ZBrushCentral

Suggestions for Seamless Textures

I’ve gotten a few questions on this topic. Apparently I had some inspirational post somewhere or something, but I don’t know what I said, or where that post is.

Anyways, I came up with a pretty good method of creating seamless textures across multiple UV sets in Zbrush. I haven’t had time to create a full tutorial with images, or anything. I sent this to Aurick a while back, but obviously they’re all very busy as well, and Aurick himself has that book he’s writing…

Anyways, here it is. I hope it answers some questions, and helps someone else out. I don’t know if it’s an entirely original idea, but I don’t think I’ve heard other people talk about it. It’s kind of obvious when you think about it, it’s just a bit of work.

step 1: Load your mesh, as well as both textures you want to blend the seams from. You can do more than two, but it can get very confusing. Save copies of each in case you screw up.

step 2. Activate one texture, and go to a view that shows a lot of the seam. The more of the seam is shown in a fairly planar view, the better.

step 3: Activate projection master with texture settings (material off).

step 4: Activate ZAppLink. In photoshop (preferably) clone the window by clicking “create new document from current history state” in the history palette.

step 5: Go back to zbrush, and pick up your mesh again. do not change the view. Switch to your other texture and go back into projection master, and activate ZAppLink again, and update the file in Photoshop.

step 6: I usually use masks from each file and overlay them so that i have one layer that contains one texture, and one that contains the other. from there, you simply paint away the seams however works for you, though the healing brush and clone tools work well.

step 7: When you’re finished, clone the window again. You’ll need it. If you still have the original mask from the last zapp, you can use that to mask out the part of the ‘other’ texture, leaving just the section of the active texture that you just fixed. for instance, if you have the torso texture open, mask out the head or arms to avoid changing those.

step 8: Go back to zbrush and preview the changes and make sure they look right. If it looks correct, accept, and pick up your mesh. DO NOT CHANGE THE VIEW OR YOU’LL HAVE TO START OVER

step 9: Switch to the other texture, drop into projection master, zapp over to photoshop, and overlay the other ‘half’ of your fixed image onto the active texture area. Save the file, go back to zbrush, preview the changes, and if it looks good, pick up your mesh again.

step 10: Save each of these textures out as another duplicate, just in case things got wonky in another area of the texture. step 11: Change the view, and repeat as necessary.

I’ve found that sometimes if you have an area like the shoulder that you’re fixing, you need to hide all but the two areas you are working on to avoid projecting things into the uvs of a part you’re not working on. If another area gets screwed up, don’t worry, just load the original copy of the texture, as well as the one with the fixed seams, and overlay the old onto the new, and paint a mask so that the file has the original “correct” texture plus the fixed seam.

I’ve also found that if you show only the part of the mesh with the active texture, such as the torso (the UV groups under polygroups can help with this), it works pretty well, and you don’t have to worry about having to mask out the other area. Yes, Zbrush smooths the mesh when you go into projection master, but if your mesh is dense enough that half pixel that the mesh “contracts” won’t matter. Trust me, you really can’t see the seam.

It’s slow going, and very tedious, but it gets the job done, and it’s at least easier than doing it in photoshop alone. I liked this approach a bit better than the version that included cloning the texture, as i could easily see what was done, and what wasn’t done, just by flipping back and forth.

Something else that helps is the fact that zbrush will read the psd files after you save them in photoshop if you import them into zbrush. Once you import it, it seems to keep a link to the file itself, but i’m sure most people know that.

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else already figured this one out, but here it is anyways. Hopefully this will be a short-term fix until 2.5 comes out. Enjoy, and happy Zbrushing! :slight_smile:

…that will be perfect :slight_smile:
My little tut for simple Seamless Textures :lol:

Andrew - This would be perfect information to put up on the new ZBrush Wiki! :slight_smile: A great page would be right here:

http://www.zbrush.info/site/index.php/User%27s_Material_and_Texturing_Tutorials

Best,

Ryan

Ryan the traveling Wiki Salesman :lol:

great idea! registered and posted. it’s up there on the Zbrush Wiki now.

LOL! Well not traveling right now, though. :smiley:

Thanks Andrew that is awesome! :slight_smile:

Frenchy! As always. :cool:

r

How did I missed this thread ?

From few weeks I am running and banging my head on walls because I am not able to create seam less texture for my toon character pants…

tried every brush including deco brush and The problem was only in using one texture :o

Thanks a lot

wickdsunny have ya checked out Svengali’s Map-it plugin yet?

My problem is not only with semas Ami.

My problem is painting in projection master an imported texture around a curved belly.

What happenes is the seams get created at the edges even if I mask it.

I want to know how to fill texture in the canvas like in the kens tutorial .

when I fill it it comes like squares and rectangles. ???

If I can fill the texture like that then I might use deco brush to create a staright texture on the texture map reducing the seams problem.

the

kens tutorial
:qu:

Lols I mean this

i belive its happening because of auv tile.

I ahve already applied auv tilking to my model how to remove it now ?

So that i can use a texture which I can paint upon by filling in canvas.

[uvmapping.jpg](javascript:zb_insimg(‘36034’,‘uvmapping.jpg’,1,0))

For that, you have to ‘unwrap’ your model in another app. Or go through ZappLink and a photoshop equivalent image editor. Zapplink exports the ‘flat’ image during a projection master session. It’s all about UV editing. Which is the ‘science’ on how to map parts of your texture onto your geometry during rendertime.
Cheers
Lemo

Ok how to unwrap using zapplink ?

If i use it inside pm, I can use it only wrapped on the model ?

Or will a new texture do ? i can manage to create a new one, the problem is uvtiling already alligned to the model ?

If i create a new texture it will get applied the same auvtiles again or not ?

I cant use anyother software right now.

when you go into pm your tool is made into a 2d version well 2.5d would probably be a bit more accurate, you can then send that to zapplink. the draw back is you can’t “unwrap” the whole head you can only edit what is visible to the “camera” or you so to speak. It gives you a way to use the best way to uv a model for nearly distortion free texturing and still be able to edit the texture in photoshop or the like.

if your desire is to do your textures in photoshop then you would be better off using uvmapper or the like to map your model before texturing in zbrush. wings3d is free and has a pretty good uv mapping option now and i think uvmapper offers a trial or free version that is somewhat limited that you could check out if thats the way you want to go.

Ami

Is there a way to remove auv mapping from the model without going to any other software ?

The problem is i dont wanan uv map it as it creates the squares in the above image which i cant work upon as a 2d map in zbrush.

The time I spend in learning other softwares I will try using it on zapplink for dissolving seams if without any choice. :wink:

you can use Zbrush’s other uv projection methods: cylinder, sphere, and plane. however, these are not very good for complex models, and you will end up losing all the work you have done in the texturing stage. you can recover the texture to some extend by baking it from the AUV model to the model with new UVs, but that requires other software again.

try this…read the whole thread.