Wouldn’t we all! However, that kind of instruction for someone unable or unwilling to study a subject for themselves has a value, and usually comes with a price tag unfortunately. If you view going over the documentation I’ve linked you to as unreasonable, you may wish to look into some sort of commercial instruction in the form of courses or videos. In addition, a dedicated Poser resource probably has information from people working specifically for that pipeline, which you may find more useful than the general knowledge most people here will provide.
I have collapsed a tutorial below for readability. Aside from the illustration, I will not be adding much information that was not linked/explained above. If you’re curious where any of this information comes from, that’s where to find it.
click to read Polypaint to Texture 101--should contain 5 images.
- Here I have my mesh. It has a low poly base which I will be exporting to another program. It has multiple levels of subdivision with Polypaint at the highest levels for reasons explained in my first post. You seem to already understand how to polypaint a mesh, so this needs no explanation.
- We will not be doing that here, but the explanation is linked in my original post. It has some fairly specific steps that need to be followed, so read it carefully in the event you wish to use externally created UVs that need to be preserved exactly.
-
-
- We will be using UV Master, because UVM is really neat, and the quick mapping methods are probably not suitable for most complex texture needs. UVM documentation linked in original reply. Like everything else contains a lot of important and useful information that might head off any number of potential problems or questions. I cannot distill all that information in the scope of this post, but you need to know it.
Here is the resulting UV’d mesh, and the simple unwrapping I’ve done herewith UVM at default settings. UV unwrapping/layout is a skill, and the more complicated the mesh/texture, the more consideration needs to go into the UVs. You will need to learn how best to lay things out to avoid issues with artifacts or texture distortion. I have deliberately chosen a simple subject to avoid those kind of issues, but expect them with more ambitious projects.
-
-
- Note the Current version of Zbrush only contains a single slider for map size. Tool > UV Map> UV Map Size
Here is my newly UV’d model back at the highest level of subdivision with polypaint active. Note that it actually contains many more polygons than the polyframe would suggest. Zbrush filters out polyframe divisions after a certain threshold on multilevel meshes to keep it easier to read.
And boom. The polypaint is now converted to an image texture that can display on the low level mesh, regardless of actual mesh resolution. The base level mesh only has 6 polygons, but displays the former polypaint info perfectly. If you export the base level mesh now with the texture active (tool> export), it will automatically export with a texture .bmp that should auto import into many other applications with the .OBJ
However, if you want to do something more advanced with that texture, like flip it or export it in a different format, we know from elsewhere in the information I linked that:
So I clone that texture in the Tool > Texture Map menu, and send it over to the main texture palette and export it as a Tiff.
Here is my cube in Maya, subject to all the differences in the Maya render environment that may make it appear differently. Each program may have its own preferences as to how to correctly display a texture. You may need to, for instance, flip the texture vertically. That will require you to be familiar with the target program, in addition to the source program.
I hope you’ll discover that however much effort you put into the polypainting, the actual creation of a texture can be very easy, and very fast. This operation took less than 30 seconds all told. But it was a simple mesh/texture, and in order to troubleshoot issues with more ambitious texture work, you will really need to understand smoothing and seam issues, as well the texture display functions in your target program. The only way to do this is to dive in and start doing it, over and over.
Good luck!
