Houston we got a problem (scaling between zbrush and blender)

Boosted24v

So I built my base mesh in Blender, exported to zbrush for smoothing, bevel, fine details etc, an now exported back to blender. Never touched any scaling setting but.... we done f**ked up. LMAO someone tell me what went wrong. That tiny speck there is the lowpoly and the giant is the highpoly from zbrush.

Alex_J

after three years i still don't understand how the hell zbrush scaling works but the thing is it's always going to be a factor of 10, so if this does happen you only need to set your scale by a factor of 10, freeze transform and reexport

Kanni3d

What'd you use to import/export from blender -> zbrush? Either way, as Alex said, it seems to be 1:10th the size (90% scaled down?), so try scaling it up about 900%

Boosted24v

Alex Javor said:

after three years i still don't understand how the hell zbrush scaling works but the thing is it's always going to be a factor of 10, so if this does happen you only need to set your scale by a factor of 10, freeze transform and reexport

After watching a few videos on scaling, units, conversions etc etc etc...and experimenting with no luck...I tried exporting as an .fbx vs an .obj and magically all is well. .fbx was perfect scale in blender with out having to change anything or do any math haha. So I apologize for posting cuz I figured it out. Phew!

Boosted24v

@Kanni3d Sorry hadn't seen your comment till after I replied. I tried fudging with the scaling in zbrush but nothing came even close. I randomly decided to try exporting as a .fbx since I had imported as an .fbx to begin with and it came out perfect with out having to change anything scaling wise.

Kanni3d

@Boosted24v
ah could quite possibly just be import obj settings in blender then?

Boosted24v

@Kanni3d according to the AskZbrush video I watched .obj files use generic scaling numbers which aren't equal to inches or centimeters etc. Gave conversion math on how to configure it to come out the right size in comparison to the units you are using however. (this didn't work for me, probably because I exported from blender as a.fbx) I just googled it and it turns out that .fbx files do actually store scale information in real world units. So the only time you'd run into trouble is if one software is in metric and the other in imperial. Of course though I gotta figure things out the hard way.

sprunghunt

There is a scale setting in zbrush under the export menu: 
http://docs.pixologic.com/reference-guide/tool/polymesh/export/

Zbrush scales your model by the numbers in this menu when you export it. If you make an OBJ in another program and import it into zbrush you'll see that it automatically sets the scale in the export menu. Sometimes people will import an OBJ but then reset this menu somehow. This leads to problems like you have above. 

My suggestion is to export a copy of the original model from blender and then import it into a new zbrush file. Now have a look at the export settings and write them down. Then open the other model and set the export settings to match those numbers. 

Neox

sprunghunt said:

There is a scale setting in zbrush under the export menu: 
http://docs.pixologic.com/reference-guide/tool/polymesh/export/

In my opinion, never ever touch those and if they do not look cryptical, shit is broken :x