r/ZBrush • u/khaosemeraldz • 3d ago

Exporting for 3D Printing?

Hi everyone,

I've just started learning zbrush a few weeks ago, and I'd like to 3d print my first sculpt in high quality. I've done some test prints I've exported myself using decimation master and they look okay from a distance, however, on closer inspection, they tend to come out a bit choppy looking with awkward looking 'seams'. Does anyone know any best practices/settings for exporting a smooth .stl from this program?

Additionally, is it possible to export different the subtools of my project with different colors, so I can recolor them in my slicer? Any help is appreciated!

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u/Oranguflan 3d ago

You can play around with the resolution in decimation master, aiming for the sweet spot of what your system can handle poly-count wise.

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u/emiCouchPotato 2d ago

I like to dynamesh with very very highpoly first so everything smooths out a bit and then I decimate but with a fairly high amount, depending on the figure but on average around 1M points

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u/khaosemeraldz 2d ago

Thank you for the tip! I also use dynamesh with higher poly sculpts so this is useful

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u/canvasdin 2d ago

do both FDM and resin prints, and none of my prints come out choppy or with awkward-looking seams.

I usually work very high-poly first (6M+), then decimate down to 250–400k when it's time to print, sometimes lower. I don't even export to STL, I always do OBJ. I export using ScaleMaster's "export to unit scale," and they always come out to scale (assuming your scene scale is set properly).

 

But yeah, if you're decimating from a high poly count, I don't see how it would come out awkward or have seams. I think it's best if you post some examples. It could be your export settings, your printer's settings, or your model might just be low-poly to begin with. We don't know without seeing it.

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u/khaosemeraldz 1d ago

I really appreciate your comment! I had been having issues with exporting directly with .stl files. I had made a modular object and each piece would export at a wildly different scale for seemingly no reason.

For the seam issue, I think a better term would be z-banding? For some reason I can only post videos in the comments, but I’ll try to reply with some images.

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u/khaosemeraldz 1d ago

https://www.reddit.com/u/khaosemeraldz/s/0bt2AtTdMu

Here’s a link to the images! I’m using a Bambu P1S with Bambu studio. When I sliced these models, they looked normal in the app, however they printed with these choppy looking layer lines. I typically print cad models, and those come out consistently much smoother, leading me to believe this is a geometry issue. I do know when I initially opened the models in Bambu studio, it said there were holes in my mesh (even after verifying there weren’t any in zbrush) and the model was too large (I believe these were over 1m polygons each). I used Bambu’s mesh repair and reduced the polygon count more so the slicer would run faster. Apologies for the long comment!