ZBrush to Keyshot camera view confusion

[Metin Seven]

Hi,

This always confuses me:

When you export a scene from ZBrush to Keyshot, then choose the Front view in the Keyshot Camera settings Standard Views drop-down menu, you get to see the back side of the ZBrush object / scene.

Is the ZBrush scene exported from ZBrush or imported by Keyshot with a 180 degree rotation, or is it correct and does "Front" in Keyshot mean looking from the back to the front side?

Thanks in advance for clarifying this, so I won't lie awake for hours every night anymore.

[Francisco]

Hello Metin Seven,

I was looking into this for you and doing a couple of little test with KeyShot and ZBrush to see how we can fix the camera issue going to the back of the model when being sent over to KeyShot.

As you can see in the image below I rotated my model in Zbrush so that the Y-axis (green line) was up, and the Z-axis(blue line) is facing behind the model.


When I sent it to KeyShot with the ZBrush Bridge you can see below that I used the Front Camera view and it was looking towards the front of the face. It appears that ZBrush, when you start working on a model, has the Z-axis towards the front and when sent to KeyShot will be reversed so that is why you see the back of the model you are working on.

Hi,

This always confuses me:

When you export a scene from ZBrush to Keyshot, then choose the Front view in the Keyshot Camera settings Standard Views drop-down menu, you get to see the back side of the ZBrush object / scene.

Is the ZBrush scene exported from ZBrush or imported by Keyshot with a 180 degree rotation, or is it correct and does "Front" in Keyshot mean looking from the back to the front side?

Thanks in advance for clarifying this, so I won't lie awake for hours every night anymore.

[Metin Seven]

Hi Francisco,

Many thanks for your reply and for checking out the issue.

Interesting, so if I understand it correctly, when starting a new ZBrush scene, you're looking at the back side of a mesh? Then I guess the best thing to do is to rotate the ZBrush view 180 degrees to face the actual front side, correct?

What makes this extra confusing is this: in ZBrush, if you go to Texture menu ➔ Image Plane ➔ Reference Views ➔ Front button, you get to see the same side in ZBrush that turns out to be the back side in Keyshot.

[Francisco]

Hello Metin Seven,

That is correct in ZBrush what's considered the Front Camera shows up as the Back Camera in Keyshot. I was looking for a way to possibly make a change and customize your ZBrush so that it would reverse the Planes when you work on a model so that they match those of KeyShot. If you are able to figure that out, please let me know how you did it so in case others run into the same issues.

[Metin Seven]

Hi Francisco,

I've added the Texture menu ➔ Image Plane ➔ Reference Views ➔ Back button to my custom ZBrush UI, so I can switch to the correct view with one click at the start of a ZBrush session.

The new ZBrush 2019 functionality to send a real camera view to Keyshot also helps, but the initial ZBrush view is still the back view, so if you work in that view, you will actually look at the back side in Keyshot even if the camera view matches that of ZBrush, which also has consequences for the HDRI environment lighting direction. I guess it's good practice to first rotate the view by 180 degrees around the up-axis in ZBrush (using the aforementioned Back button is the easiest way), so you're looking at the actual front side that is properly transferred to Keyshot.

[Francisco]

Hello Metin Seven,

Thank you for posting the steps that you used to resolve the issue with the camera. I will be making a note of this so that if the question does come up again we can let them know what they can do to fix it.

I will be locking this post and if you still need help please open a new post. Thank you.

Post closed by Luxion Support Team