Materials workflow confusion

[Bonecradle]

Maybe I'm digging a big hole when the solution is on the surface, but anyway...

Is there a simple way to save a tool with an applied material?

If I make a tool and add a material to it then save it, when I reload the tool it is drawn with the currently selected material and not the one it had when I saved it.

This also happens if I apply a material while using texturemaster and save the resulting texture with the tool (though I am a texture neophyte, so maybe it is me doing it wrong).

(I say 'simple' above because I found that I can save a material with a tool by marking the tool with 'Material' turned on in the marker palette and then converting it to a polymesh before saving it.)

Maybe within the ZBrush workflow there isn't any real need to save materials with the tools but to my forgetful mind it seemed the best place for a material was with the tool it was designed for rather than in a list with other similar materials that were not named as well as hindsight would suggest they could have been :)

[aurick]

Materials cannot be saved with a tool.

One option would be to save your material with the same name that you give to the tool. Since one ends with .ztl and the other with .zmt there will be no conflict -- and no confusion!

[Bonecradle]

Thanks for the reply Aurick.

Now I am wondering, if I make a tool and apply two materials to it (I am making a felt hat with a leather band) but I can't use the tool immediately in a picture, is there anything I can do so that when I reload the tool it comes back with both materials intact? Or would it be necessary to reapply the materials each time I use it (e.g. if I am recycling tools in different pictures)?


<Still desperately hoping to make the conceptual leap into the heart of ZBrush>

[aurick]

Actually, there is a way to do it. I was just playing around today and had it occur to me.

You CAN save material and color with a tool if you use vertex shading. Here's how:

:: Draw your object and enter Edit Mode
:: Choose a base color and material.
:: Turn on MRGB in the Draw palette.
:: Press Color>Fill Object
:: Now you can edit with materials and colors, as well as polygons. The catch is that each polygon can only have one color and material.
:: When you save the tool, the colors and materials will automatically be saved with it.

If you only want to save one material on the object, you still need to fill the object with that material and with M active in the Draw palette. Once the object has been filled with that material, it will be able to be saved with it.

NOTE: If you use a custom material, that material will NOT save with the object. What the tool really remembers is the material slot that was used. So to get the original material back onto it, you would need to save the material separately and then when you load the tool later, load that material back into the same that it had previously occupied. It's easy to find out which that is, though -- just drag from the material preview onto the canvas. Your cursor will become a picker, and when you release it the material underneath will be the selected material. So drag and pick the one you want to switch out, and then load its replacement.

[Monkeyfarm]

I could swear that from watching the texture master tutorial that there is a note that plays that talks about being able to embed material information in the texture. No?

[aurick]

I need to find out what the exact rules are for it, but yes it's possible.

My experience seems to have been that if you save the texture separately and import later to apply to the mesh it will no longer retain the material info. However, if you save the model with the texture wrapped onto it and specify that you want the material to be embedded as well, then when you load the tool later it will come in with both the proper texture and the correct materials.

For example, the match sticks that I created for the Christmas picture that I did are a case where I saved the texture with the model and the texture had materials on it. I can load that match again now and the materials are still there.

I'll check to see if I can get more info on this.