Perfect Bakes in Substance Painter from Zbrush

In this video I explain how I prepare my models to bake perfect in Substance Painter. Clean the Zbrush file and naming convention.
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[@marinapomigalova736]

I have watched multiple tutorials on this topic and still could not understand how it works. You are the only one who explained everything in detail and I finally made it work. Thank you very much!

[@fabriziopacifici7531]

Finally, a very good tutorial on this topic. Thanks a lot.

[@AJsapala481]

Thank you so much for this tutorial and explanation. This has definitely helped me figure out how to move into a better workflow for character art.

[@yorickvlt1021]

Hello and thanks from France! Was really well explained, thanks for sharing!

[@AhmedAlbastaki]

You are a great teacher sir

[@artem_astaroth]

maaaaan! this pure gold lml, muchas gracias por compartir

[@cosmosmythos]

GENIUS !!

[@davidarguedas5735]

Excelente tutorial !!

[@crawlingking321]

Very well explained..thank you for sharing

[@milkbread5036]

muchas gracias :)

[@andrescontreras3901]

Gran video! increíble muchas gracias

[@amdx1975]

Hello from Kharkiv Julio! I'm your fan and subscriber now, he-he! Wery good tutirial, man! Good luck and best wishes!

[@JulioCesarEspada]

Thank you! Glad you like it!

[@markokd]

Hello, I'm your fan and subscriber now as well :) I have a question what kind of geometry does the high-poly model have? Is it decimated, DynaMeshed or ZRemeshed or it doesn't matter?(high-poly for baking)

[@JulioCesarEspada]

Hello Marko, thanks for your comment. The high poly to do the retopo I like to decimate it, but the actual high poly I use for baking is just the higest level from zbrush, unless it is too heavy that requires some optimization.

[@TheArteclipse]

Perfect 😂😂

[@fabioapelbaum8840]

Hi Julio! Hope all is well! I follow your steps, but I might be missing something. I export the High in OBJ using Zbrush SubTool Master, and I have my low which also were exported from Zbrush the same way, but instead of MAX, Im using C4D, when I imported the OBJs into C4D I did noticed that the objects did not keep the names I added as the Sub-Tool name, so I manually renamed all of them again to match the names of the high... Also, another thing I did which Im unsure if its OK, is that on the LOW, I consolidated some parts into the same material, so I can texture them together inside of Painter... So my question for you is, when I do the baking, will Painter look at the objects of the Low version by the material name? or by the object name that was saved in C4D? Even though the OBJ file name has the correct name based on the subtool name , when I import the obj into C4D, the object name is shown as Default... to that note, I did follow a tutorial that says that you should disable GRP from the export settings in the Tool section for each tool, but that option is not longer there, and was now moved to the Preferences/Export, on desabling the GRP from there, seems now is global and dont need to be done for each tool? Anyhow, doing so, doesnt fixed the problem.... And, not sure why, but I do get an error that the High Poly was not find for X object. Any ideas? Thank you!

[@JulioCesarEspada]

Hello Fabio To keep the internal names of the meshes in OBJ the GRP option must be deactivated. As you noticed, now is in another menu under Preferences. If C4D does not read the proper names it must be something in the import process in C4D. Review your import options there and see if there is anything that is breaking those names. Alternatively you could try to use FBX file format. I have been using it more and more and I barely use OBJ nowadays. Painter needs the _high vs _low just to bake. It ignores the materials for this process. Materials are just for TextureSets, and only make sense in the low meshes since those are the ones that will be painted. If the baking can not find the highpoly is is 100% that the name is not correct. Let me know how it goes!

[@fipzee]

Excellent video, thank you for doing this! I had no clue you could group the high poly names that way. Any reason you didn't use fbx to export the high poly meshes?

[@JulioCesarEspada]

I have been using more and more FBX and nowadays I use it for the most part, but OBJ is most of the time the same so it does not really matter. I found some issues long ago with FBX but it is all in the past. FBX or OBJ should work fine for high and low.

[@fipzee]

@@JulioCesarEspada I also found the same in the past with FBX but no problems lately. Thx for the reply.

[@jonathanalejandromoralesgo1740]

Excelente explicacion Julio! Entonces para aclarar, una vez finalizado el Highpoly decimamos cada mesh, exportamos las subtools separadas en un mismo .obj, realizamos la retopologia de cada mesh y sobreponemos el high decimado by meshes en substance painter? Me puedo ahorrar lo del color ID si en max le asigno un standard material a cada uno y luego exporto las piezas del low en un mismo obj?

[@JulioCesarEspada]

Correcto :) La idea del color ID es sacarlo del high. Puedes usar el high de Zbrush y por lo tanto usar el polypaint o si el high lo sacas del max hacerlo con materiales, pero entonces tendrás que especificar otro tipo de bake para el ID, no recuerdo cual sería ahora mismo (MeshID tal vez?) No tengo el ordenador delante para verlo en detalle pero van p or ahi los tiros.

[@jonathanalejandromoralesgo1740]

@@JulioCesarEspada Entiendo, en tu caso Julio, como mergeas las substools texturizadas en un single mesh sin que pierdan la informacion de mapeado y texturas del material asignado? Yo ahora en mi caso particular estoy documentandome para adoptar tus enseñanzas sobre la aplicacion de las submeshes a mi workflow: Zbrush->Topogun->Rizomuv->Substance painter->Mixamo->Marmoset.

[@JulioCesarEspada]

Ni las uvs ni los materiales se deberían perder cuando hacer un merge de objetos. En el caso de los materiales max creará un multimaterial y asignará una ID a cada conjunto de caras para tenerlo separado por material. Por lo demás todo debería funcionar sin problema.

[@errolmanibuy3745]

Thank you very much for the explanation Julio, it helped me a lot to understand what's going on 😄. But I'm a beginner in this zbrush to substance thing, I got lost in how you do the baking and syncing the high and the low. And everytime i opened the fbx file in substance errors occurred. Missing UV and sorts...the scene won't opened. Can you give me a clue on what happened?

[@JulioCesarEspada]

FBX in Substance should open without any errors, so if you are sure the model is good before export I guess the problem may be in the export process for some reason the FBX file is not being generated properly. The only thing I can think of is you are using an old FBX exporter version. In the FBX export dialog, right at the bottom there is a tab named FBX file format. There make sure you have Binary and FBX2020 selected. If still you have problems, try using OBJ instead of FBX and see if the file is broken. If you still have problems, contact me through artstation with a link to download your model and I will have a look at it when I have the chance.

[@tanvirahmed617]

thank you sir , you r super helpful. i just want to know last time when the baking was clean because the overlapping part was seperated and name differently? why do you have so many high poly object during baking ? what if i import into a single file ?

[@JulioCesarEspada]

It is important to keep separated high poly files so substance can read them separately and identify the "_high" tag. If you export all in a single file Substance can not differentiate them so they won't find the _low match.

[@karlhungus2115]

I understand how you named everything to set up the high/low poly files, but how did you import the low poly file into substance painter and only have one texture set for the entire body? My character is getting a texture set in substance painter for legs, arms, neck, torso ect. when I just want to have a clean single texture set for the whole body like you do.

[@JulioCesarEspada]

Think on texture sets as materials. If you assign a single material to ten separated pieces, substance will create just one texture set. If you assign ten materials to a single mesh, substance will create ten texture sets. Hope that helps!

[@atchun]

@@JulioCesarEspada Great video! But also have the same question, how do you export, from zbrush, to substance painter as one texture set. Assigning same material to all subtools in a folder, and to exporting to FBX, results in multiple textures sets in Substance painter for me

[@JulioCesarEspada]

@@atchun You don't need Texture Sets created from any subtool. The only purpose of the subtools exported from Zbrush is to bake. Texture Sets come from the material/s assigned to the low poly mesh.

[@karlhungus2115]

@@JulioCesarEspada That did it! Thanks, it now works.

[@spyrosromfaias7479]

Hello pretty good tutorial! How can I go to substance through maya instead of 3dsmax

[@JulioCesarEspada]

It should work the same for Maya, the only difference is that instead of importing files in Maya I use drag and drop from the file explorer.

[@arcari13]

How have you painted the meshes on zbrush? cant find it, please help me

[@JulioCesarEspada]

Srry I did not see your message before. To paint meshes just do a Color/Fill Object.

[@lethalramen]

I can't find the "GRP" button in ZBrush 2022. Is it off by default now? If not, where can I find it?

[@JulioCesarEspada]

In one of the recent updates they changed it to another menu. Now is in Preferences/ImportExport/Export. Now it is not necessary to deactivate it in each subtool, just once on the preferences and it will stay off.

[@chakallycan377]

Hola Julio Cesar, gracias por el video , estoy intentado usar tu metodo y me funciona bien importando en substance fbx y mesh name contra fbx, pero cuando intento fbx contra obj no me hace ningun baking, he revisado todo y no encuentro la solucion, que podria ser? gracias x el video muy bueno

[@JulioCesarEspada]

Si te funciona fbx entonces usa fbx, no hay nada que haga el obj que no haga el fbx excepto tal vez ser algo más universal. Imagino que te refieres a el obj como high? En ese caso revisa que estás exportando con el GRP en OFF para que las subtools conserven el nombre original y no se pierda al exportarlo.

[@chakallycan377]

@@JulioCesarEspada estimado Julio gracias por tu respuesta me autoeduco en esto y creeme lo que haces se agradece. Pues el problema era sencillo ya me funciono , era que tenia que unir los subtools del lowpoly que tenia en uno solo y exportar como fbx, antes los selccionaba todos y los exportaba como una sola malla fbx pero de esa manera no recibia los detalles del high poly, una vez que en maya cogi y uni los subtoolsen una sola pues ahi si hizo el baking, lo que me da a entender que l archivo fbx puede recoger varios objs y sus uvs unidos en una sola malla. Excelente metodo muy limpio quedaron los mapas de normal. Una pregunta solo puedo hacerlo si exporto el hp desde maya no desde zbrush, porque podria ser esto? lo que me doy cuenta es que el hp que termino en zbrush lo exporto como obj y cuando abro maya y lo importo el nombre del obj es muy largo, yo creo que es por eso que substance no lo reconoce en el namig convention cuando es importado directamente de zbrush. En Maya importo el obj y le limpio la raiz con el naming editor y ahi si lo exporto a substance y hace un preciso y hermoso beking. Es raro esto pero me funciono al final Muchas gracias tu metodo es fantastico

[@JulioCesarEspada]

Me alegro que te haya funcionado al final. Yo nunca importo los obj a Maya ya que no acabo de entender como funcionan los cambios esos de nombre que hace, y sinceramente nunca me he preocupado por mirarlo a fondo por que me funciona bien exportando desde zbrush, que al final es de donde quiero sacar los high. En Maya como mucho importo los decimados para hacer la retopo, pero ahi me da un poco igual el nombre. Lo unico que hay que tener en cuenta en Zbrush es que el GRP esté desactivado para las subtools y asi exportando con Subtool Master el nombre debería cogerlo perfectamente en Substance. Estoy preparando otro video en el que tocaré este tema de nuevo y creo que lo haré en Maya, asi que podremos ver el proceso claramente ahi. Un saludo!

[@imagineer1485]

I want your interface