ZBrushCentral

Is non-destructive texture/projection painting possible in zbrush?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey guys,
I have been experimenting with Spotlight to paint a texture onto a model using a reference image as the source. But I have noticed that this process is destructive to texture. Even at the highest sub-division levels, when I export the newly created texture from zbrush into photoshop and compare it to the original reference image, much of the crisp detail is lost.

It seems that Spotlight is just like poly-painting, as each polygon receives a single color. I was wondering if zbrush is able to projection paint non-destructively, that is, straight to the UV map rather than to the polygon.

Or if not, can another application like Mudbox do so?

-P

#2

Spotlight acts like polypaint because it is polypaint; vertex density will play a factor in the quality of the projection as a result.

In addition, the size of the image inside of spotlight itself compared to the Zbrush Document’s pixols will also matter. In other words lets say you load in a massive 4k image, but scale it down in spotlight so that it fits into a 64x64 space on your screen. If you try to project at that scale, then you will only be projecting what you can see in that 64x64 square, regardless of how many pixels the image actually contains. The image has more pixel data and the model might have the geometry to support it, but it is basically the document pixols that are getting projected.

The only way I know of to paint directly on the Texturemap inside of zbrush is to use Projection Master instead (assuming the tool has a texture enabled first). You can even Zapplink this to photoshop, line up your images there, then send it back to zbrush to convert the result to the texture. Even this method isn’t without its flaws however.

#3

I was wondering the same thing. Anyone?
Thanks for the helpful info cryrid, but could someone please reiterate/amplify the matter a bit further (intermediate newb here) so i can decide on buying Substance Painter or not. Am i correct in thinking ZB’s texture projection painting may not be good enough for the really hi-res, hi detail projects. Not counting simple props and low-poly meshes perhaps S Painter would be better for all complex hi-res jobs (film creature creation is what i’m shooting for). Thanks!