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Baking Matcaps vid tutorial no worky with 3.5 / r3?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I’ve tried out the video tutorial on the “Homeroom” titled “Baking Matcaps to Texture Maps with Joeseph Drust”, where he does many things with Image Plane to bake a MatCap to a texture map… yet either I am missing about fifty steps, or that tutorial is not compatible with ZB3.5r3

Is there anyone that can explain it better, or am I pretty much SOL as it, in fact, will not work with the new version? Or is there even a step by step explaination, so I can see where I’m messing up without having to interpret the slightly echo-ey dialogue?

#2

hi Valandar

I haven’t seen the tutorial, but a method I use is to select the flat shader before proceeding to capture your material.

The flat shader will allow you to export the material texture, looks like a ball.

In maya i assign this to the colour of a surface shader via an environment ball.

Then using maya software i bake the colour to a map. (in the hypershade convert to file texture)

There are methods for doing this within zbrush but if not working for you (and you happen to be using maya) this should do the trick. Although other 3d apps should be able to do the something similar.

hope that helps.

#3

Not exactly what I mean.

This tutorial uses ImagePlane, and displacement maps to get the funky shading and crevice effects, among other things, found in a ZB Matcap into a baked out texture map.

I’ve seen another method, using Zapplink, but this one was different:

1 ) Bake your displacement map, have colored diffuse already done

2 ) (Here’s where I screw up somehow) Load the displacement map and diffuse map onto an image plane, and play with displacement settings (which, for some reason, I can’t get it to do)

3 ) Capture the result, export as new map with funky effects.

It’s one of the videos “below the fold”, with a funky cephalopod on the picture.

#4

1 ) Bake your displacement map, have colored diffuse already done

-Zbrush will only be able to edit 16bit disp maps

2 ) (Here’s where I screw up somehow) Load the displacement map and diffuse map onto an image plane, and play with displacement settings (which, for some reason, I can’t get it to do)

-You could also try fill canvas, under the colour menu, this will fill the canvas with the colour, material and alpha you have selected.

3 ) Capture the result, export as new map with funky effects.

-yeah either from the menus or MRGBZGrabber (although this may crop image depending on how much of the canvas is used).

I would also add
-resize your canvas to a square resolution 2048 x 2048 etc…
-make sure your uvs aren’t overlapping and give them a 4 pixel gutter/bleed.
-the plane is polygonal and therefore resolution dependent, with the fill canvas method you have no resolution dependency, and since the canvas can utilies the zdepth for 2.5D operations an alternative would be to use projection master to add further detail to your maps (unfortunantly limited to 16bit).

Sounds like an interesting tutorial, will have to give it a go.
Hope fully my suggestion is more on the right track :wink:

good luck

#5

Sounds good!

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…if I was at all confident about what you’re saying. Really, other than sculpting hi-res models and using ZB to create morph targets and reshape mid poly figures, I’m still somewhat of an amateur here… :smiley:

#6

[QUOTE=]
2 ) (Here’s where I screw up somehow) Load the displacement map and diffuse map onto an image plane, and play with displacement settings (which, for some reason, I can’t get it to do)
[/QUOTE]I think the step you’re missing is load the displacement map as a mask before displacing… otherwise your displacing the entire plane by the same amount.

At least I think that’s it, I know the technique you’re talking about, but it’s been awhile since I’ve done it.

#7

Okay. Load it where and how?

#8

Oh…

Bring in your displacement map as an alpha.

Then under tool>Masking… hit “Mask By Alpha”.
Then under tool>Deformation… offset with only the z highlighted.

If I remember correctly I usually went with 50 or -50, but feel free to play around with the exact amount to offset.

You also might want to subdivide a few times before masking to give your plane enough resolution.

#9

I can get he map to displace, however its holding any of the material info.

Anyone had any luck with this?

#10

I have been wondering the same thing, this question has been been like a virus in my pipeline! Has anyone figured it out yet?