ZBrushCentral

Need help, Polypaint to UVs and Texturing

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello, I ran into a roadblock related to UV mapping and texturing.
and I have a couple of questions about how to do the following:

There’s a ton of tutorials on UV Mapping and Polypaint but what I want to do is
take a high Poly model (several Million) and take it’s Polypaint and convert it into
an UV map texture that I can export and edit in Photoshop

Also I know there’s supposed to be a way to Decimate high polygon models and project
the detail into a low polygon one, How do I do this?

Another thing that’s really puzzling is how Polypaint requires a high number of polygons
in order to have any resolution but if you use UV master then the tool has to be only 150K
polygons? so there’s no in between? either a ton of polygons or just a few?

Oh and my final question, when I get the UV islands on Photoshop, how do I know where
to paint? I think Photoshop can now load a 3d obj but what if I only had the islands?

Thanks for helping me again ^^

#2

Try having a look at this post that I submitted a few days ago. http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?191756-Mini-tutorial-on-exporting-polypainted-models-for-3D-Printing
You may find something of use there.

As far as painting on the unwrapped UV’s - good luck. If you have a simple model with some polypaint on then you can use those as reference, but in general, you will find polypainting on your model to be MUCH easier.

I don’t have ZB on this computer so it’s hard to say “click here” but when decimating there should be an option to project at the same time? If not then you need to decimate a copied sub-tool and then with only those two sub-tools visible use the Project button in your Tools (?) palette. (It’s hard to picture it without ZB in front of me).

#3

Duplicate your object
Remesh it to get lower poly version
UV Unwrap it externally or UVMaster
Subdivide the mesh
In the Subtool panle use the Project All to project the original model onto the new model
Repeat with more subdivisions as needed
If you enable RGB you can also project the polypaint from the original onto the new model just like projecting geometry
You can then create a texture and create the texture from the polypaint
Info: http://docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/topology/zremesher/transferring-detail/

#4

Ok thanks a lot I think I get it now,
and is there a number of polygons I should aim for?
like what is considered acceptable if working in Maya
for example? 2 million polygons?

Also do Normal maps, Bump maps and all those other
maps work like UVs? can I do those on Zbrush aswell?

ps sorry for the newbie questions, I’m new to 3D in
general

#5

Also do Normal maps, Bump maps and all those other
maps work like UVs? can I do those on Zbrush aswell?
You can create them individually or use the Multi Map Exporter plugin http://pixologic.com/zbrush/downloadcenter/zplugins/#zbrush4r7.php