ZBrushCentral

Continious or seamless texture problem

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi Everyone!

A while ago Aurick showed me and some other people how to make
continuous textures using nothing but Zbrush.
Its awesome (And thank you Aurick!!!)… and yes you guessed it:
I have a slight snag:
No mater what I do I cant get a small artifact to go away, its a thin
gray line that shows up on the edges of the canvas no mater what I
do, here is an example of one such image wrapped onto another object:

problem_001.jpg
problem_001.jpg1600×848 260 KB

I have tried using different backgrounds, like an object, a flat color
filled layer and stuff like that with no luck (also it seems to have
nothing to do with the background), any help would be thrilling,
I could make some very cool stuff with this if I could make that
ine stop!

Thanks!!!
Mealea

Ps: Hya Zber!

#2

ok I think I know what it is, but I cant get rid of it.
It looks like its the the “document border”.
I can change its color but so far it wont go away.

#3

If I remember correctly you have to make your canvas 1 pixel bigger in X and Y then crop the extra pixel off.

#4

Interesting… and sort of working… but its also very tricky as I haven’t got photoshop…
However while it did get rid of the line, I still have a substantial “ripple” I guess you could call it making the texture less than seamless… its very odd as it looks perfect in Zbrush to the point where I have no idea where thee actual edge is, if I could keep it that way I would be thrilled!
I will keep at it, I am seriously determined to get this working!

Thanks!
Mealea

#5

Hya Mealea! :slight_smile:

When making seamless textures in ZBrush, don’t paint right to the edge. It’s important that you know where the edges of your canvas are. Zoom out a bit so you can see the edges. Follow these steps. Paint on the canvas but stay a bit in from the edges. Hold down tilde (~) key and drag on the canvas to move it. Paint some more, staying in from the edges, then hold down tilde key and move the canvas again. Keep doing that until you are happy with the result. Have fun! :slight_smile:

#6

When you are happy with your texture there are two things to do:

  1. In the Layer palette, slide the Displace Z slider all the way to the left (-8192).
  2. Do a Best Render.

Then export your image by pressing Document>Export.

It’s essential to use Best Render so you don’t get lines at the top and bottom of the image. Moving the Layer forward gets rid of artefacts that can occur along the edges (though there can still be artifacts if your image has a lot of shadow).

Note: you can’t use AA Half for seamless textures because the anti-aliasing will change the color of the pixels at the edges. For this reason you also can’t use Soft RGB.

HTH,

#7

Zber2!!! Your back!!! Yaaaay!!! :slight_smile:

#8

Originally posted by Nancyan:

Zber2!!! Your back!!! Yaaaay!!!

Hi Nancyan! Just temporarily to help out Mealea. I’ll pop in on occasion though. :slight_smile:

#9

Thanks Marcus! :+1:

#10

I’ve deleted my previous post as I have written a little plugin to handle seamless textures. It should produce perfect results for most situations and there’s no need to use Best render. I’ve posted it here:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showpost.php?p=848052&postcount=37

#11

@ Zber: You are leaving? What have I missed? And you came back to help ME??? THANK YOU!!!
As to the edge, I know that bit and I dont, I am very careful about that, in fact I have tested it as hard as I can and still get that eevviill creeping sneaky bad line…
I conducted a very simple test:


  1. Open Zbrush.
  2. Fill with flat color (in layer pallet as per Auricks instructions).
  3. Move canvas using ~ key.
  4. Export image.
I still got the line with NO drawing at all. (the unwanted line in this case was black or dark gray)
In a second tst I did roughly the same thing only instead of making a completely new document I hit Control N and replaced an existing drawing, this one resulted in the same line only this time it was made of two rows of pixel (or pixols) at the top of the image. Very odd.
Could this be a bug?
You not seriously leaving are you? And if so where and for how long and why and and and… ???

@ Nancyan: /me grins! I bet I know why you are interested in this subject!

@ Marcus: Thankyou! Im going to try that thing you made RIGHT NOW, I will be back as fast as possible!
Im bouncing off the walls!

THANKS!

#12

@ Marcus:
My initial test (done VERY sloppy and quick) came out nearly perfect, there is a very very hard to find line but I think that is a rendering issue more than anything…
Your plugin works EXCEEDINGLY well! Thank you! Brilliant work!

More in a moment, I have a bunch of testing to do!

GRIN!!!

#13

It works so close to flawlessly its amazing!

Here is a simple (and as far as I can see perfect) example of your plugin:

RGBGrab02.jpg

If I am right about what Nancyan is up to, you may have just made her rather wealthy in the metaverse.
/me pokes Nancyan in the bellybutton!

Anyhow, thank you very very much, this is a seriously great little tool:
One button = instant happiness!
Just out of curiosity, how did you do this?

More after more messing about and testing and other chaos, I need to try using this on a tentacle monster in OsGrid and see if how it looks!

GRIN!!!

#14

I’m glad you like it. :slight_smile: The lines/artefacts are mostly caused by shadows at the edge of the image. The plugin simply automates a method that would be tedious to do by hand - it tiles and enlarges the image before cropping back to the original size so that there is no ‘edge’ to cause shadow artefacts.

#15

If ONLY I could make a bundle in the metaverse…I have absolutely NO discipline, Mealea! Just doing it cause I can’t stop myself!!! And yes, this is very interesting.
/me pokes Mealea back :slight_smile: and laughs!

Thanks so much for yet another fantastic plug-in Marcus!!

#16

Thanks Marcus I have been wanting to do seamless textures for some time and put it of because my PS skills are limited…

This works perfectly.