Sorry about the late replies guys, hopefully this will clear some stuff up:
@Gareee:
Maybe you know of a trick that can project the same uv mapping on each of those replicated parts?
In Maya what I would do is break up the duplicated curve parts into their own objects (like that bandolier, for example), UV one of them, then do a transfer attributes (with UVs selected) to transfer the UVs to the other identical objects. Hopefully future iterations of Zbrush will allow you to maintain UVs, but in the meantime you can give that a try (not sure what the equivalent of that process would be in 3DMax or XSI, but I’m sure there’s similar functionality). As far as the UV Master, it’s been a while but you should be able to flatten then use your move brush to move points around, if that’s what you’re asking.
@andreseloy
Can I use the insert mesh replacement with the IMM brush?
If I’m understanding the question correctly, yes! My zombie brush is a IMM brush that all utilize the insert mesh replacement (just make sure there’s one and only one hole on your replacement object)
@Jharford
I wouldn’t mind if you could upload them somewhere please. They are just too slow on the zclassroom site for me. I really don’t know why.
Also - the topology brush accesories video is not on the youtube yet, hopefully that will go up soon ?
let me go back through my older videos and make sure they have the right encoding, and I’ll see if I can get them down to a reasonable size. The topology brush accessories video wasn’t on youtube last time I checked either…hmm. Maybe give Pixologic a few days, they’ve had a busy week at siggraph lol. Hopefully soon though!
@moth3r
…I wanted to explore every possible way of converting existing brushes back to subtools? I hope there is some simple way to do it because recombining libraries without original tools files currently looks pretty hefty to me.
The easiest way I’ve found (that Paul showed me) is to select your polymesh3D star geometry (in the upper right of the tool menu), select your MMI brush of choice (with the part of the brush you want to extract), then go to Geometry > Modify Topology > Mesh From Brush. This will replace the generic star with the mesh from the brush.
I know it’s kind of a process to do this for brushes with tons of subtools, so one other method you can try is to make a polymesh plane, choose your MutiMeshInsert brush of choice, go into the picker menu and set your orientation to draw out straight from the camera, then go into the brush menu > Modifiers > MutiM (Multimesh Selector, the small slider) and choose the “1” option. This will cycle through muti meshes in the brush. Draw them out on the plane, then when you’re done, delete the plane geo, separate all the muti meshes into their own subtools, then run a deformations > unify on one of them. Then choose the “repeat to other” option at the bottom of the deformations menu, to get them all similar. This should allow you to take lots of the meshes from big insert brushes and make them into subtool libraries, which you can then mix and match and save out.
@SammyD
One question I do have about the new topology tool, is that I don’t see any way to tweek / move the points created by the topology brush. For me this, would be a very handy thing. Is it possible? Or can you send the topology created by the new topology brush to a Zsphere Subtool somehow. eg., like the Zsphere - SubTool > Rigging - Select mesh > Topology - Edit topology way, so points can be moved and still be snapped to the surface of the sculpt?.
One way you can do it is to draw out your topology lines using the topology brush, then switch to the CurveEditable brush, turn off Zadd and Rgb, and move the curves around that way (make sure you have bend and snap on). Then switch back into the topology brush. Or like you said, you can get most of the topology done, make that into a mesh, then just load that mesh into your Rigging > Select mesh topology using Zspheres and clean up using that method. Hopefully there will be a simpler approach to moving verts around in later iterations of Zbrush.
@dominicqwek
Micheal - I do have a question with regards to the draw size when generating mesh with the topology brush. Since there is no negative value for the draw, is there a way to quickly have the mesh extrude inwards instead of outwards? I know we can always extract it but was wondering if there is a quick way of doing this?
Oh man good question, can’t believe this hasn’t come up yet. Hmmm. Shoot, I’m stumped, I’ll have to ask the Pixologic guys on this one. Sorry about that!