ZBrushCentral

Baking out color information

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Pipeline question.

I’m a games modeller and at the moment the standard approach to creating a games model seems to be:

a) Model a low poly character (or zsphere one)
b) Sculpt it up in zbrush
c) Export the high poly info to your modelling package (or use zmapper) and bake out the normal map, ambient occlusion map and so forth.
d) then use photoshop to texture up the colour work.

Another option is to:

a) Model the low poly character
b) Import it into zbrush and both colour and sculpt it simultaneously.

Both of these have a few problems though - the first doesn’t allow for detailed pixel painting while the second is less reusable (e.g. you can’t make a military chest piece and easily move it out across 3 marines)

I was wondering if anyone had found the best way of baking out just the color information from a model that’s composed of several subtools. So I’ve made a torso, shirt, coat and watch. They’re all modelled and painted up. I’ve made a low poly retopology model with UVs based on the initial meshes. At this point how would folk find the best way to get just the colour information off these objects and onto the retopped mesh I’ve just made? Easy enough to bake the detail as a normal etc in max but so far the best solution I’ve found is a step by step project all working outwards. Anyone found a better solution?

#2

Append the low poly mesh to the original as a new SubTool. Divide it to have as many polygons as your texture will have pixels. Then turn off Zadd and turn on Rgb before pressing Tool>SubTool>Project All.

This will copy the polypaint from the original model to the new version. Now you can assign a blank texture of the desired size to the model, then press the Col>Txr button to transfer the polypaint to your texture.

#3

Hi aurick - aye - that’s for basic poly projection. Which is fine if it’s a single thing like a naked guy. But if the single guy is wearing overlapping stuff (such as a shirt, a waistcoat and so forth) do you just work your way from skin outwards? So do a skin bake, then a shirt bake then a waistcoat bake?

Also that leads to problems with things where an object appears both behind and in front of another one. Example - the aforementioned shirt has a collar which folds out and over the waistcoat. Meaning as an object the shirt is now both beneath and above the waistcoat.

In an ideal world I’d be able to do a bake on several subtools at once (and retopologize across them) much like I can bake in Max - but all I can do is keep my fingers crossed for that down the line.

#4

Meant to say - this doesn’t work. Zadd being off still transfers all the modelling data not just the colour info. You can get round this by using morph targets but looks like its a bug?

#5

Is there some reason to bake bare skin onto a shirt or to bake multiple shirts onto an overcoat?

You can only project onto one subtool at a time and it will go outward in.

It does bake in the sculpt no matter what, unfortunately. Yet another thing requiring a workaround but it’s easier to do one side at a time then smart resym if your objects are symmetrical.