A new ZBrush-to-Sketchfab Exporter is out

Attention! This is an older version of the Zbrush exporter, we recommend that you download the latest version here.

Big news for ZBrush users: with the Zbrush summit coming this weekend, we’ve just released version 2 of the ZBrush exporter! Optimizing your models and publishing straight to Sketchfab is now easier than ever.

In addition to improved performance and reliability, the following new features are now included in the exporter plug-in:

• Build UVs
• Bake painting, normal, and ambient occlusion (AO) texture maps
• Decimate (reduce polygon count)
• Define a maximum texture size

Whether you’re new to the exporter or just need to upgrade, you can get it here.

This video walks through the new features and upload process. You can find more detailed instructions and screenshots below.

After installing the plug-in, you can find it in the ZPlugin menu. The process is fairly straightforward – just follow the tool’s steps in order.

1 – Account log

Enter your API key, which you can always find in your password settings. You can also check for updates to the exporter from this section.

2 – Prepare Maps

Next, build your UVs and bake the textures. Painting, normal, and AO maps are all enabled by default, but you can turn them on or off at the bottom of this section. Between build UVs and Bake, you may want to Restore Visibility, so you can see your whole model again. These steps may take some time, depending on complexity of the textures and the number of subtools in your scene.

3 – Decimate

Next, run Preprocess followed by the Decimate function. This can also take quite a while for big models. The default level of decimation is 25%, which you can change with the slider.

4 – Upload options

Enter a model title (required), description, tags, and mark it as private if necessary (PRO accounts only).

You can also set a maximum texture size here. This is especially useful for models with lots of big textures – we like to avoid browsers crashing due to VRAM limits 😛

Finally, click Upload!

Here’s the result:

We hope you enjoy the update, and we’ll be looking forward to your uploads! As always, if you have questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to reply here or drop us a line.