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Medium --> Zbrush --> 3D print workflow

kentcaldwell
Explorer
Hi all, I'm a huge fan of Medium and a long time user of Zbrush. I've done a quick write up on my workflow to prep a Medium sculpt for 3D printing, using some of Zbrush's tools and plugins (Trim Rectangle, Decimation Master, etc.) Thought it might be useful to post here:

http://kentcaldwell.blogspot.com/2017/02/oculus-medium-with-zbrush-vr-to-3d.html

For those reading, I'm assuming a basic familiarity with Zbrush, but if anyone has questions, reply to this thread and I'll try to clarify.

-Kent
9 REPLIES 9

monstersandmachines
Heroic Explorer
Awesome job. I'm definitely interested in 3D printing some of my sculpts so this is great information. Thanks for sharing.

jessicazeta
Heroic Explorer
Wow, that turned out great!!

Gamerrangerbob
Explorer
Great job, I am a hobbyist and playing with medium but wanted to print a sculpt of characters I tell my daughter as stories ... I tried exporting the obj but it ended up at 1.6gb and photoshop won't read it. is this the normal size of the obj when you import into z brushorIam i doing something wrong. the preview obj imports fine. I just want to set a size dimension and hopefully reduce the sculpt to a size shapeways can accept (68mb). Sorry if hijacking your post.

MattHickman
Rising Star
Yeah, the exported OBJs are very large right now due to the way we convert from our format in Medium to external meshes. For now... but soon... 

kentcaldwell
Explorer
I don't think any of my sculpts have been that large in file size... but... even if they are large(ish) files, if you manage to get them open in Zbrush, a quick pass through its Decimation master and then a resave should get an STL or OBJ to a much more reasonable size, without too much noticeable decrease in resolution...

jojocircusmonke
Explorer


Hi all, I'm a huge fan of Medium and a long time user of Zbrush. I've done a quick write up on my workflow to prep a Medium sculpt for 3D printing, using some of Zbrush's tools and plugins (Trim Rectangle, Decimation Master, etc.) Thought it might be useful to post here:

http://kentcaldwell.blogspot.com/2017/02/oculus-medium-with-zbrush-vr-to-3d.html

For those reading, I'm assuming a basic familiarity with Zbrush, but if anyone has questions, reply to this thread and I'll try to clarify.

-Kent


Kent,
 Fantastic job!!  Looks great!   I too am a long time z-brush user.  My workflow was always to start in Z-brush and sculpt a ton of detail there, then take it into maya to retopologize the mesh entirely for rigging/animation using the maya toolset for that.   Since using medium It kind of stole my heart away from zBrush because it serves the same purpose for me but in a much more engaging natural way.   I wanted to reach out because I think you may be able to save yourself some time if you are just looking to print.  If you have windows 10 it should have microsofts 3d builder included for free (at least my version does).   I took my exported medium sculpt into there and used its tools to fix the holes/problems in the mesh, reduce, and then layout/arrange the peices for printing.   Exported an stl from there which printed great.   The whole process from medium to printer took maybe 25 minutes of my time (and a half an hour of watching a progress bar during the mesh fixing and reducing processes).   If I'm being a dunce and there are other reasons i missed, let me know, because I love zbrush, but havent seen a reason to go back.  Plus I'm a nerd for 3d, so I'm into the hows/whys.  If not, you should checkout 3d builder.   It is a limited toolset but it's all I've needed for preapring printable assets out of medium.   Assets for animation are another story, but I still use maya for retopo for that stuff.   
Regardless, you do very impressive work sir, so it probably doesnt matter much what workflow you use.

-Joe

kentcaldwell
Explorer
Joe, this is great info. Zbrush is smooth and fast for me, but I was hesitant to throw together the guide because it seems kind of ridiculous to use this (really expensive) powerful software in this instance only for a quick mesh cleanup / decimation It's awesome to hear that 3D builder can accomplish the same thing for those not looking to learn / spend a lot of money on Zbrush.

There might also be workflows with Medium and Meshmixer to get sculpts print-ready, if anyone has one, please share....

Anonymous
Not applicable
That came out great! I really need to 3D print another sculpt 🙂


@Gamerrangerbob Try downloading 'MeshLab' as it's free and really good at handling big files and reducing the poly count/file size.

To reduce the poly count go to Filters -> Remeshing, simplification and construction -> Quadratic Edge Collapse Decimation

Saved me a few times when massive 3D files crash the 3D software I'm trying to import into!

Gamerrangerbob
Explorer

FrozenPea said:

That came out great! I really need to 3D print another sculpt 🙂


@Gamerrangerbob Try downloading 'MeshLab' as it's free and really good at handling big files and reducing the poly count/file size.

To reduce the poly count go to Filters -> Remeshing, simplification and construction -> Quadratic Edge Collapse Decimation

Saved me a few times when massive 3D files crash the 3D software I'm trying to import into!

Thank you, I found meshlabs mentioned by southerngfx in another post and managed to reduce it to a stage where 3dbuild could absorb and have sent through to I materialize to print. Hope it comes out as tried even though some horns and things were going to not print properly but may give my dragon a battle fought look. Its my first real try but getting better each time I go into medium. The dragon is what I am trying to print 
https://www.oculus.com/medium/artists/gamerrangerbob/ ;