Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Discussions about animating in SOFTIMAGE©
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cnever
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Joined: 02 Jun 2011, 11:02

Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by cnever » 24 Jan 2014, 10:21

Hi

I am busy with some Shapes (blend shapes) for a character and was wondering if anyone here had a workflow from zbrush to SI. Seeing that it is a lot more natural for me to sculpt the facial expressions.

I don't mind doing the export obj and import for all the shapes but the problem I have is when I import from zbrush the changed facial mesh the mesh has jumped all the vertex positions so the slider moves the whole head??

I am sure there is a way to reset the vertex positions before applying shape key or a way to export or assign it correctly?

Any input would be great.

Thanks (can't believe goz for SI still not available)

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mattmos
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Re: Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by mattmos » 24 Jan 2014, 11:32

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?168399-GoZ-For-Softimage

For face shapes, I wouldn't go that route though - I imagine it would be fairly hard to get point orders to behave. The tweak tool along with proportional modelling does the job for me, and there's no back and forth needed.

cnever
Posts: 60
Joined: 02 Jun 2011, 11:02

Re: Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by cnever » 24 Jan 2014, 12:49

Thanks Mattmos!

That link definitely has some great installation tips but I have never gotten GoSoft to work ever?? I will be honest I have only really tried now due to the nice install instructions but the script does not seem to go to soft although it is open, with admin rights etc.

Can't believe pixo hasn't made one yet.

For the shapes and sculpting it - Everyone has their way, but I love sculpting and do it a lot more than modeling in xsi and I know that I can push more and do great expressions then moving point for point in xsi. I am sure there is a way to just get the data of vertex that moved. I mean if you duplicate the face and make changes and assign shapes the points don't warp weird at all. It is the same concept I just need to know how to reset the points when import I suppose?

But thanks will keep trying to get goSoft to work but no luck so far.

cnever
Posts: 60
Joined: 02 Jun 2011, 11:02

Re: Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by cnever » 24 Jan 2014, 13:00

cnever wrote: That link definitely has some great installation tips but I have never gotten GoSoft to work ever??

Haha - ok wel got it to work when I did the manual installation...

And yes the shapes are working fine no points moving that shouldnt! I can now duplicate the face goz to zbrush sculpt the face and goz back where I just apply the shape to correct name an viola I have a shape. freeze the model and delete the goz'd mesh.

I hope it works out in the long run but the quick tests I did now it works perfect...

thanks for the help

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mattmos
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Re: Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by mattmos » 24 Jan 2014, 14:14

Fair enough, each to their own ;)

Glad you've got it working.

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sonictk
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Re: Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by sonictk » 02 Feb 2014, 21:01

I'm also dealing with this now, and I've been looking around for an easier solution other than just exporting the OBJs out of ZBrush one-by-one and then re-importing them into XSI...does anyone know of a way to somehow batch this? Even using the Multi-OBJ importer plugin doesn't bring the OBJs in with their right names...Zbrush just exports them with Group1, Group2 naming conventions and I have to go in and rename all the shapes all over again...

Is there even a way in ZBrush to export a subtool's layers as seperate OBJs and for XSI to bring in OBJs using their filename instead of the object's internal name? Would make the process a lot easier.

cnever
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Joined: 02 Jun 2011, 11:02

Re: Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by cnever » 03 Feb 2014, 06:22

Hi Sonictk

I am sure some clever person would be able to create a script. There is one for Maya that comes with factory R6 I think. I have never used it but looks promising.

To be honest renaming and importing the shapes separately is not that bad for me. I just save the zbrush tool with layers for every shape so that if I need to tweak something than I reimport and reassign. Also I delete the imported obj every time I am finished with assigning and freezing the model down to prevent crashing (softimage).

Some steps can be automated but the goSoft already eliminates a lot of steps :D

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sonictk
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Re: Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by sonictk » 03 Feb 2014, 16:39

The Maya blendshapes plugin in ZBrush works alright (though I actually still just extract out the individual shapes once it's brought into Maya since I prefer having live shapes to work with instead of baked ones...), it's just becoming a little silly especially when I have upwards of 20+ shapes and every time I want to make an adjustment using ZBrush's tools I have to go through an overly-convoluted process.

I'm starting to see why my rigging professor just does all his blendshapes within Maya itself without fooling around with Mudbox/ZBrush. But at least in Maya I had Diamant Tools which kind of emulates sculpting tools a little bit, XSI's tweak tool is fantastic but it would be nice to be able to use ZBrush/Mudbox's brushes for this sort of stuff too without having to jump through this many hoops...

I'm looking into ZScripting now to see if I can find a way to duplicate layers to subtools, or layers to tools, even. At least that way I can use subtool master to export out the subtools all at once. Seems that ZBrush itself doesn't seem to have this functionality out-of-the-box...

Thanks for the reply! :D

Nick3d
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Re: Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by Nick3d » 05 Feb 2014, 17:42

I remember the video from Janimation that used Zbrush for the shapes and run everything inside Softimage and Facerobot, the results are stunning
https://vimeo.com/23548524

Scroll the other videos from Cris Fudge, they're show the shapes, but don't explian in detail how they achieved that results

Still impressive...

cnever
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Re: Shape keys from Zbrush sculpting

Post by cnever » 05 Feb 2014, 18:26

sonictk wrote:The Maya blendshapes plugin in ZBrush works alright (though I actually still just extract out the individual shapes once it's brought into Maya since I prefer having live shapes to work with instead of baked ones...), it's just becoming a little silly especially when I have upwards of 20+ shapes and every time I want to make an adjustment using ZBrush's tools I have to go through an overly-convoluted process.
Yes when we do thing over and over it does get quite cumbersome... I know on zbrush central there is also a section on the forums where you can request certain scripts and maybe someone will be able to help out there for scripting.
Nick3d wrote:I remember the video from Janimation that used Zbrush for the shapes and run everything inside Softimage and Facerobot, the results are stunning
https://vimeo.com/23548524
Still impressive...
Dam Nick3d that was quite impressive... although I am sure it was more than just blend shapes that made that work, a lot of rigging went into that, still very impressive.

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