ZBrushCentral

zBrush - Blender Workflow help?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi guys, I’m trying to learn the workflow between Blender to zBrush and am having a few problems transferring models, is there any chance someone could help be understand how to fix these?

Q1: When importing a model from Blender to zBrush is comes over as an all hard edge object. I set up some edges as hard and others as smooth originally. How can you have zBrush read the smooth vs hard edges?

(gray object is how the object looks in zBrush vs Blender)

Q2: How can you get zbrush to transfer the smooth & hard edges back into Blender? (It’s probably the same answer as #1)

Q3: Why does zBrush cause Blender to lose it’s material when imported? Is there any way to save the material in Blender from being deleted when you transfer between the two?

Thanks for the help!

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#2

Have you tried the unofficial GoB (like GoZ) for Blender?: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?127419-GoB-an-unofficial-GoZ-for-Blender

#3

Latest GoB version.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?127419-GoB-an-unofficial-GoZ-for-Blender&p=1116470&viewfull=1#post1116470

#4

Thanks for the replies, I haven’t tried the GoB add-on yet, I usually like to manually transfer models between programs. I talked with some users on the Blender Artists forum about the zbrush-blender workflow and so far I learned:

  1. By default zBrush works only in hard edges and doesn’t give a smooth edge preview to help with the program’s speed. I heard somewhere there is a setting to change that but I couldn’t find it so far.

  2. You can mark some edges as hard and some as smooth shading in Blender but .obj files don’t transfer that information.

Although you can physically separate the object where you have hard edges and combine them in zbrush to save the hard edges. You would first mark all of your hard edges in Blender, apply an edge split modifier, then export as .obj with [x] selection only, and [x] apply modifiers selected. Then in zbrush you would go to Geometry >> Crease >> select the crease button, then Geometry >> Modify Topology >> select weld points.

  1. Unfortunately, then the third problem happens: you lose marked hard edges when transferring back into Blender. You could manually add your hard edges back again and that is ok for smaller projects but is very time consuming on larger scenes. I’m not sure if there is a better way to add the hard edges back again in Blender. Does anyone know how to quickly transfer the marked edges back again in Blender?

Thanks for the help everyone! :smiley: