From the course: Sculpting a Scarecrow in ZBrush

Importing base meshes into ZBrush - ZBrush Tutorial

From the course: Sculpting a Scarecrow in ZBrush

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Importing base meshes into ZBrush

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- [Instructor] In this lesson, I'm going to discuss importing in base meshes and how to go about working with them. What I like to do is, when I model in an external program, I will typically save out all of my model as one OBJ, bringing it into Zbrush and then I'll break apart the subtools. Let me show you what I mean. So I'll go to Import, I'll go into my Export/Import folder under OBJ, and you'll notice the file called Full Scarecrow. I'll go ahead and bring that in. Press T on the keyboard to go into Edit Mode. And now I have the entire scarecrow model brought in. In fact, you'll notice that there is one small issue. I have some flip normals in one of the gloves. I can very easily fix that, so I'm not going to worry about that right now. In fact, what I'll do is delete it out and I'll just make a duplicate of this hand and move it over. So with the asset imported in, what I need to do is break apart the subtools. So I'll go into Polygroups and I'll select Autogroups. And then back into my Subtool menu, I'll go into Split and Groups Split. Now what this does, is it will go through all of the assets and break them up into separate components. So that now if I isolate this, you can see we have the handkerchief around his neck. We have the glove, the torso, and so forth. If you prefer, you can also rename all of the components. This will make it more convenient later on when you begin to export out your individual components. You'll already have them named for the export. It will also help when you polypaint and you apply any texturing to individual components. If you were to bake out textures for that component, it will also carry the name over. To rename the components, simply go to the Rename. So Scarecrow and then capital T, Torso. As I mentioned, I have the glove, which is currently reversed. I'll go down to my Delete and say OK. And that will remove it permanently from the file. I'll select on the other glove, which honestly I can actually sculpt this glove first and duplicate it, and then move it over. So that's really not important for me to make a duplicate right now. But I'll show you how I do that anyway. I'll go to Duplicate with the asset selected. I now have a duplicate of it. Here's the problem: because the glove is obviously for the opposite hand. I'm just going to move this glove over and show you what I mean. I have two of the same hand and what I really want to do is to flip that, or in this case in Zbrush, called Mirror. So we'll go under Add Deformation. And I know for a fact that these are facing in the X direction. So I want Mirror in the X and I'll select on that. And what that does is automatically reverse the direction. And then of course, I'll need to rotate this accordingly to fit within the design. So I'll move my rotation. And bring that around. Come back up to my subtool. Turn on all my assets. And now I have the new hand in place. As I mentioned, I'll actually create a duplicate later once I do all the sculpting of the glove. This way, I don't have to resculpt it a second time. The one thing that's missing in this base mesh is the necklace and belt made of rope going around the character. Now I could have easily done that in a 3D program using a Taurus. Basically, a pretty simple method of just using the Taurus with a couple of ends extruded out to create the knot and the hanging thread. But I wanted to also demonstrate to you how you can work with ZSpheres to do that right within Zbrush, so that's what we're gonna take care of in the next lesson.

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