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Texture vs. Material question.

ZBrush Artworks
#1

Hello fellow explorerZ,

Until now I’ve primarily been using ZB for modeling and porting the model to Lightwave for surfacing and rendering. Since getting 1.5, I’m determined to get a handle on that process in ZB.

I am coming to a better understanding of how to use materials and textures, but still have some confusion. I understand materials control surface attributes such as diffuse, specularity, and reflection and color bump. However, am I wrong in thinking that textures only contain color information which is utilized by materials. My confusion arises from reading discussions here which seem to explain it that way, and then in my working through the Texture Master Rhino tutorial I read a statement in the PDF file which contradicts that understanding. The statement is on page 21. When painting the back of the rhino it states that you don’t need to worry about material since that has already become part of the texture. Is that telling me that the materials attributes are now stored in the texture? I’m not sure I’m explaining this very well. My understanding is currently in a tailspin.

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Bob

#2

When using Texture Master with the ‘M’ (materials) spot selected it will save the materials as well as the colors when you save your object. Just be sure that if you have overwritten any materials with a custom one or modified a material that in your document the materials are all in the same place. Hope this helps.

#3

Something that is very unique to ZBrush is that the texture can contain materials – however, they will only work the way you expect them to in ZBrush since they can’t be exported to another program.

To convert the material-shaded color to actual RGB color (which you can export), you’d need to fill the layer with the texture and then use the MRGBZGrabber with PickShaded selected. This will create a new texture that can be exported with material-generated colors included. It won’t include properties like reflectivity, however.

As you can imagine, when working in ZBrush it’s very nice to be able to apply several diffent materials to the same object as an embedded channel within the texture!

#4

Thanks for the replies. I did some more playing around and think I have a handle on it. But I have one more question or point I would like clarification on, just to make sure I’m understand things correctly.

It seems from my experimentation that the texture does not actually store the material itself, but mearly a pointer to the materials position in the material list. Is this correct? That would agree with Tag’s post.

An example as I understand it now. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I create some custom materials and use them in a texture on a tool. Now I want to use that tool, texture and materials on my other machine with ZB.

  1. I’ve got to save the tool with imbedded texture.
  2. Save each custom material.
  3. On my other machine load the custom materials into the same slots they were in before.
  4. Load and use the Tool.

Is that it?

Thanks for the help.

  • Bob
#5

That is correct. The material modifiers are not saved as a part of the texture. Only the slot that they occupy.

A very good point to bring up! :+1: