lowpoly texturing game model

[ZaBenkei]

Hi

I ran into a litte problem trying to modify an already painted texture in Zbrush: When I hit "pick shaded" which I need to do in order to get particular shader effects baked, the edges seem to get "baked" into the image as well. This is quite obivious, as I use a real low-res model and turned the smoothing to zero to get a neatly fitting texture. But I was wondering if there was no display mode like "smooth*shaded*" , that is no smoothed geometry, but only invisible edges. That would solve the problem I guess, but does anyone happen to know how to achieve this or any other workaround?
thanks in advance..

[aurick]

Immediately after dropping the model, before you start doing anything else, coat it with the Flat Color material (Set Draw mode to M with ZADD turned off). This will prevent shading that's taking place on the existing model due to lighting from being transferred to the texture along with the shading that you DO want.

[ZaBenkei]

Thank you!
..but actually, even when first coating the model with a flat color material, after picking the shaded texture the edges still look kind of traced..

this is a part of the texture before adding paint in zBrush:
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1043453144ahg.jpg

and this afterwards - the edges clearly visible: http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1043453221hvw.jpg

am I doing sth wrong?

[aurick]

Ok. I see what's happening. The shading caused by this being a low poly model is trasferring with the material shading.

What you should do is set Tool>Modifiers>Smooth to 1 before dropping the model. You may also have to set the Divide slider to a higher value than the default of 3 in order to completely smooth the surface.

[ZaBenkei]

Thanks!
But actually, this gives strange results, as the geometry (being really low-poly) is based on tris, not quads. Apart from this, smoothing the geometry by actually increasing the poly count distorts the existing texture on the model.
....no other suggestions..?

[MikeHart]

I think you shouldn't use pick shaded. Draw the shadows yourself. The shading is based on the actual light setting of zbrush, So it is normal that it does that.

[ZaBenkei]

Yeah, I suppose I'll give this a try

Thanks!