zBrush - Blender - UE5 workflow question

[gnomeass]

Hi,

I’m using zBrush to do some high poly sculpting over Blender base models and then sending to Unreal Engine 5. I’ve tried using the GoZ plugin to send meshes back to Blender but they are being imported into Blender with less geometry detail than they had in zBrush - my first question is whether anyone can tell me why this is happening and what the fix might be.

Since the GoZ hasn’t worked for me I’ve been using the FBX export in zBrush but I’m finding that it takes a hell of a long time to export and the import these models into Blender. I’m working on models with several sub tools that together might have between 15 - 30 million polys between them.

Is there a faster way of exporting these models that will retain geometric detail, and will preserve the UV unwrap? Since I will be using nanite in UE5 I want to preserve geometric detail, I won’t be baking the detail into a low poly model, I will be using the high poly directly.

Thank you so much for any tips that can help me speed up this process.

[Spyndel]

Hello @gnomeass

@gnomeass

I’ve tried using the GoZ plugin to send meshes back to Blender but they are being imported into Blender with less geometry detail than they had in zBrush

GoZ for Blender is neither developed or supported by Maxon or the ZBrush development studio. Please direct any questions or issues with its use to the developers. Questions with the use of Blender are better directed towards Blender resources.

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@gnomeass

I’ve been using the FBX export in zBrush but I’m finding that it takes a hell of a long time to export and the import these models into Blender.

Exporting/importing models at extreme polycount simply takes a while. Exporting models at extreme polycount with UVs takes longer still. FBX takes longer than others because of all the information stored with that format. From personal experience, the GoZ format itself saves extremely quickly, but your target program has to be able to import that format.

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@gnomeass

Is there a faster way of exporting these models that will retain geometric detail, and will preserve the UV unwrap?

Yes. Export the models at lower resolution and apply the detail as displacement.

Otherwise working back and forth at those polycounts is simply going to take a while. There aren’t really ever any shortcuts, unfortunately. If you save time in a process by skipping all the traditional steps in making a model more accessible to other programs, then you can look forward to increased time and effort simply trying to work with the files.

A more powerful CPU may improve the situation somewhat.

Good luck!