RogueMage Posted January 27, 2012 Posted January 27, 2012 The last days I tried around a lot with MudBox and Zbrush with the intention to make texture to a female body. So I loaded a the body mesh with NifSkope and exported it as an OBJ. Then I imported this OBJ into ZBrush 4R2 where it shows up as tool. I want to use the Spotlight-Tool to project hi-res images on the model. I watched some tutorials and understood that ZBrush does polypainting and that I have to raise the subdivision-level multiple times (CTRL-D) to paint textures in high resolution. Well, that works: the mesh is divided and I can paint/project in high resolution. But: the mesh is deformed where are the 'borders' or where it seems not to be connected, which is destroying the shape. In all tutorials I found they start with spotlight painting on a perfect mesh... Well, the final question is: How to I subdivide a mesh in Zbrush and keep the shape/form to polypaint with Spotlight a high res (4096x4096) texture. Please help!
Handelo Posted January 27, 2012 Posted January 27, 2012 A difficult question. No experience with Zbrush here, but I have worked with Mudbox and know that both have this same issue. They both require an extremely clean mesh to work with subdivision levels properly. By clean I mean quad faces ONLY. Even if you have a mesh that's completely closed with no borders or irregularities, if it's comprised of triangles it will give you issues when subdividing. The only solution I see would be to use the Spotlight on a normal map instead of using it to directly alter geometry. But again, I'm no Zbrush expert so there might be an alternative.
Senviro Posted January 27, 2012 Posted January 27, 2012 . Under Tool in the Geometry drop-down, there's an option called the 'Subdivide Smooth Modifier.' This to make scultping look better for that 'clay effect,' and it's on by default. You can tell it's on by the yellow/orange color of the button. Click it and the button should go gray, and your mesh won't change shape when you Divide - only adding to the poly count for poly painting like 'ya want. Hope that helps. - Senviro. As a side note, you may have/want to use the 'Texture Map' drop-down under 'Tools' to 'Clone' the texture, then click the other 'Texture' drop-down at the top to vertically flip ('Flip V') the final image before exporting it. Zbrush makes them upside down 90% of the time. .
RogueMage Posted January 28, 2012 Author Posted January 28, 2012 Thx a lot Senviro. This works fine It's really fun to use Spotlight and real HQ impages to project them on the body. I divided the bodymesh to subdiv level 6 and cloned it. But after opening it in Photoshop it did not look that detailed as expected for a 4k Texture. The image I projected was a 3328x4992 jpg though (ZBrush seems not to like tiff). I still have a long way to go I guess
Senviro Posted January 28, 2012 Posted January 28, 2012 . Glad to be of assistance; it's rare I read something I know the answer to. As for the texture quality being projected on the body, that could be because the model's UVs are a different size than the texture resolution you're trying to export. I'm not all that great with painting and UVs and such. If your textures just don't have enough detail: Zbrush has a feature called 'Geometry HD,' and that can get sections of your model up to crazy poly counts segment by segment for some really detailed image projection. I'm not good at it, so I'd recommend Pixologic's video tutorials on that. Could also try exporting the image as a PSD rather than a Tiff, but where texturing and UV mapping starts, my knowledge begins to dwindle. - Senviro .
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