ZBrushCentral

polypainting with an alpha

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

howdy,

i am finding that if you add an alpha to your brush and you try to polypaint, it will NOT WORK… NOTHING gets painted-

UNLESS you have a non zero value in zadd or zsub?

is this correct?

it would seem to me that you should have the ability to use alphas for painting without actually having to “sculpt” no matter how small the perturbation.

is this a calculated restriction? a bug? or am i doing something wrong?

thanks.

jin

#2

Do you have ZAdd, ZSub, MRGB off and RGB on. RGB must be on to paint colors onto your model if you are doing any kind of color painting. Also, make sure Colorize is on for your Tool, under the texture rollout. It would also help to disable your UVs in this palette and reimport them later if you plan to create a texture map for use in an external app. Also, make sure the area you are trying to paint is not masked.

#3

.

#4

actually,

this seems like a bug to me.

try painting with no ZADD…

WITH AN ALPHA.

i cannot get it to work.

jin

#5

and to be perfectly clear, the problem is not getting PAINTING to work. it DOES WORK.

but with no zadd or zsub, you cannot use an ALPHA on your brush.

jin

#6

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=50033
I have the same exact problem

#7

yah,

it seems like everybody and their mothers jump in with details on how to just polypaint but nobody actually regards the issue - that ALPHAS don’t work on brushes when you’re polypainting.

so let’s chalk this up as a bug then.

jin

#8

jinchoung,

I use polypainting a lot and have no problem using an alpha.

I just tested this (see screenshot) and I can use alphas to paint both colors and textures directly in polypaint.

[[attach=66949]polyalpha.jpg[/attach]]polyalpha.jpg

Check what kind of stroke you are using. If you are using freehand or dots, the alpha’d colors will smear together. Use drag rect, drag dot, or spray to see the shapes unsmeared.

#9

He said with ZAdd/sub on, smarty pants.

#10

Ah… actually he said with NO Zadd or Zsub.

Note the screenshot - ZADD and ZSUB are off, just straight polypainting, which is what he was asking about.

I think the problem may be that you are not selecting “DISABLE UVS” on the TEXTURE menu before you start polypainting, jinchoung.

#11

AHA!!!

thank you dangalf! you understood the issue i was presenting and your solution works!

so in order for polypainting with alphas to work, you must disable uvs.

would be nice if this was writ large in the documentation. they should definitely do that.

thank you much.

jin

#12

but BTW,

what a weirdo combination of possibilities!

if you paint without zadd/zsub, you absolutely need to disable uvs.

you can have uvs enabled if you make your zadd as small as 1.

not very intuitive.

i wonder how much of these effects are intentional… if some of this is unintentional, i hope they consolidate, work it out and make it more intuitive.

jin

#13

.

#14

dangalf helped. you didn’t. what you wrote did not address the particular difficulty i was having. thanks for trying but it didn’t help.

now i have been helped. so chill out.

jin

#15

I was having the exact same issues with polypaint (couldnt use alphas, unless zadd/zsub was on, but could paint regularly with the freehand brush). Im not too sure why, but all I did was exit and restart zbrush and it seemed to work just fine.

#16

I am actually having the same issue. I disabled UVs, generated new UVs (AUV and GUV), colorized, and restarted. I tried it with a fresh polymesh instead of the ztl I was working on. Nothing helped. It worked fine with that tool on another machine.

I eneded up reinstalling and now it works. Could it be a plug in is causing the trouble?

Thanks.