Questions about layer.

[HimiCo]

How does layer work ?
According to the manual, bake converts all pixels in the ACTIVE layer into base colors.
When I tried to bake a layer, the content was combined (merged) with those of other layers.
Why the content of other layers merges into the layer when it was baked?

When I choose a material from Materialpack, the previous materials of inactive layers are also changed to the material. Why does the material of inactive layer change? Some change, and others don�ft change.

Thank you very much.

[LWTB]

i dunno first question.

But, with the material, you may have overwritten one material. that caused the others to change to it.

[banez]

for your Material problem from Materialpack
(import) Before you make any thing.
for layers how it work is lets say you made a head model then added a layer then made 2 eye balls so lets say you wanted to go back and re draw on the head but didn't want any color to over lap with the eye or even touch it...
so by adding layers it only draws color on that object.
if you added color to the head and ran the color over the eye it wont touch it or add color because your in the layer you made the head....
if you merge the layer it act has 1 then you will end up coloring if your not carefull

[aurick]

Question #1) Baking a layer causes all materials in the active layer to be converted to the Flat Color material, and the shaded colors on those materials are converted to RGB color applied to the Flat Color material. Any color that doesn't have pixols to be applied on -- in other words, colors that are picked up from the other active layers -- fall behind the clipping plane. The layer preview shows all color on a layer, including what's behind the clipping plane. But just because it's visible in the layer preview doesn't mean that it's visible on the canvas. If it's behind the clipping plane, it's not going to be on the canvas regardless of what you see in the layer preveiw.

Try this for an example. Open a clean document, choose a color and material of your choice, and draw a few spheres or other objects. Create a new layer and immediately bake it. You'll see the shaded colors from the spheres appear in the layer preview, so it looks like the spheres got transferred to the empty layer. But now turn off the first layer and return to the empty one. Guess what? It's still empty!

So don't worry about your layers "cross pollenating" when you bake one. In a way, the layer preview lies. :)

Question #2) Materials operate independently of layers. You can't, for example, use the NoisePattern1 material on two layers, turn Flatten Layers off, change the material properties on one layer and expect the material to remain unchanged on the first layer. With Flatten Layers off, the other layers won't update until you go to them, but the moment you switch to that first layer all materials in it will update to the current material settings. With Flatten Layers turned on, then the material would update instantly across all layers.

Now what happens when you use a material from the MaterialPack? In a nutshell, it replaces whatever material is currently selected when you load it -- including wherever that material is used on any layer of the canvas. This holds true, actually, for any material that you load. ZBrush only allows a certain number of material slots, so any time you load a new material, you will replace your currently selected material.

As a rule, it's better to choose a material that you know you won't use in your image before loading one (from the MaterialPack or not).

A technique that I sometimes use is to build a scene using all the different Fast Shader materials (I think that there are 5 of them, off hand), and then replacing them one by one from the MaterialPack. This allows me to build the scene with very fast rendering, and only mess with the materials when everything is already in place. Or if I want to do two renders of the same image using different materials and then composite them in Photoshop, I'll take my first render, save the document under a new name, and then replace the materials that I've used. It's a quick way to radically change the look of the scene. :)

[HimiCo]

LWTB,ÈZ, and aurick
Thank you very much for your kind responses. They did really help me.

I did a test that aurick suggest about the layer. I got just you suggested.

I still have a question. This is a picture I did a while ago. The layers were baked.
The left picture was with two layers (girl, and rock). The right picture was only one layer of the rock. The layer of the girl was turned off. When the layer of the girl was turned off, her leg, and her hands which were overlapping with the rock were still there. The overlapping parts of the two layers were merged. Did you experience this kind of problem?

Thank you for the very useful instructions about Materials. I am going to try it.

Thanks again. They are very helpful.
HimiCo


http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1018585977uhz.jpg

[Belleski]

I can sympathize with your material replacement
problem. It has happened to me too. There seems to be no way to correct it. If I immediately load the original material back...
it has no effect. I use markers so I can replace elements that get messed up accidently.
Its a work around but it helps. ;)

[Slosh]

Good picture, by the way. Nice boobs. How come I haven't seen it posted before? I thought I'd read every post on this website.

[HimiCo]

Belleski, and Slosh, thank you for your responses.

Slosh, the picture was posted at renderosity Zbrush gallery before (it was replaced with new one). The girl was imported from poser. This place was devoted to learning Zbrush, so I decided not to present this kind of picture in this forum.
Although my interests are somewhat different from the majority, I like Zbrush, and eager to learn the techniques.