Tachyon Studio
BLENDER ADDON · SCULPTING
ZBrush Bridge
Send your meshes to ZBrush as SubTools, sculpt, and get the result back — with UVs, PolyPaint, the sculpt mask, Face Sets and your creases carried both ways. A true two-way bridge that reads and writes ZBrush's own binary GoZ format, and ships its own ZPlugin route for when GoZ is missing or bound to the wrong ZBrush. It reuses (or launches) the version you pick, imports the instant you press GoZ, and pushes your edits back hands-free while you work. Heavy sends run on a background thread, so Blender never freezes.
| Two-Way Bridge | Live Auto Sync | ZBrush Ready |
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| ⚠ | Before you buy — ZBrush is not included with this product. This add-on is the Blender side of the bridge only. It drives ZBrush; it is not ZBrush, and it does not come with any software or licence from Maxon. You must buy your own ZBrush licence separately, directly from Maxon (maxon.net). If you do not already own ZBrush, this add-on has nothing to talk to. Tachyon Studio is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a reseller of Maxon. Windows only — macOS and Linux are not supported. |
THE ROUND-TRIP — ONE CLICK EACH WAY
A true bridge that reuses your running ZBrush, launches it if it is closed, and keeps your Blender scene the source of truth.
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BLENDER
1 · Send
Selected meshes open in ZBrush.
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ZBRUSH
2 · Work
Do your thing — auto or by hand.
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BLENDER
3 · Get
The result lands back in Blender.
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100% non-destructive — your Blender scene is never changed
THE INTERFACE
Everything lives on one Universal Bridge tab in the sidebar — press N.
EVERYTHING IT DOES
Everything in one sidebar tab
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Send to ZBrush
One click sends each selected mesh as its own SubTool via native .GoZ files, carrying UVs, vertex colours (as PolyPaint), the sculpt mask and Face Sets (as polygroups). Multi-million-poly sends write on a background thread with a viewport progress bar (Esc cancels), so the UI stays responsive.
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Get from ZBrush
Pull the most recent GoZ transfer back with the full binary payload (UVs, PolyPaint, mask, polygroups). When topology is unchanged, matching objects are updated in place — materials, modifiers, UVs, parenting and transform all survive.
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Two ways across, and the panel knows the difference
Send by GoZ, or by the add-on's own ZPlugin when GoZ is missing, broken or pointed at another ZBrush. Both send the same mesh. What changes is what can come back: PolyPaint, the mask and polygroups return only over GoZ, so every control that depends on them greys itself out and says "Comes back only over GoZ." instead of quietly doing nothing. If GoZ opens a different ZBrush, the panel names it and Fix points GoZ at the one you picked.
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Creases, both directions
GoZ has no crease channel, which is why a sculpt normally comes back from ZBrush with every crease gone. So the bridge uses the channel GoZ does have: creased edges are sent as polygroup borders, and ZBrush creases them itself with its own Crease PG — automatic on Import from Blender, or one macro button any time. Your creases are kept on the Blender side too and put back when the mesh returns, same edges, same weights. After a remesh they go back by position within a tolerance you set, or are honestly left off.
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Subdivision levels
Send From Level picks the level ZBrush exports — current, base or highest — and puts yours back afterwards. Rebuild Levels On Import has ZBrush reconstruct its levels on the way in, so a mesh you subdivided in Blender arrives with those levels instead of as one dense cage.
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ZBrush layers as shape keys
Press Send Layer as Shape Key in ZBrush, then Layer to Shape Key in Blender, and the sculpt layer lands as a shape key on your mesh — blend it, mix it, or throw it away. Your layer strength in ZBrush is left as you had it. It needs the topology unchanged, and says so when a DynaMesh or ZRemesher broke the match.
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Topology rescue
When ZBrush changes the topology (DynaMesh, ZRemesher, a subdivided export), Rescue UVs and Weights re-projects your UV maps and vertex-group weights onto the new mesh instead of losing them with the old one. On by default.
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GoZ Auto-Sync
A background listener imports automatically the moment you press GoZ in ZBrush. It runs without keeping a modal open and survives file loads. Coming the other way, your send is written instantly and lands in ZBrush from Macro ▸ Universal Bridge ▸ Import from Blender — one keypress if you bind it to a hotkey.
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Live Sync
While a sync is on, edits in Blender push back to a running ZBrush a beat after you stop editing — no Send click. Choose the scope (Edited only / Selected / All), the push delay, and whether to push mid-Edit/Sculpt Mode, all behind the gear beside Auto Sync.
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Sculpt tools that need no ZBrush
Six of them, in their own Sculpt Tools folder: Preflight, Bake Sculpt, To Multires, LODs Here, Tex to Paint and Sculpt Check. LODs Here builds
_LOD50, _LOD25… copies with Blender's own Decimate. Tex to Paint samples your Base Color image into vertex colours ZBrush can paint on. Preflight and Sculpt Check catch what bites later: unapplied scale, a missing UV map, non-manifold edges, a mesh that is not actually symmetric (with a one-click symmetrize), wildly uneven polygon density. |
CHANGELOG
What's new in 3.0.0
Everything below arrived after 2.0 and is gathered here, because if you bought this at 2.0 it is what you have been missing. Nothing was removed, and no file you made with 2.x needs converting.
Added — a second way across
- Send Via: GoZ or our own ZPlugin
- The panel knows what each route can carry
- GoZ pointed at the wrong ZBrush is visible, and fixable
- GoZ not set up yet?
Added — the sculptor's round trip
- Subdivision levels
- ZBrush layers as Blender shape keys
- Topology rescue
- Sculpt to Multires
- Send Selected Faces
- Creases, both directions
- Mask as Vertex Group
Added — work you no longer need ZBrush for
- Bake Sculpt
- LODs Here
- Tex to Paint
- Sculpt Check
- Preflight, on this panel
Added — sending and getting
- Normalise Scale for Sculpting
- Report What Changed
- Vertex Budget
- PolyPaint arrives as a real texture
- A ZPlugin panel inside ZBrush
Changed — the panel
- Send, Get and Auto Sync are the top of the panel
- The six sculpt tools are legible
- The settings are folders, not a list of twenty-one switches
- Every folder header reports
- Taller folder headers
- Ten new icons
Fixed
- Meshes arrived in ZBrush lying on their back
- Creases were never restored on the GoZ path
- Linked copies keep up
- Auto Sync notices the Send to Blender macro
- The GoZ folder can be cleared from the panel, with the size it will free.
- Updating the add-on while it is enabled no longer fails on Windows with "Access is denied", and an update that already failed that way can be finished from the Manager.
Installation
Set up once - a few minutes, start to finish.
FEATURE BY FEATURE
Send to ZBrush
One click sends each selected mesh as its own SubTool via native .GoZ files, carrying UVs, vertex colours (as PolyPaint), the sculpt mask and Face Sets (as polygroups). Multi-million-poly sends write on a background thread with a viewport progress bar (Esc cancels), so the UI stays responsive.
Get from ZBrush
Pull the most recent GoZ transfer back with the full binary payload (UVs, PolyPaint, mask, polygroups). When topology is unchanged, matching objects are updated in place — materials, modifiers, UVs, parenting and transform all survive.
Two ways across, and the panel knows the difference
Send by GoZ, or by the add-on's own ZPlugin when GoZ is missing, broken or pointed at another ZBrush. Both send the same mesh. What changes is what can come back: PolyPaint, the mask and polygroups return only over GoZ, so every control that depends on them greys itself out and says "Comes back only over GoZ." instead of quietly doing nothing. If GoZ opens a different ZBrush, the panel names it and Fix points GoZ at the one you picked.
Creases, both directions
GoZ has no crease channel, which is why a sculpt normally comes back from ZBrush with every crease gone. So the bridge uses the channel GoZ does have: creased edges are sent as polygroup borders, and ZBrush creases them itself with its own Crease PG — automatic on Import from Blender, or one macro button any time. Your creases are kept on the Blender side too and put back when the mesh returns, same edges, same weights. After a remesh they go back by position within a tolerance you set, or are honestly left off.
Subdivision levels
Send From Level picks the level ZBrush exports — current, base or highest — and puts yours back afterwards. Rebuild Levels On Import has ZBrush reconstruct its levels on the way in, so a mesh you subdivided in Blender arrives with those levels instead of as one dense cage.
ZBrush layers as shape keys
Press Send Layer as Shape Key in ZBrush, then Layer to Shape Key in Blender, and the sculpt layer lands as a shape key on your mesh — blend it, mix it, or throw it away. Your layer strength in ZBrush is left as you had it. It needs the topology unchanged, and says so when a DynaMesh or ZRemesher broke the match.
Topology rescue
When ZBrush changes the topology (DynaMesh, ZRemesher, a subdivided export), Rescue UVs and Weights re-projects your UV maps and vertex-group weights onto the new mesh instead of losing them with the old one. On by default.
GoZ Auto-Sync
A background listener imports automatically the moment you press GoZ in ZBrush. It runs without keeping a modal open and survives file loads. Coming the other way, your send is written instantly and lands in ZBrush from Macro ▸ Universal Bridge ▸ Import from Blender — one keypress if you bind it to a hotkey.
Live Sync
While a sync is on, edits in Blender push back to a running ZBrush a beat after you stop editing — no Send click. Choose the scope (Edited only / Selected / All), the push delay, and whether to push mid-Edit/Sculpt Mode, all behind the gear beside Auto Sync.
Sculpt tools that need no ZBrush
Six of them, in their own Sculpt Tools folder: Preflight, Bake Sculpt, To Multires, LODs Here, Tex to Paint and Sculpt Check. LODs Here builds
_LOD50, _LOD25… copies with Blender's own Decimate. Tex to Paint samples your Base Color image into vertex colours ZBrush can paint on. Preflight and Sculpt Check catch what bites later: unapplied scale, a missing UV map, non-manifold edges, a mesh that is not actually symmetric (with a one-click symmetrize), wildly uneven polygon density.
Bake Sculpt in Blender
Select the high-poly sculpt, then your low-poly last, and Blender bakes a normal map and an ambient occlusion map onto the low-poly's own UVs, with the normal map wired into its material. Size (512 to 4096), cage extrusion and AO samples are in the dialog. No UVs inside ZBrush, no macros, and it works on both routes.
Sculpt to Multires
Keep your base cage — its rig, UVs and topology — and carry ZBrush's detail as Multiresolution displacement instead of swapping in a dense mesh. The cage is subdivided, up to six levels, until it matches the sculpt, then reshaped to it. A DynaMesh or ZRemesher result has no matching level, and the bridge tells you rather than producing something broken.
Send Selected Faces
In Edit Mode, select the part you want to sculpt and send just that. The faces are copied to a new
_Part object in the same place, so your original is never cut apart; join the part back when you are done.
ZBrush Panel and Macros
Installs its buttons twice over: a Zplugin ▸ Universal Bridge panel and macros under Macro ▸ Universal Bridge: Import / Send to Blender, Decimate & Send, ZRemesher & Send, DynaMesh, Bake Maps for Blender, plus cleanup combos (DynaMesh → Polish → Decimate, ZRemesher → Polish, Sculpt to Lowpoly). They auto-load on every ZBrush launch and read your target values from the panel.
Import Baked Maps
Load the maps ZBrush baked with the "Bake Maps for Blender" macro: the normal map and the PolyPaint colour map are wired straight into the active material, and displacement is added as a Displace modifier. Map size, format, 32-bit and three-channel displacement and Flip Green are settings, not whatever ZBrush happened to be set to.
Send & Get controls
Update vs Replace on Get, Normalise Scale for Sculpting for meshes too small or too large for ZBrush's brushes, Report What Changed to select the vertices that moved, a vertex budget that warns when a sculpt comes back heavier than you want, a non-destructive Decimate on Get, a dedicated "ZBrush Import" collection, Apply Modifiers on send, ZBrush's mask as a vertex group, polygroups as material slots, a PolyPaint round-trip toggle, and a backup-before-send collection.
A panel you can read
Send, Get and Auto Sync at the top; everything else in folders that say what they are set to while closed — "GoZ Files — 7 files, 1 MB", "ZBrush Buttons — installed", "Setup — GoZ ready" — so you open only the one you came for. On Blender 5.x the folder headers are drawn taller, so they are easy to find and hit.
Part of the Universal Bridge line
Shares Preflight, a Naming helper, Selection Sets, Send History, Versioned Files and Automation Recipes with the other bridges, all on the same tab.
Icons You Can Recolour
The panel buttons use a drawn icon set — send, get, link state, preflight, history, selection sets, batch — not borrowed glyphs that mean something else. Preferences ▸ Button Icons switches between brand colours (each bridge in its own), mono (one accent you pick) and Blender's built-ins. Link and modifier icons stay green / amber / red, because there the colour is the message.
Requirements & Setup
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PLATFORM
Windows only. The add-on detects and launches ZBrush through Windows paths and processes. macOS and Linux are not supported.
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BLENDER
Blender 3.3 - 5.2 - Extension on 4.2+, classic add-on on 3.3-4.1.
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LICENCE
ZBrush is required and sold separately. You need your own licensed copy from Maxon. No ZBrush licence is included with this product - it is the Blender-side bridge only, and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a reseller of Maxon.
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ZBRUSH
ZBrush 2021 or newer — Pixologic or Maxon, auto-detected under
Program Files; pick the install in the dropdown or set the executable by hand. The ZPlugin route works without GoZ. |
NETWORK
Network: none. Blender and ZBrush exchange files on your own machine - the add-on opens no network connection.
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Tachyon Studio
Part of the Universal Bridge line — works on its own, and the free Universal Bridge Manager hub add-on is included with your purchase.
| Join the Discord — Questions, Support & 10% Coupon | More by Tachyon Studio |
Ask the developer directly, and pick up your 10% discount coupon for your next add-on.
THE TACHYON STUDIO COLLECTION
Go beyond
ZBrush Bridge.
Bake the sculpt, prepare UVs and continue into Maya.
FROM MESH TO BAKE
Marmoset Toolbag Bridge
Bake in Toolbag and bring the finished maps into Blender.
Build out your workflow.
Optional tools for your workflow.
MAKE ROOM FOR DETAIL
RizomUV Bridge
Unwrap in RizomUV and return UVs to Blender.
CONNECT YOUR MAYA WORKFLOW
Maya Bridge
Send to Maya and return all data, mesh changes or UVs.
ORGANIZE THE ASSEMBLY
Object Groups
Organize assemblies with nested groups and selection sets.
There is more in the studio.
See the full collection ↗Optional products, sold separately. Check requirements; external applications are not included.