Need Assistance With Properly Polypainting And Unwrapping A Tree

[S_K_I]

Unwrapping is perhaps the one area of 3d modeling I struggle with the most, not to mention I’m still learning Z-Brush so bare with me for my ignorance please. Anyways, I created this tree through zspheres and obviously I didn’t know what I was doing in the beginning so through the various subdivision changes and pipeline I removed the polygroups that made up the individuals branches that made up the tree so now my tree is one polygroup, and my lowest subdivision is in the 3½ million range which was is now my only one, but I’ll get to that later.

At this point I sculpted the mesh to where I wanted it, and proceeded to polypaint the object but it is here where I encountered my first problem because the texture was coming out more pixelated than normal, even though the resolution of my bitmaps are in the 2k range. I checked the make sure the quads on the mesh looked ok, and even though it appeared so I still kept getting the pixelated image. So again forgive me for my ignorance, but I thought it was because my UV was jacked up so I tried to use the UV master but because my lowest subdivision was so high it wouldn’t UV the mesh properly, and I don’t know how much polygroups affects the layout of the UV as well. I also wasn’t able to reconstruct the mesh because it contained triangles.

At this point I completely gave up on saving the polypainting I created simply because I’m using textures and it wouldn’t take me very long to repaint it all over again, I just thought at this point it was because I didn’t assign UV’s before I started painting. So my next step was attempting this method I found on YouTube involving duplicating my tree, zremeshing the clone to a lower poly count, and projecting the original onto the clone, which worked to a degree I just kept getting jagged edges and spikes, but playing with the mean count sort of fixed it but not completely, which I didn’t mind at this point. So finally I was able to get UV master to unwrap it but it didn’t come out right as you will see in the pic because the texture looks completely out of scale and the flattened map doesn’t look correct either, and it is here where I’m completely lost now. Do I need to assign polygroups to the branches? How incorrect are the seems that Zbrush assigned? Is the UV issue I’m experiencing the reason why my my textures are so pixelated or does that not have any effect on it and it’s limited to the mesh density? And if that’s the case why is still having an impact even when I raise the subdivisions to 6-8 million? I know there’s so many steps I did wrong in the beginning, but I’m still learning as I go along, I just never anticipated making a tree would be this difficult, I even watched this tutorial and the creator was having just as much problemsas I was. Ultimately this project is going to be exported to 3ds max and rendered in V-Ray if this helps you guys understand where I’m going with this. If I can get an ELI5 I’ll buy all of you a bottle of tequila.

Thanks.

[Thor]

I think you’re getting there…

First, I’m not a pro at this, so there might be MUCH better ways to do this. In fact, I’m pretty sure there are.

I think what I’d do is start by decimating a copy of your original. You can do this a few times if you want:

Original:

Decimated (using defaults, decimated twice):

Next, I’d zremesh… be sure to have a look at the zremesher settings. I usually start with the defaults and crank Adaptive size up to 100 for the first zremesh, then turn off adaptive, and use “half” a few times.
Zremeshed:

After zremeshing, you can subdivide, and reproject detail from your original.
Zremeshed divided and projected:

At his point, you can polygroup the branches if you want to.
Polygroups:

Now you can use UVMaster to create your UVs. You can adjust the seams in UVMaster
UVMaster:

Again, there are probly better ways, but I think this is a typical workflow in Zbrush.

Hopefully someone else will chime in with some other methods.

[S_K_I]

I just walked in, so I’ll follow up with my response later, but I’m definitely going to polygroup my model and see what happens. If you don’t mind though, can put a texture on it so I can see how it looks real fast? Thanks

[Thor]

VERY quick and dirty spotlight texture:

… obviously you’ll take your time.

After polypaint/spotlight, in the texture palette > click “New from polypaint”
This is a quickie, so it’s only a 2048 texture.

[S_K_I]

Hey Thor! Sorry for the late reply, but anyways, I finally got back to my tree trunk and after a couple hours of tutorials and some trial and error I got the hang of UV mapping for once and I’m satisfied with the results. I have a few more questions if you don’t mind so I’ll start off with the pictures first.

First 3 is the texture map which looks 10x better now, followed by the UV Map and UV texture. Regarding the UV texture I’m using the default one from Zbrush if you can tell, and was wondering if the squares are the right size or not? And if I need to re-tile it, where do I do that from?

On the branch where you can see the jagged and spiked mesh, I kept getting that result when using the Subtool>Project tool from my original trunk projecting onto the remeshed one. I still don’t quite understand Project especially when it comes to the Mean, so I was pretty much just guessing the entire way, and I don’t know if I needed to decrease the distance, increase the mean, or if it’s something else entirely.

Lastly, another issue I encountered with Project was part of my branches were cut off and unattached to the main trunk, which is since the branches are going to be covered with leaves later on anyways, but when I hide the solo branch and try to delete it from the modify topology it changes the overall integrity of the trunk mesh. I tried both the lowest subdivision and froze it, but the same thing occurs, it’s processing the subdivision and the final result is my trunk appears to be more polished or smoothed. What am I doing wrong? Also, after it the solo branches are deleted, will I have to redo my unwrapping all over again or will the UV’s and texture integrity be ok?

As I said before, I’m still satisfied with the final resort, I would just like to know for future reference how to address these issues in future projects.

Thank you so much for your help Thor.

Edit: I think I solved the solo branch mesh issue. I repeated the freeze subdivision again and this time it came out fine, I can’t explain what I did differently, but the the topology looks the same as before I deleted the branch. Woot.

Edit 2: I just realized I have to redo the UV all over again after I deleted the unwanted branches. Man this is tricky.

[Thor]

Regarding the UV texture I’m using the default one from Zbrush if you can tell, and was wondering if the squares are the right size or not? And if I need to re-tile it, where do I do that from?

shrug
As far as the UV layout, if the texture looks good I think you’re all set - but if you plan to use other software to render, I don’t know what you’re gonna end up with.

On the branch where you can see the jagged and spiked mesh, I kept getting that result when using the Subtool>Project tool from my original trunk projecting onto the remeshed one. I still don’t quite understand Project especially when it comes to the Mean, so I was pretty much just guessing the entire way, and I don’t know if I needed to decrease the distance, increase the mean, or if it’s something else entirely.

After zremeshing and projecting, you can use the smooth brush, move brush etc, to adjust the new geo to match your original, and project again. You can do this as many times as you need to. You can turn on transparency to see what you’re doing. After subdividing your new geo, you can also use the Project > Reproject Higher Subdiv button to relax your mesh and get a better fit.

Lastly, another issue I encountered with Project was part of my branches were cut off and unattached to the main trunk, which is since the branches are going to be covered with leaves later on anyways, but when I hide the solo branch and try to delete it from the modify topology it changes the overall integrity of the trunk mesh.

I have no idea how you managed that… if there’s no break in your original, and if you zremeshed, you shouldn’t have gotten any separation of the mesh after projecting.
If you’re using Subtool > Remesh instead of using zremesher, obviously you might have problems.

In your screenshot with the separated branch, it shows 21mil total points, 5 mil active points – but it looks like only one subtool. Do you have some geometry hidden?

Your screenshots are showing 5+ million points - Why so many? Did you follow the steps in my previous post?

Don’t forget, you can zremesh multiple times to get better geo/lower polycount.

I tried both the lowest subdivision and froze it, but the same thing occurs, it’s processing the subdivision and the final result is my trunk appears to be more polished or smoothed. What am I doing wrong? Also, after it the solo branches are deleted, will I have to redo my unwrapping all over again or will the UV’s and texture integrity be ok?

I just realized I have to redo the UV all over again after I deleted the unwanted branches. Man this is tricky.

Yeah… something’s not right with how you’re doing this. I’m guessing in the remeshing step. Your original does not need any uvs. After zremeshing, that’s when you want to use UV Master - then you can subdiv the zremeshed copy, and project a few times to get the detail back.