Some workflow questions - starting Z

[Dogway]

First off I have an issue removing a submenu, ctrl+alt+click and renaming the submenu to blank won’t delete the submenu as it does to menus.

Is there a way to crop an alpha? or in other words edit the alpha spacing within Zbrush without stretching the alpha. I see that LazySteps is what usually works, but that’s not what happens when I use the StitchBasic brush.

Another thing I’m trying to pulloff is to sculpt stitches and at the same time create a matID, basically painting the stitch as red. The problem is color fades as the alpha reaches 0 (or mid value), before the stitch hides into the mesh, so I tried applying a mask like “texture”, without Z information, but this also goes premultiplied by the selected alpha. Any idea? I wan’t to avoid using mesh because I also want to scultp holes at the same time.

Finally what you find is a good workflow for prop modeling in VFX? Sculpt and retopo, or model (in maya) then sculpt. Thanks!

[Altea]

For clearing a submenu check what it says, clear the name to delete the submenu

About VFX, I don’t think there is any difference with other kind of modeling. I would say avoid sculpting whatever can be done simply modeling (furniture etc) and leave the sculpting for areas rather organic, as organic decoration and concepting. You don’t need to sculpt a normal chair. This will give you a useable geometry without any retopology.

About the other two issues they would need examples to clarify what is going on.

[Dogway]

Thanks for the reply.

If I clear the submenu name, it simply shows blank, but won’t delete as shown in the image.

As for the alpha, what I want is to narrow the stitch to stitch gap, or in other words, crop vertically so the stitches are closer. AFAIK this is commonly done with LazySteps, but for some reason when using this brush the effect is different. I’m trying to bring some stitch variation without going to photoshop every time.

For the stitch sculpt and mask (or mask ID) if I use a color as suggested in other threads I get premultiplied color, so when the stitch sculpt fades into the mesh, so does the color (see image). The same happens when using a stitch ID as a texture. An alternative I thought up would be to pack alpha and mask as an RGB texture and paint the stitches in Substance, the workflow done in XYZ skin textures, then export both R and G channels, one to feed as bump, or layer in Zbrush, and the other for ID. the issue is I would need to export very big textures with very wide UVs in the 0,1 range for the stitch to retain some detail.

[Altea]

About removing submenus you can remove them draguing all his items out or to another place that is not inside that menu. Then an empty bar will appear below the title bar and in that moment can be dragged out.

The rename system looks very buggy-broken. Sometimes won’t even allow rename at all.

[Altea]

About the crop, if what you are asking is specifically a way to crop an alpha, as the generic idea of crop, there is a way but is convoluted. It forces you to copy the alpha as texture, export it as JPG that will give you the option to crop it and then import it again as alpha.

Assuming you modify alphas: Select the alpha and use the button make texture.

Now go to the texture menu and select the new texture

Export it as JPG

That will give you the option to crop (and other edit options)

And then you can re import again as an alpha

But there are not options to dynamically crop the alpha in a non destructive way, as the tile option in the alpha menu. There is a way to fade out the edges but it will have an oval shape instead rectangular.

[Altea]

About the seams, would not be better if you simply do the seams (bump and color) in Substance painter without the need of sending it back to Zbrush?

https://cubebrush.co/substancetools/products/pe4tsa/stitches-seams

Another option is using a insert curve mesh for the seams in Zbrush instead an alpha. That won’t have any problem to keep the color.

[Dogway]

Thanks a lot Altea, emptying the submenu worked a treat, how odd.

I tried searching for the Export Image options in ZBrush, where is it located? Is it in the textures menu? It might work for me, if it saves me opening another application.

The stitch workflow in Painter is what I referred as the XYZ workflow, I didn’t find any details on the alphas included on your link so I would rather build my own. I want yarn twisting for each stitch and holes or indentations where the stitch starts so that rules out the curve mesh. I will run tests on Substance Painter and export as 8K, although I think 8K is not shown for cards like mine (750 Ti, yes I gotta update).

I also read a workflow where one could record painting a stitch stroke, then change the alpha or something and replay the action, but I’m not sure how that works if it ever works at all.

[Altea]

For the alpha editing I used the alpha library window and the textures library window. Basically the make texture button transfer the Alpha (that is only a grayscale image, not an alpha channel) to the texture library. There it can be exported as JPG that automatically will open the editing options. These editing options only will appear if you choose JPG. It can do more things apart of crop, including the quality of the JPG

[Altea]

Perhaps you know this video about using colors. But I not quite sure if it works OK.

I simply leave the brush with a flat color (no texture) and this avoids the problem. But you need to deal with the MidValue that in specific case I set as 61 and not always you will get the optimum value for something like this, it depends of the alpha.
This example is from the alphas-brushes come from here, that I just have bought. It was only 4$. But those doesn’t have any color. You need to set it manually and I guess depending of the brush will be more or less successful.

ZBrush - 35 Seam/Stitch Brushes

If this is done with white and black you could extract a mask that can be edited further in photoshop, making it more incense or colorize it. This would allow to use it in Substance Painter.

Another example with a different brush. You can intensify the contrast adding more layers, duplicating the layer and leaving only the polypaint to avoid doing more intense the RGB. But perhaps doing this in photoshop gives more control

If you want to test this simply go to your own brush, leave the color as a flat color, no texture, and play a bit with the Midvalue, typically 54-64. Even if you see it fading a bit you always can do it more intense in Photoshop to reduce the fade. Nobody is going to get as near to a stitch as in your screenshot, you simply need to do it a bit better.
In this case I simply used it as a alpha for materials

[Dogway]

Yes, my bad I exported as .PSD, didn’t know exporting as JPG was required. This workflow suits me when lazysteps doesn’t want to work.

As for the stitches, I will go the Substance Painter route with custom stitches as I want close ups and photorealism. Maybe I can sculpt a stitch or two and from there get the displacement and edit it in Photoshop to also build the alpha.

Thanks for the help!