Answered: Help Anybody Please

[system]

Hi there guys

I need some help if you please…I work as a 3D imager for a company that does life size dinosaurs & other animals for museums. We sculpt the models and then Mill it in sections on a milling machine, assemble it and so forth.

Now until recently we had to sculpt every single scale on a dinosaur by hand, to compensate for the milling machine chamfer. but we are using zbrush now for the sculpting, saves a lot of time of course, but we need help and tutoring on one aspect of this process

Let me explain: We decided on a simple geometry like hexagons for the skin, (See pic1 attached) The point of all this is to get data that gets the vertices down to a maximum of 18 per scale. which will in turn make the milling process way easier…My big concern is will Z brush be able to create a texture of these simple polygons. Every line connecting the points on each scale needs to be an immutable straight line. When the texture is wrapped over the complex shapes of the model the lines must remain straight…(Naturally their length will change)

in a nustshell: we basically need to wrap simple geometries (the hexagons) over complex forms of the model (see pic 2)

*first picture attached is the simple hexagon geometry
*second is our dinosaur

Hope you can help and direct me to a step by step tutorial…

thanks so much guys

Regards
Martin

Attachments

[marcus_civis]

I don’t think this can be done. The reason is that any texture tile you create using hexagons can’t be rotated and match correctly. So wherever you have polygon strips meeting from different directions the texture will be broken.

If you create a tileable texture based on a square or rectangle then it would be OK. You can use ZBrush’s UVTile mapping to map the texture to each polygon.

You can see the effect in the images.

Attachments

[system]

H Marcus

Thanks a million for your reply…It makes sense what you said and as I am a newbie to zbrush I was just lookin around for some answers…

Is there any possibility you could mail me the step -by -step process of “tiling” you did in the first image you attached?

I need to cover the whole model in those hexagonical tiles, send it to my milling machine colleague to check if we could work with that…

Thank you so much again

Cheers

[aurick]

Import your tiling texture into the Texture palette. Now go to level 1 of your model. In the Tool>UV Map menu you click the UVTile button. In the Tool>Texture Map menu, assign your tiling texture.

[system]

Hey Marcus, how about if he used something like one of the following 3 crops of his texture? Obviously he would want
to do a clean job of it, I just did some rough crops to demonstrate the idea.

Tom

Attachments

[system]

OH, hmmm… I just noticed his restriction of the
sides remaining straight lines. Sorry about that.

Tom

[system]

Tom that might be an idea…cropping it…I will see if we can maybe work with that, even with the “straight line” restriction…

Thanks!

[system]

Thanks also for your help Aurick…I’ll see what I can do!

[system]

Hi guys

me again!

What If I used a texture like this one attached?? its a vector but just a screenshot here. The second image is how the milling guy wants the texture to look on the model I suppose to mill it in the negative…

*image 1 vector texture

*image 2 texture negative

Any help getting a texture like this around my model?
Notice the sides of the vector texture is tesselated, so we can create tiles maybe?

I would appreciate any How to / help regarding this…remember i am a newbie:)
Cheers

Attachments

[marcus_civis]

We’ve already told you how you can use UV tiles. The impression I get is that you’re looking for an instant solution but there’s no such thing for a situation of this sort. The simplest way would be to:

1. Assign UV mapping to your model so that it is ‘human readable’. In other words, like an animal skin, laid out flat. The UV Mapper plugin will help you do this and you can make sure the seams are hidden as far as is possible.

2. Once you have UV mapping you can use an image editor like Photoshop to create you texture map. To get your UVs from ZBrush into Photoshop you could:

• Turn on polyframes (Shift+F)
• Press Tool>Texture Map>New from UV Map. This creates a new map based on the UVs you assigned.
• Press Tool>TExture Map>Clone Txtr. This copies the new texture to the Texture palette.
• Press the Export button in the Texture palette to save out the texture so it can be opened in Photoshop.
• Use the map as a guide for creating your texture map. You can copy and paste portions of the scale pattern so that you cover the ‘skin’ to you satisfaction.
• Once done you can bring the texture back into ZBrush and apply to your model. You can then use Tool>Masking>Mask by Intensity to mask the scales prior to sculpting.

For further information the online videos are a good start:
http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/

And there are online docs here:
http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/What's_New_in_ZBrush_4

[system]

Hi Marcus

You are right, I am looking for a quick (ish) solution…under pressure here! but thanks for your help mate, much appreciated…

[marcus_civis]

Here is a very quick example.

Workflow:

1. Used UV Master to unwrap the dog, with Symmetry on. Exported 2048x2048 map to Photoshop as above.
2. Used your image to create a tileable pattern at 256x256 pixels (see attached image).
3. Selected the pattern image then Edit>Define Pattern.
4. Made a new layer on the map and selected All, then Edit>Fill and selected the pattern created at (3).
5. Saved flattened version of map.
6. Imported map into ZBrush and applied to model.
7. Divided model so that there was a good number of polygons then pressed Tool>Masking>Mask by Intensity. Inverted Mask.
8. Turned off View Mask and turned off Texture Map>Texture On.
9. Tool>Deformation>Inflat set to -5.
10. Result as in image.

Note: there’s a seam down the front of the head that doesn’t show in the image but you’d want to make sure that this wasn’t there when assigning UVs as it will show clearly.

Attachments

[system]

marcus, Thats it! thats what we have in mind right there…great stuff…obviously some areas like around the dinosaur’s eyes ( or dog,s eyes in this case) the texture would be waaay smaller and less pronounced but this is what I was looking for!

Maybe I should Split the dino model into sections and apply this map to each section, to compensate for some areas on the skin where the scales would be small and less pronounced…

Thanks so much

[marcus_civis]

You’ll have more control if you use a single UV island as there will be fewer seams. It would be easy enough to scale the scales around the eyes using Liquify filter in Photoshop.

[system]

ok Marcus thanks, man I am gonna be busy this weekend!..practising what you posted…and generally getting to grips with zbrush…

Thanks again Marcus
Cheers

[system]

Hi again

I got as far as No.5 on your workflow marcus “Saved flattened version of map” after that I got stuck. How and where do I import map to zbrush and how do I apply it to my model?

This is where I am now :(screenshot)

thanks:)

[marcus_civis]

1. Texture palette > Import and select the map.
2. In the Tool palette make sure your model is selected. You might like to have it drawn on the canvas and in Edit mode but this is not essential.
3. In the Tool>Texture Map menu click the Texture Map thumbnail and select the texture you imported at (1) from the pop-up.

That’s it. The texture will now be applied to your model.

[system]

got it…thanks marcus!!

[system]

Hi again Marcus

I got it right thank you, when I practised with the dog…The images attached are of a dinosaur tail that I flattened with UV master…but I ran into problems when I did the Tool>Masking>Mask by Intensity. Inverted Mask, and then the Tool>Deformation>Inflat set to -5. It looked very bad…

but take a look at them if you please - it was scanned with a laser scanner in Canada…the geometry is way different than the zbrush dogs’…Maybe they scanned it too High res? Would there be anything I could tell them or that I could do to keep the polycount lower? or a way I can fix the geometry?

thank you

Attachments

[marcus_civis]

You don’t say what went wrong when you tried to do the deformation. A picture would help here. There’s no particular reason why a scanned mesh shouldn’t work, though what you show is rather uneven and you might get some bad patches. You’ll probably need to subdivide to capture the detail cleanly anyhow.