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Zbrush 2.5d for game texture?

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#1

Hi,
It has been a very long time since my last post, I am looking for more examples on the use of 2.5D texturing meant for game production, not for me but for those who prejudge Zbrush by just reading the trouble shoot section and think that it is no better than ‘Photoshop’ or probably never even heard of ‘Painter’.

There is not enough good example to show these people what 16bit alpha channel means and pixol vs pixel.

I feel sory for these idiots but on the other hand, Pixologic have not emphersize the practical use of Zbrush in video games.

Thank you.

#2

Cool site :cool:
Pilou

#3

Seeing as the next release of Zbrush will be 2.5 hopefully the folks at pixologic will plug in their marketing brains and link the 2.5d pixols of Zbrush with release 2.5!? :wink: The biggest problem about using ZBrush for game textures is there isnt any easy way to export materials/textures from ZBrush. There is a bake material plugin but that isnt 100% accurate. As long as ZBrush 2.5 features a fully working export materials/textures option I see no reason why the next release shouldnt be hyped up as a game developers product.

#4

Hi Pilou and Maggot,
I’m new to game model texturing, the entire painting process from 2.5 to 3d and back to 2.5 again is already good enough to suppliment an ordinary 2d paint program, many does not realize that you should create a larger texture in Z and rescale later as required.

Instead of baking radiosity with vertex paint, lighting with Zbrush is much more realistic, don’t you think? Everyone is playing with hi-res than low res for work.

Hopfully I will find some time off to create some samples but currenty have to abide to their rules, or perhaps they are afraid that I will shame them.:smiley: :td:

#5

To do textures for games u need an image file eg tga jpg or png, zbrush doesnt seem to have a way to save textures/materials as a picture file-this is different to taking a snapshot of the document/material/texture as zBrush fits the texture to the uv map(this is done invisibly to the user). Once u have this image file, that can be used as the texture for that particular mesh/model. Ive attached a typical material captured by material baker. This is the sort of image which would be used as a skin texture on a human model in a game.
[ZTexture02.JPG]
Do you see the blockiness?This isnt due to the resolution of the capture entirely, it is mainly due to material baker not being 100% accurate.If the next release of Zbrush has an export map function that writes to image files, then people can start using it as game textures, but going from my example, its got a way to go.

#6

Seems like your UV mesh is not optimised, we only use 128/256 texture size and mostly tile with one to cover whole character and separate parts are added in like this picture:
dino_arm.jpg

#7

Thank you so much for your obj files filip. I am a hobbyist and am looking for good samples to learn with. Your OBJ files give me the chance to try out texturing on an object which will look nice at the end. I am growing into ZBrush slowly and am a bit overwhelmed by all the functions. Your files give me the oportunity to focus on a certain issue. In my case texturing. THANKS!

I am making Counter Strike levels, and Unreal Tournament levels. I always used ‘organic’ structures compared to the ‘boxy’ worlds others create. My levels are usually somewhat prefered over the other by players. My buildings look more than Hundertwasser buidlings than the 1000’s copy of an officec building. I am thrilled by the possibilities ZB is giving me compred to the box oriented tools I used previously. I’ll post pictures of my first ZB enhanced level. I am not much of a player but the game engines with their immense posibilities have been my animation tool for a while now. Till major packages came down in price (XSI4.2).

Sorry for rambling :wink:
LemonNado