I came across something odd in my workflow, and I wonder if anyone has run into the same problem while using polypaint with layers, as well as the spray/color spray.
It is quite integral to the workflow so finding this caused massive issues, and lots of workarounds have been tried to solve it.
Any tips, tricks, recommendations, problem-solving, rubber-ducking, validation in other versions would be very welcome and much appreciated.
@floon has been kind to act as a rubber-duck with me trying to solve, or at least getting to the root of the problem, but weâre stuck. Although it seems to be something to do with the color variation.
We started noticing strange âhard ghosting edgesâ in the painting we did on layers.
Left is showing the painting, with spray, on a layer, to the right is the same settings but not on a layer. The right is how we expect it to look on a layer too.
So I tried to test some things to work around this.
1 - no painting under, getting confetti/edges/alpha/outlining.
2 - painting with the same colour Iâll paint with after, then erase the area to âclean itâ of any underlying artifacts. (painting and erasing with alternate off)
3 - painting on top of the clean area, no problem right? looking nice and neatâŠ
4 - me thinking, lets try this with neon colour. paint and then erase, same steps as before
5 - getting an outline around the painting instead.
When exporting with the alpha channel (new texture from polypaint when layer is in record, no other layer visible) I got strange results again. Before I always just got the funky disco colours, but not the painted outline. Although it looked like the painted outline wasnât in the alpha, so I thought it might have been ok anyway. alpha seemed quite clean in photoshop.
However, when the alpha is applied, the outline is still there.
And as you can see, the hard edges/artifacts follow through the export as well. So it is definitely something happening in Zbrush.
Another added thing we found was the added problem with the exported texture that anywhere it had been âpainted and cleanedâ for the alpha to work properly, it was actually exported with a 1% alpha.
Ofc this might not seem like much in one layer, but when it starts to be more than one layer and said layer might be duplicated in photoshop too, well then it is definitely noticeable.
Weâve tried clamping the alpha, painting out/erasing, and sure, while things might work haltingly in the short run, it is something that we just cannot deal with in the long run.
just for funsies as well.
I tried painting two patches, different colours, erasing both, and then painting over them to see if that would be any different. Turns out, both had an outline of the last painted colour (neon pink) rather then the two individual colours that you can see in the previous image.
So yeah, anyone that has any info about this, or can help validate in other versions, or can try other solutions⊠very much appreciated!
Iâm getting a headache from all the head-against-the-wall that Iâve had over the last couple of weeks with this.
Versions tried so far with the same problem:
4r7
4r8 p2
2018.1
2019
Thank you for taking your time to read this, and sorry for the long post!