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Micro Poly material behavior in 2021.6.4 (workaround)

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi everyone, I noticed an odd behavior when trying to fill a mesh created using Micro Poly with a material using the M channel only. This includes a workaround.

So in panel #1, I am just using a plane and any Micro Poly mesh to create a new surface. Then I click Accept to turn it into geometry.

Panel #2, I turn on the Material channel and with with Basic Material selected I click Fill Object. The result is strange.

Panel #3, Here is the same effect when filling the mesh with the Droplet matcap. It goes almost all Black with a tiny blue area in the bottom.

all this time my main color has been set to White and the secondary is set to Black.

Panel #4, I change to MRGB and do a Fill Object. Everything works properly now and filling with only the M channel from this point works fine.

so I am thinking that something is getting messed up when there is no color filled on the mesh. It often seems to fill with black or some odd mix of colors, Ive seen several different colors happen though usually black. Filling the color with White first seems to clear up this issue but it’s still strange behavior.

hope this helps anyone with this issue

Screen Shot 2021-05-20 at 12.47.14 PM
Screen Shot 2021-05-20 at 12.47.14 PM4106×3220 796 KB

#2

Pasted from Support reply:

This will happen if you create the Micropoly mesh with polypaint disabled for the subtool. If the paintbrush icon in the subtool entry for the target mesh is deactivated when you create the Micropoly mesh, as would be the case if you had just clicked “Make Polymesh3d” for a primitive, the resulting mesh will be filled with black polypaint. This is actually happening when the mesh is created–you just notice it when you fill the mesh with material because it activates polypaint display. If you enable the polypaint display icon before creating the mesh, it will be filled with white polypaint.

Please note that it isnt possible to fill a mesh with a material and not also fill it with color paint. If the RGB channel is not selected, it will simply fill the mesh with white color in most situations. So in this situation simply toggle the polypaint display on before creating the mesh, or fill it with the desired color of polypaint.