Zbrush to Maya model export probs
polycounter lvl 3
Hi, this is my first posting, i've been reading this forum for a couple of years, so i'll try to keep it as technical as i can (gulp).
I've just started using zbrush, to add to my maya/max skillset, and sillynoob that i am, i deleted the lower subd's during the sculpting process (tutorial made it sound like i could restore them easily, this was not the case). So i now have a modelled & painted, believable scifi beastie, with 6 million* polys, that I can't unwrap or export for use in maya.
If i project a dynamesh onto a zsphere (to regain lower subdivision), it turns my quads to tri's, preventing zbrush from unwrapping properly. If i use decimation master, i lose a paintjob of 2 full days, AND its breaks my quads to tri's.
I've been trying workarounds & tutorials for over a week, but im too inexperienced to really see a solution. Also, i have tried scrapping the pixelpaint job, reduced the polycount to 16k*, and tried unwrapping (both via uvmaster & guv's, with polygroups & without), but all i get is a glitchy texture of colours. Ive attached a screen of this & the original finished model.
I feel i am missing something obvious in my methods, if anyone can shed any light, i'd really enjoy finishing this char (rather than shelving the poor critter).
Thanks for reading!
I've just started using zbrush, to add to my maya/max skillset, and sillynoob that i am, i deleted the lower subd's during the sculpting process (tutorial made it sound like i could restore them easily, this was not the case). So i now have a modelled & painted, believable scifi beastie, with 6 million* polys, that I can't unwrap or export for use in maya.
If i project a dynamesh onto a zsphere (to regain lower subdivision), it turns my quads to tri's, preventing zbrush from unwrapping properly. If i use decimation master, i lose a paintjob of 2 full days, AND its breaks my quads to tri's.
I've been trying workarounds & tutorials for over a week, but im too inexperienced to really see a solution. Also, i have tried scrapping the pixelpaint job, reduced the polycount to 16k*, and tried unwrapping (both via uvmaster & guv's, with polygroups & without), but all i get is a glitchy texture of colours. Ive attached a screen of this & the original finished model.
I feel i am missing something obvious in my methods, if anyone can shed any light, i'd really enjoy finishing this char (rather than shelving the poor critter).
Thanks for reading!
Replies
What kind of error is UV Master giving you regarding triangles? I've used it on many meshes that contain triangles, and have never gotten any errors out of it. You could try
When trying your suggestion, i get "Not enough memory to complete unwrap. Split model into different subtools in order to reduce polycount." I have tried this (8 subtools), with the same results. I have 16gig ram, nvidia geforce gtx (660m 2gb) running on i7, so i dont think my hardware is the prob. I also set priority to high for zbrush in taskmanager.
To clarify my earlier post, i managed to apply UV master only after i dynameshed & reduced polys, but it results in the pixelated/artifact ridden texture i posted at the top, not an actual error msg. Most of the web speaks very well of uvmaster, so im definitely missing something here >< thanks for your suggestions, helps open up other avenues i havent thought to try
As for the UV Master result you're getting on the earlier mesh: try using the Makepolymesh3D button, then unwrapping the clone that it creates. Alternatively, export the mesh as an obj and load it as a new object. I've found those can get UVMaster to spit out different results if the model isn't unwrapping the way you would expect. It might also help to split the mesh into a few polygroups in order to help give it some starting guidelines, while forcing it to rethink about the layout.
If it continues to fail, you might want to contact their official support to see if something is wrong with your installation or your machine. Maybe test some other meshes to see if zremesh and UV master are failing on those as well. If that is the case, then in the meantime I would recommend to focus purely on getting a new retopologized mesh modeled and UV'd (whether its done in zbrush, maya, or whatever). Xnormal will let you bake the polypaint and normal maps from the sculpt to your new model, and from there you can continue with Maya.
For the record, it was the "makepolymesh3D" step that i was missing, which wasnt letting me Zremesh properly. Once i'd polymeshed it, zremeshing with less polys worked 1st go, and projecting the earlier 6million poly tool onto the new mesh went smoothly.
The unwrap is still playing up the same way, despite re-importing, and ive tested some other meshes, which worked fine first go. So its definitely me.