3DS max, Zbrush and Substance painter 2

Filip5

Hi guys, I tried to model a simple mesh in 3DS Max, which I transferred to Zbrush, back to Max and to SP 2. Hovewer, at some point it gone completely wrong and I dont know why. I am going to write the steps which I did, so hopefully someone can point me the right way.

1. I modeled wooden pillar in max, added support loops. I also UW - ed the mesh, exported as .obj and imported to Zbrush.



2. I divided the mesh in Zbrush, added details and exported is as .obj back to folder. 



3. In Max, I aligned both objects so they overlap each other. I exported them both out as .fbx files.



4. Substance painter 2 - New project, I used pillar.fbx as lowpoly. Afterwards I bake textures using highpoly. The result I get is this, which is totaly wrong... It seems as if UVs are bad, but I have no clue why...

Revel

Did you exported the high and low mesh as as single FBX file? they need to be on separate file.

Filip5

DId that, got two files. But could it be that I need to UV unwrap zbrush model too ?

NoRank

No, you don't need to unwrap the high poly model. Did you collapse the unwrap modifier? 

Revel

Yeah you dont need to UV the zb mesh. Seems like your UV kinda messed up in the process. Before re-export can you check your UV in Max? it looks like your UV reset to stretched across 0-1 space. Or try to import that FBX back into Max n check the UV and see how it looks like..

Filip5

It seems that I figured it out. I had to re-unwrap my model second time before exporting it to fbx. That leads to another question, do I need to do unwrapping before importing to zbrush, if I have to do it afterwards ? 

musashidan

Zbrush can mess up uvs on import/export. Best to leave unwrapping until your low poly is finished and in Max. No, you don't have to unwrap for ZB import, If all you're using it for is to add some sculpting details.

Revel

^Yeah like what he said. Normally you want to build your mesh and export that as xxx_low.fbx (with proper uv), import that to ZB (if your lowpoly clean enough) and do further detail pass and export that as xxx_high.fbx. So in SP2 you import xxx_low.fbx as your lowpoly and xxx_high.fbx as your highpoly, with that ZB didn't messed up or overwrite your uv info on the mesh by accident.

Filip5

I am not aware that Zbrush would accept .fbx files. And I prefer that one over .obj too. But as far as I know zbrush accepts .obj, so I export owpoly as obj to zbrush, do edits, export is as highpoly .obj, and then export them both out of max as fbx files.

musashidan

ZB has an .fbx import/export plug as of R7.