Zbrush / Marmoset display normal issue

Sevv

I have been working on a head model and im having real trouble with normals displaying in Marmoset but I feel its an underlying ZBrush issue.

Sculpt in Zbrush.



I export its low sub div.



Bring this into Marmoset and it displays like this...



If I take this model into Max, reset xform, edit normals, unify and reset etc... this does not fix it. If I export as an fbx, bring back into Max, xform, normals, smooth... that does fix the problem. I can bring this mesh into Marmoset and it displays normally.

However, if I bring this new fixed mesh back into Zbrush as my replaced low sub div level... and then export the same mesh out of ZBrush, I am back to square 1 and the problems back.

Exporting say sub div 3 gets this result...



Its still screwed but you are only getting the screwed poly lines from the lowest sub div level... weird!

I have tried using Maya to export my mesh but that doesnt get me anywhere.

Its like I can fix my mesh outside of Zbrush and then import it into Marmoset but any time I go back into Zbrush my newly fixed mesh gets unfixed.

As I want to export my higher sub div levels for baking in xnormal... I need to some how fix the underlying problem and succeed in exporting meshes from ZBrush in a fixed state.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? Ive spent far far too long on this mesh to abandon now. I need to fix this. Any normals I bake from any exported mesh from ZBrush have this sub div level one screw up.

Many Thanks

Sevv

An additional problem i've found is that supposedly cleaned up meshes exported from Maya, when brought into xnormal for baking revert to having the same problem.

Its almost like they appear fixed but underneath are not.

jfitch

Zbrush doesn't have a concept of soft normals unless you export as an fbx in 4r7. Your bake was most likely done with soft normals on the low poly, and that mesh has hard normals, giving you the error (or its the other way around) either way the normals of your lvl 0 mesh/game mesh/bake mesh need to all be the same for your normal map to appear correctly. You can probably fix it by bringing your level 0 into maya or max, unlock and soften the normals, then reimport into marmoset.

Sevv

Thanks for the help. Luckily I have solved this now, oddly... if I reuved it in Maya, not Max or Zbrush... but Maya, then bring that back into ZBrush it fixes the problem *shrug*

Very confused but never mind )