Poser GoZ to Zbrush - Saving progress on a project?

ObscuroArcanum

I'm using Darkseal's Poser to GoZ tutorial (as well as his clothing tutorials) as a guide to work between Poser and Zbrush, but there is nothing in any of the tutorials that explains how to save my progress on my project inside Zbrush. When it can take hours to create morphs and textures, I don't understand how to save my progress and there is nothing in the tutorials that mentions how to save when it comes time to stop for the night.

I tried saving the Zbrush document, but all this did was save a document with my M4 figure a static thing on the screen that was no longer a mesh that I could edit.

At the moment, my project is creating textures for a M4 character, so unlike with a morph I can't just click the GoZ button and send my work back to Poser to be saved in my scene and then export it through GoZ again when I want to begin work again.

I have spent the last few hours searching for an answer to this and I haven't had any luck.

Any help to solve this would be very much appreciated.

xmasrose

I am new to ZBrush too.

To save my work I use "Shift+Ctrl+T". 

I am a DAZ Studio user.

How long is the part in the tutorial about Poser/GoZ and how long is the part on texturing and morphs ? Thank you.

ObscuroArcanum

Thus far, I haven't used the Shift+Ctrl+T command but Zbrush's list of shortcuts label this as Save Tool, so to me that sounds like it is saving the mesh itself rather than the project. If it is saving the tool, then I don't see how that will give me a project file to open later to resume my work when it may not have created a Zbrush project document.

The entire tutorial series is about Poser and GoZ. The video on creating morphs is 17 minutes long and DarkSeal only does a basic morph. Nothing elaborate like spending hours or days creating a character's face and body morphs. The video on texturing is 32 minutes long, but again, it is only a basic and rough demonstration of texturing in Zbrush. Again, this is not what I'm after because the amount of detail that I want to create on my skin textures is going to take me weeks to do. The tutorials are incredibly helpful of showing the basic process, but unless you're doing something quick and can complete the task in a single sitting (and your computer doesn't crash) then there is nothing mentioned about how to save progress.

When I was getting no assistance from this thread and my project was put on hold because of it, I ended up using a work around to create my textures by exporting V4 from Poser using GoZ, exporting the mesh from Zbrush as an .obj, creating a new document and then importing the mesh. It allows me to save a project file and I can work on it at my leisure. It breaks V4 for creating morphs, but it does allow me to export my textures.

For creating morphs, I'm not bothering with the GoZ function and I'm doing it the old way of exporting the .obj from Poser, loading the mesh into Zbrush and doing a quick test to make sure the pipeline works and Poser accepts my morph, and when it all checks out, I get to work on making the morphs.

xmasrose

Thank you, so I won't purchase it.

I got https://www.daz3d.com/zbrush-to-poser-simple-clothing and https://www.daz3d.com/zbrush-to-poser-intermediate-clothing.

I did part of the first one and learned a lot. As I said I am a beginner .

I used "Shift+Ctrl+T" for that tutorial and also for playing with fibermesh eyebrows and it worked fine. I can still work on my project when I load the tool.

ObscuroArcanum

I wouldn't say that tutorial isn't worth buying. While it didn't answer my questions, there was still a lot of helpful and useful information in the videos - especially for new Zbrush users. :) I do recommend the tutorial... it just raises the 'Uh, how do I save my progess when using the GoZ function?'

I will give Shift+Ctrl+T a try and see what happens. :)

Those other two tutorials you mentioned - they are great, aren't they? :D So helpful!

xmasrose

That's because these tutorials are so good that I looked into the "Poser to GoZ" one but I don't use really Poser and anyway I only have Poser10.

Just hope Darkseal will make some new ones.

 

ObscuroArcanum

Yeah, but I don't see that happening for a while. The tutorials were pretty current with the versions he used and the basics were covered to get us started.

Daywalker Designs

zBrush doesn't really care what external program you're using to get the model data in and out. Saving progress on what you've done is best done as a zBrush project (*.zpr) which will include any poly painting you've done.

ObscuroArcanum

This is what I did after I sent the M4 model I needed from Poser to Zbrush through the GoZ bridge. I Saved As a .zpr file but when I went to open it again afterwards, my M4 model was a static object on the screen. I could not edit it or manipulate it.

Daywalker Designs

ObscuroArcanum said:

This is what I did after I sent the M4 model I needed from Poser to Zbrush through the GoZ bridge. I Saved As a .zpr file but when I went to open it again afterwards, my M4 model was a static object on the screen. I could not edit it or manipulate it.

zBrush doesn't, out of the installer, provide an option to have commonly used features like edit mode, set as the default setting, which annoys me a lot. There is a zBrush plugin that provides that on the Pixologic site, though.

ObscuroArcanum

It doesn't really bother me that I have to enable the Edit mode whenever I drag a new mesh onto the stage, but to each his own. I'm quite content with the way Zbrush operates without any additional add-ons. I'll probably need some of the add-ons when I get better with the program and my projects become more complex.

The original reason I posted this topic, about saving when using the GoZ function, I think I may have found the answer in the two file types Zbrush uses - .zbr, .zpr. The .zpr files save everything, the tools, the materials and the settings. Saving through the Document tab is only creating the .zbr file type, which don't save the tools and meshes and apparently are only for texturing. Saving through the File tab allows me to create the .zpr, which I can then use the Ctrl+S shortcut as normal to save my progress and pick up where I left off when I open my file. I'm only working on textures at the moment, and I can't confirm that the GoZ functionality will still behave as normal... though I couldn't see why not. In theory.

I thought I would post this in case other users find it helpful.

Syrus_Dante

Hi @ ObscuroArcanum

The last time I used the GoZ Plugin was with DS4.6 and zBrush 4R7 I think. I also thought there must be a way to save the zBrush Project between the GoZ sessions.

I had some issues and I discovered a workaround that you can read in this post G3f textures in zbrush.

I would say you can use your current zBrush project for creating the texures and export them with the Zplugin - Multi Map Exporter, but if you want to create morphs you have to be shure to import-export the same geometry with no subdivision.

I'm pretty shure if you click the GoZ button in your current zBrush project even with your DS scene opend the GoZ sessions dont pick up where you interrupted this fragile Plugin based link between the two programs. DS may offers you a dialouge to import the geometry as a static object then you can check if the geometry scaling matches or not. As far as I had discovered I think it is based on these GOZ exchange files within the GoZProjects folder and only works for the current session while both programs are running.

So If you plan to create morphs from the GoZ session saved in your zBrush project file, you can export them as obj files and in DS use morphloader to import them with a scaling of 10000% - thats what I did and at least I can say it worked with the GoZ Plugin for DS4.6.

ObscuroArcanum

Hi Syrus83227_202e840f4e

Thanks for the information, though I'm not sure how much of it is relevant when I'm working with Poser and Zbrush. I will bookmark your other post though for when I start working with DS, the Genesis figures and Zbrush.

Working with my project, I'm able to create my textures and export them one by one. I prefer to do it one at a time, as opposed to using a plug-in to start with, just until I get the hang of it and make sure everything is correct. Because my figure was exported from Poser grouped as Materials, I'm not going to trust it to make my morphs and I will instead prefer to create a secondary project, with M4 sent to Zbrush through the GoZ plug-in with it grouped as bodyparts. And if that doesn't work, I'll do it the old fashioned way and just export the .obj from Poser. I did this for a facial morph I'm making and it works fine.

I don't yet know how to create the facial and body morphs in Zbrush, either through GoZ or manually loading the figure's mesh but then have them separated into two different INJ files in Poser. I'm not worried about that yet. I'm just concentrating on creating the textures and the facial morphs. So far, I've been able to create the bodymorphs using the dials in Poser.

Syrus_Dante

Oh I didn't read that you work with poser - sorry.

But working with the (Morph) Layer System in zBrush is a good way to start creating Morphs as I descriped.

QUOTE @ G3f textures in zbrush

6. for your own morph modeling create at least one new layer and have fun with the insane amount of tools and possibilitys in ZBrush but dont alter the geomerty topology in any way if you want to load your mesh back as a morph into Daz Studio.

I found myself creating more than ten layers for diffrent areas, the facegroups come in handy here.

(Sorry I forgot to say what I meant with "isolate FaceGroups" by 2x Ctrl+leftClick on same FaceGroup make it invisible and add more with Ctrl+leftClick then invert visible with Ctrl+Shift+leftDrag@emptyCanvas.

Now mask visible by Ctrl+leftClick@emptyCanvas - then make all visible with Ctrl+Shift+leftClick@emptyCanvas - and finaly invert mask with Ctrl+leftDrag@emptyCanvas - now shrink/grow/blur mask

With that you get a smooth unmasked area you can now work with the Brush Move-Elastic shortcut B-M-E, activate symetry X and sculpt. This works like a Poser magnet or DS-D-Former with weightmap but also with symetry and the brush stroke angle is based on the perspective...oh damn working with zBrush is hard to descripe )

First using the masking brush at low RGB value and technics like shrink / grow / blur / invert mask to isolate the area I want to morph.

If you are quit the record mode the masking seems to get lost but its still there when go back to edit mode - you can also store masks by: create texture from masking > clone texture > alpha from mask > export alpha map as image file. To load alpha: mask by alpha.

(The Layers in zBrush also save RGB values for every vertex so it can also be used as PolyPaint-Layers to turn on and of or lower intensety)

I use brush move elastic quiet often and after quit layer record I switch back and forth the influence from diffrent perspectives to see if some unwanted distotions happend in some polys. If so I switch of the layer go to Tool-Tab "morph target > store morph target" choose "brush > morph" shortcut B-M-O, set up focal shift and low z intensity. Then switching the layer to record again and carefully paint the distorted polys back to the stored morph target shape. If you like you can also merge down two or more layers and finaly export them all in one or seperate as OBJ. Yes after a while I get used to the somehow twisted logic in ZBrush because in most cases it leads to a nice and smooth workflow.

ObscuroArcanum

It's fine that you missed I'm working with Poser. :)

And yes, the Layer system with the Morphs is a feature I've really enjoyed working with. Just like the Layer system in Photoshop.