Well, I'm a little late, but I had this same problem in my 3vze engine. It turned out to be a blown timing belt. An easy way to check this would be to pull off the distributor cap and crank the engine with someone watching the rotor. If the rotor is turning, then the timing belt is fine. If it's not... prepare for one hell of a repair job unfortunately.
One other thing too: I've actually seen the gear at the base of the distributor shear off in some cases. So if the rotor does not turn, you may want to pull the distributor and check the gear before trying to break into the timing cover. Hope I didn't catch you too late!