Hello, does anyone know if there’s a good way to polypaint a pattern like this:
onto clothing, like this skirt? I’ve tried the curve functions but they don’t quite work for what I need, stencil skews the alpha and lazymouse just doesn’t work with the folds in the clothing. Any help would be appreciated.
Hello @c3dstuff
Your general options here are :
- Develop proficiency with the Lazy Mouse 2.0 features and sculpt your stroke in by hand with a brush set to Alpha Roll in the Stroke > Modifiers menu. Be sure to use features like stroke snapping and the click to click straight lines. It would probably produce better results to click in the stroke in smaller segments rather than trying to hand paint the entire thing. Use a mouse or disable pressure sensitivity for results free of pressure variations. Increase Lazy mouse settings like Radius and Smoothing to create smoother, more forgiving strokes.
- A UV-based approach. UV your mesh prior to beginning sculpting and apply your pattern as a texture, using UV unwrapping and layout skill. Then when your mesh is sculpted into shape, the texture will conform to that shape and you can convert it to polypaint on the mesh. This will require that your topology stays the same until converted to Polypaint
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You could also remesh the target mesh into the lowest possible polycount, then unwrap it with UV master. If you straighten the UVs, you could then use the Morph UV function in the UV Map menu to flatten the shape and draw your repeating pattern out as a straight line. This will require that you understand how to manipulate and lay out UV islands.
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Remember that once a texture is created, you can work directly on the texture image itself rather than the polypaint. If your UVs have been unwrapped and laid out in a form that allows you to do it, you can paint directly onto the texture in an image editor, or you can use features like Projection master or ZApp link to paint directly onto the texture while it’s applied to the model, albeit limited to working on a fixed view (not real time 3d). This would allow you to go along and paint the border section by section directly onto the texture itself, rather than the mesh’s topology. Once you have a texture painted, you can convert the texture color to polypaint.
- A 3d based approach. Theoretically you can convert any alpha into a 3d mesh, which can then be converted into a 3d Curve Brush, or applied directly to the target topology as nanos. Masking can be established via Intersection Masking Plugin, which can be converted to Polypaint. However, your alpha here is too intricate to recommend this approach.
New to ZB 2021:
A Dynamics Based Approach:
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Create a cylinder primitive via the primitives in the main tool menu with something like the settings below. You want no end caps and only the single horizontal dividing line.
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The Tool menu primitives come with UVs that make wrapping a repeating texture pretty easy. Just apply your texture to the default UVs, adjust the Y scale of the cylinder as desired, and increase the Hrepeat value until you get the results you want.
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Append this cylinder as a subtool to your target garment, and position it as desired.
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Using the Dynamics settings below or something like them ( I got decent results with these, feel free to experiment), select the Transpose Cloth brush, and slowly scale towards center. It doesn’t have to adhere to the underlying surface perfectly, you just want to get in the ballpark. Stop scaling before major distortion starts to happen, and before the mesh starts to intrude too far under the garment’s surface. The cylinder wrap should still be at a single level of subdivision, as low poly as possible.
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Using the Cloth Move brush, adjust the wrap as desired. Press and hold ALT after making contact with the mesh to move in and out based on the mesh’s normals. This can be used to push the wrap into recesses that scaling couldn’t accomplish without too much distortion. Go around making sure the wrap fits as well as possible, and also tweaking the curvature of the wrap, so it conforms to the folds in the way you want.
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Once the wrap is positioned, subdivide it to subD level 7 or so, and convert the texture to polypaint via Polypaint from Texture. ) Remember that polypaint detail is dependent on mesh resolution, and your alpha is very intricate. This will require that both the wrap and the target mesh have a very high level of resolution to capture that detail.
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With both subtools visible in the subtool menu, select the target garment, and project the Polypaint detail from the wrap onto it. In the Projection menu, only Color (not geometry) should be active. You may need to increase or max the value of the . Dist slider. Either the RGB or MRGB channel should be active.
This method is a little fancy, but doesn’t require as much finesse as hand painting, and creates a very clean print.
Good luck!
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wow thanks for the comprehensive answer! I went with your dynamics & projection approach and it worked out great, it also allowed me to easily make a nice bump from texture>polypaint>mask by poly paint using that way for a stitching effect, really useful, thank you!