Hello, I am trying to paint a rough background on a dome in ZBrush and so naturally I try to use the flat color material, but I have to say right now that flat color has been glitchy to the point of uselessness.
It’s supposed to be a night background so I start with full black and then I try to paint another color and it’s like it’s trying to get back to using the clay material. I know other people have this issue so what’s the solution?
Pure black will be treated as transparent, shift a bit from 0,0,0 and try. It’s always about workflow 
That’s interesting but I don’t think that’s the problem here. Another issue that I am getting is this weird “layering” issue where I can’t completely color over something, like it was masked (yes, I checked to make sure there was no mask).
As you can see in the image, I have three different blacks (none of them are pure black).
Long story short, I paint the darker black over the ligher black but when I use the lighter black to try to paint over the darker black, it becomes that middle shade of black no matter how many times I try to paint over it. It’s like a mask. It’s feeling rather nonsensical at this point.
Under Tool:Polypainting, make sure Grd isn’t turned on.
See also: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?183623-lights-materials-and-rendering&p=1066841&viewfull=1#post1066841
No, turning off grd didn’t resolve the above stated problem.
Thank you for the response, I’ll read the link.
Wait, I think I see something that’s up.
I read the post that you linked to and I think I see part of the problem.
I select flat color and then I click m and then I click fill object under color BUT when I select a different material the material is applied to the object.
I chose another material, basic material 2 and did the same as I did for flat color and in that case the material stuck.
For some reason, flat color won’t stick.
(I’ve tried this with different objects.)
Don’t use Flat Color. It’s a special material that basically means ‘no material’. When you embed it in an object then you are clearing that object so it then will take on whatever is the selected material. This is the intended behaviour.
Instead use another material, such as the Basic Material, and adjust its properties to give a ‘flat’ effect.
So, it acts as a material “clear”. Gotta say, I wish ZBrush had made that a little more clear.
I don’t know very much about ZBrush materials, how do I most efficiently get a “flat” (meaning completely unshaded and unaffected by light) effect with basic material? Is that even possible?
You can read about materials here:
http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/materials-lights-rendering/materials/
To make a ‘flat’ material:
Additionally, for some models you may need to set Render>Preview Shadows>ObjShadow to 0.
Thank you for your help! I was able to create a material that behaved just like a flat color material.
I’m still getting that weird color issue (there’s an image of it earlier in this thread) where I can’t totally paint over a color.
Just so that I can be more specific about my color problem I will say how I can replicate the issue.
1: Open up ZBrush and select the default cylinder and make polymesh 3d. Then I draw it onto the canvas and go into edit mode.
2: With standard brush selected I select MRGB, turn off Zadd, and select basic material. With my main color RGB:255 (meaning R:255 G:255 B:255) I go into color and click fill object. I then switch back to RGB with rgb intensity set at 100.
3: I then subdivide the cylinder 5 times.
4: I then click switch colors and adjust my main color to RGB:2 and paint a bit onto the cylinder.
5: I then adjust my main color to RGB:72 and then paint over the white and the black in the same stroke.
I then can see that the black area that I painted over with the grey brush is slightly darker than the white area and no matter how much I try, I can’t paint over the black area to match the brush’s color.
I used the C hotkey to sample the colors. The grey that is painted over the formerly black is RGB:71 and the grey painted over the white is RGB:72, like the brush. I checked to make sure there’s no mask or layer inadvertently active.
If anyone tries to replicate this situation, do they get the same exact result? I tried to be as specific as reasonable and used the default mesh and settings specifically to minimize possible other causes.
You switched from MRGB to just RGB. That could make a difference. Also there are 2 ways to pick color. start dragging from color swatch and hold Alt, it will grab the shaded color vs. standard picking action(like with C)
I’m afraid that had no effect at all.
I can reproduce this. No idea why it’s happening.
Well, that’s a relief, in a roundabout way, cause hopefully that would mean someone somewhere has had this problem and possibly solved it somehow.
I think it’s a weird way to work. :rolleyes:
I don’t really see what you mean.
In every other painting related program on Earth, if you take a brush, set it to a certain color, it will match the value of the color exactly barring some kind of esoteric setting.
Question, are you painting inside a hemisphere so you can rotate around? If you delete the faces above the ‘horizon’ the ‘sky’ color can be set with the background color. At least that’s probably how I’d go about it.
The problem isn’t the hemisphere. If you look earlier in the thread, I described how I am getting that weird painting issue even with just the default polycylinder3d.
I precisely spelled out the steps I used to get to the problem and one of the other posters here told me they were able to replicate the problem as well.