positions to each other within a Zbrush scene when rendered together, I don’t have a problem with getting used to seeing single subtools centered and grounded in Keyshot. The only time I would care about their positions is when rendering the entire scene.

As you said, you can add a grounded and centered subtool in the .zpr (I would just use a sphere scaled way down instead of a ground plane - I might even add one to my default Zbrush startup document/project). This pretty much solves the positioning problem, no?

And one more thing I noticed, that if you change the position of your subtool in Keyshot , the modified position will not be remembered by Keyshot in your next session after a new render. If you change it in Zbrush there is no problem .

I would NOT use Keyshot for any positioning (or repositioning) of subtools. Although it might be nice, there’s really not much need to do this. In fact, moving/positioning subtools outside of the .zpr would be terrible from a scene management perspective, in my opinion. I think the idea is that Keyshot for Zbrush is intended for rendering, not for scene creation/manipulation. Especially since we can’t export the geo from Keyshot for Zbrush. Also, the .bip files are pretty big when saved with geometry, so recently I’ve been deleting geo before saving and just saving the keyshot files for environment/camera/render settings.

If Keyshot material templates take care of the material assignments, and Zbrush takes care of scene element positioning, I think I’ll be all set with an efficient workflow.

I do understand that you might not feel the same way.

[system]

I guess you are right Thor , it is probably a matter of figuring out the right workflow method. For my first assignment in witch I used keyshot I did not have it resolved yet. I think that from now on I will use these methods and it will be ok.

Thank you again . If I will encounter other issues of this sort I will post them here.