I need to start this post of by saying I love the MicroPoly system and use it constantly in my workflow; I particularly enjoy its ability to use multiple variations and randomly apply them across the mesh. That being said, I’ve found that there are some limitations to this functionality when it comes to the number of variations that it can randomly use. Currently that limit is 8 and if you set up a MicroPoly with more than 8 subtools in it, the message “Too many subtools are included and they will be skipped” pops up when you use that MicroPoly. (as shown here)
Most of the time 8 variations are more than enough, but there are a few times that I wish I were able to use more variations. Today I came up with a great example of where having more than 8 variations would be useful–creating a random string of numbers on something! These are the variations I used to make a quick example of what I would like to do (for usage they are separate subtools, I just hit xpose and merged them into a single subtool to demonstrate what I’m talking about here).
When I was at the ZBrush summit I asked Paul Gaboury if there was a specific reason for capping the number of variations within a MicroPoly (I’m no coder or anything so I figured there could be some kind of memory limit or something) or if it was just an arbitrary number. He said that the number was entirely arbitrary and the ZBrush team thought that was more variations that anyone would need in this feature. I finally came up with a usage case scenario where having a larger number of variations is needed! I would love to have the option for at least 10 variations (one for each digit), but more would be amazing as it could then be used to put strings of random letters or symbols as well.
I know that randomization with larger quantities is available using IMM brushes, but I really like the “preview” geometry and non-destructive workflow of using the Dynamic Subdivisions and MicroPoly.