Max 2020 and Zbrush 2019
polycounter lvl 9
I'm a long time max/zbrush user, and one thing that's really, really important for me is having a functioning goZ to send stuff back and forth between the two programs. For a long time I didn't upgrade my max version from 2016, simply because goZ seemed to break when I upgraded and none of the new max features were really worth it.
Well, thanks to a security fault in older Autodesk software I'm being forced to upgrade and yep, looks like goZ is completely unusable for me.
3ds Max will now collapse (and reset the xform) on your goZ mesh to an edit mesh as soon as you hit the goZ button. This is an undoable action, which means any modifiers you had on the object are now completely destroyed. Let's say you modelled a bracelet by using the curve modifier. You send it to zbrush and realise that actually you want it a little more curved now, well it's impossible to make any changes now because the bracelet has been irreversibly collapsed down to an edit mesh. Any mesh that has a material assigned with a texture will also error out and not be sent to zbrush until you've removed the material.
Objects are being brought into 3ds Max with a pure white material with a very high specular, making it pretty much impossible to work with the mesh unless you assign or remove the material. The scene background will also be set to pure black.
If you're using 3ds Max 2020 and zbrush I'd love to hear if you're having similar problems. A working goZ is so essential to my workflow that I cannot understand how more people aren't talking about this. With any luck it's a local problem, although knowing autodesk this seems unlikely. I honestly may consider switching to blender unless I can get goZ back to how it was...
Well, thanks to a security fault in older Autodesk software I'm being forced to upgrade and yep, looks like goZ is completely unusable for me.
3ds Max will now collapse (and reset the xform) on your goZ mesh to an edit mesh as soon as you hit the goZ button. This is an undoable action, which means any modifiers you had on the object are now completely destroyed. Let's say you modelled a bracelet by using the curve modifier. You send it to zbrush and realise that actually you want it a little more curved now, well it's impossible to make any changes now because the bracelet has been irreversibly collapsed down to an edit mesh. Any mesh that has a material assigned with a texture will also error out and not be sent to zbrush until you've removed the material.
Objects are being brought into 3ds Max with a pure white material with a very high specular, making it pretty much impossible to work with the mesh unless you assign or remove the material. The scene background will also be set to pure black.
If you're using 3ds Max 2020 and zbrush I'd love to hear if you're having similar problems. A working goZ is so essential to my workflow that I cannot understand how more people aren't talking about this. With any luck it's a local problem, although knowing autodesk this seems unlikely. I honestly may consider switching to blender unless I can get goZ back to how it was...
Replies
It's not really a long term solution however because goZ will create a new object in zbrush (it sees the copied mesh as a new mesh) which you'd have to routinely delete and manage (I'm not sure you'd be able to automate this in a zbrush script either). You also lose out on the re-projection functionality in zbrush (which I'll regularly use to add loops or mess with the UVs in max, and automatically have my detail re projected.)
All I really want is for the same features that existed in 2016 to work in 2020
Does styx support polygroups and polypaint ? Because that's the main advantages of goz over regular obj export.
@musashidan Thanks for the suggestion! I've bought Styx and am giving it a go as we speak. I'm really liking it so far and it's so much quicker than goZ which can be really slow when you've got a few hundred subtools. I'll need to get used to it but I think it covers all the things I'd use goZ for, I can use max/zbrush again, so thanks so much for that!
@Noors It looks like styx supports polygroups. There are actually two options, one to export without polygoups and one to export with them. The developer mentions the polygroup version can cause issues though, although I think that's referencing Maya more than max. It will retain polypaint when you change the mesh in max and import it to zbrush, I don't use polypaint all that much myself so I don't know if goZ did anything more than that!