Hi,
I just finished painting a model after following the Zclassroom Polypaint tutorial.
I thought I followed it correctly, but when I went to change the color to texture I couldn’t locate the “Texture” menu selection to change it.
I then found it at the top and not on the side like in the tutorial.
But still I can not change my painted color to a texture.
I can export the tool with the painted coloration on it and import it back in, but cannot export the model with the painted texture as an obj.
Did I miss a step?
I am using the new Mac Zbrush 3.12.
I am very frustrated by this because I don’t want to have to repaint the texture once more.
Any suggestions on how to access the texture or how to change it from a painted color to a texture?
Yeah polypainting in the new mac version is slightly different.
Firstly, make sure your model has UVs in the UV map section (under Tool). If ‘delete UVs’ is greyed out then you’ll need to create some.
Secondly, make a new texture. Under the texture section (under Tool) click on the window to load that texture for your model. Then click ‘new from polypaint’. When done you need to click ‘clone texture’ to chuck it into the texture palette so you can export it.
Thanks,
Yea I ended up having to start the texture all over again.
Not sure why you are allowed to paint the model when you can not do anything with it until the UVs are selected.
I tried selecting UVs with the painted texture already in place and following those steps, but it just held the current Color selected and would only clone that. The Texture painted prior to creating UVs is worthless.
They should lock that paint option out, until you have created UVs.
Waste of time, if you will be working outside the program.
The steps in 3.12 are basically the same as 3.1. It’s just that there’s a bit more flexibility, and some buttons have been moved in order to allow for a more logical layout.
Have you read the 3.12 documentation addendum? It gives instructions for how to convert polypaint to texture. You can get it from the Download Center. See the big orange icon in the top row? 
As for why you can polypaint before UV’s have been applied, there are many reasons. For one thing, this allows your workflow to be non-linear. You can paint what you want, when you want. Then assign the UV’s at any point in the process that works for your project or team environment. And if you decide you need to change your UV’s, that’s no problem either. You can do so without losing all the time and effort you’ve already put into texturing. But you do need to have UV’s before you can actually convert the polypaint to texture. That only makes sense.
Well that didn’t work either.
After re-painting the model, I went to New from Polypaint and it changed the mapping of the texture I just painted.
So it just made the work I did worthless as well.
I may just go back to Maxon’s Bodypaint to finish this.
I can’t seem to get this Zbrush paint to work at all.
I have a really nice painted model which is useless.
At least if I paint it in Body paint what I see is what I get.
No extra guessing or maneuvers that don’t work when it is exported.
I just keep using Zbrush for detail modeling since that is all it seems to be good for.
Yea I read through the documentation and none of it worked for me.
I watched the videos, and for some reason, when I go to export the texture it is not what I painted the way I painted it.
More than likely it is my fault, I’m just not doing something right.
But I don’t have time to spend endlessly painting this model only to see it is unusable. There is obviously a large learning curve to this and it is not as easy as I thought it would be.
My steps were exactly as the documentation states to do it.
But when I click on any of the selections like “New from Polypaint” it completely changes the layout of the texture.
So I don’t know what is up.
I am very frustrated by now because I have been trying to get this texture off this model for about 18 hours now.
What do you mean by “it completely changes the layout”? Could you show examples?
What should be happening is that you’re getting a texture that’s based on the model’s UV’s. In the Texture palette, it will look different because that’s an unwrapped version. But when it’s applied back onto the model it should wrap correctly. (Remember, though, that when you export a texture from ZBrush you need to flip it vertically.)
What I mean is I went through the painting process and then selected New from Polypaint and the texture on the model looks like it unwrapped and then was re-wrapped on it the wrong way. It isn’t what my model should look like. Is this normal, or should it stay like the way I painted it?
Is there any documentation that is an exact step by step way to use Polypaint and extract the model’s texture so it can be used in another program?
Because so far the available documentation is leaving out what seems like important steps and what these steps mean, like I should know this stuff already.
I want to know after modeling what is the menu selection I should make next in order to get an accurate texture on the UVs and so on, and then what step I should do next after the painting of my model so I can now export the texture and use it properly elsewhere. Because even after reading the current new documentation it is not working for me.
I try exporting the Model and it makes a BMP texture, a MTL and an OBJ.
I open the OBJ into Cinema4d and the texture is missing, I import the bmp into the color area of the texture and it is all screwed up.
It doesn’t matter what kind of mapping I use it wont fall into place.
So I am having a wonderful time at making this work.
I have created a texture in the earlier Mac Zbrush version and don’t remember having any texture issues like this.
Below is the image before I click the New from Polypaint button and after.
Attachments
I’ve been screaming at my monitor for a while now trying to get the polypaint to a texture map in 3.12 ( the mac version). The buttons have been moved around and I can’t find any STEP BY STEP DOCUMENTATION that addresses this. As mentioned above in the post its assuming we are supposed to know this stuff. I had little problem doing this in previous version ( or on the PC).
Has anyone had luck with this since the last post?
How are your UVs?
Did you do an UV check first to see if they are ok? (I don’t know if you did your UVs in Zbrush or if it comes from another 3D package.)
ZBrush read the UV coordinate differently from other 3D package.
You have to flip the texture vertically by going Texture --> Flip V
if you`re importing or exporting to different application.
Also, when doing Polypaint, all you simply got to do is turn Texture off.
ZBrush will automatically put you in Polypaint mode.
By turning on RGB or MRGB, anything you paint then will be bake into the mesh itself. With the resolution of its equal to the number of polys.
So, the denser your mesh is, the higher the resolution.
Or if you already got a texture and want to continue from that on, load the texture the go to Tool --> Texture --> Txr>Col, this will bake the color into the mesh, and you can continue polypainting.
After you finished painting, you can go to Tool --> Texture --> Col>Txr
to bake the color into the texture within your arranged UV.
If youre not happy with your UV, you can turn the texture off, this will convert it back to Polypaint mode, but you wont lose anything that youve paint before. If you use something else for UV unfolding, then export the mesh at the resolution that you want to other application, unwrap it, and import it back at the same resolution. By doing so, youll have the new UV, while maintaining what you have already painted.
However, this could work differently on Mac, since I never use it before.
Don’t know if this is of any help to you but this is aquick movie of how I export a uv texture from zbrush to an external program. You need uvs, these were created in blender. Using ZBrush 3.12B.
Richard
Hi guys, I am new to this forum, and I am experiencing some problems with polypaint to texture as well.
rjmarklew, that video was excellent! But I am still having problems with converting polypaint to a texture. When I follow the instructions in the video, my model turns black.
Could it have something to do with normals direction?
Do you mean color Black, or totally disappeared?
If it disappeared ,then thats because, for some reason, your UV wasnt properly made.
When thats the case, all of the UVs vertices are all clustered to a single point, and so it can`t read the color data of the texture and treated it as being a transparent alpha, thus making it totally disappear.