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Exporting modified textures from Spotlight directly

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Greetings! I think Spotlight is a great tool for doing certain types of image editing, but sometimes I don’t want to use it to paint an object, I’d just like to export the image back out. I’ve figured out a couple of ways to do it, one is very kludgy: I just screengrab and then crop the image but of course this limits max resolution to that of my monitor. A higher quality method is I paint it onto a sufficiently hi-res plane, then make texture from polypaint which can then be exported. But that’s a lot of steps and not an elegant solution.

Is there any way to export a modified texture either directly from spotlight, or to save the modifications to the original texture and then export that texture? Seems like there must be a more direct way to accomplish this that I’m just not seeing.

Alternately is there any 3rd party software that can parse an exported Spotlight collection. That would be just as good but I feel it’s unlikely.

Thanks in advance!

#2

create a plane,
Texture your plane as you see fit.
change your document size to be as large as you want, 2k, 4k, etc

zoom out of your document to ensure you’re using all of it
frame your plane

export out your document.

hope this helps.

#3

This helps, thanks. It seems like fewer steps than my “paint then texture-from-polypaint” and feels more efficient than my previous “solution”.

One thing that confuses me is that the ‘Add to Spotlight’ icon has a ‘+’ and ‘-’ symbol on it, making it seem like clicking it again would remove the edited texture from Spotlight back to the texture tray. The icon makes promises it doesn’t keep! Hopes dashed…

#4

If you want to remove images you can do in the Spotlight dial. There is an icon with a cross for delete from the stack

#5

Thanks, I meant in the texture palette there’s a button called “Add to Spotlight” that looks like it would bring images in and out of Spotlight (but it only adds to spotlight, at least for now). I’d hoped that meant an easy workflow for bringing edited images out of Spotlight back into the texture palette for exporting, without the trouble of creating a plane, subdividing it and painting it, then exporting through some method. As far as I can tell, the “remove” or “delete” function on the dial simply vanishes the image into the ether, never to be seen again barring an “undo”.

In the meantime I am just painting a plane and exporting the doc, which is probably good enough for practical purposes. It is a functionality I’d love to see added in a future release. Zbrush does it all, why not one more?

#6

Do this:

  1. In the Texture palette, select the original texture (that you have modified in Spotlight).
  2. Press the ‘Add To Spotlight’ button.

The texture should be removed from Spotlight and the original updated in the Texture palette to reflect the changes. You can then export as usual.

#7

Thanks Marcus! Another tip for the ZBible:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:small_orange_diamond:+1:

#8

YES! This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for. I quickly experimented just now and was able to get it to work when doing saturation and hue adjustments. I haven’t been able to get it to work with a texture that’s been “nudged” but I’ll experiment and see if its user error, or maybe I was at the wrong subdivision level, etc. There’s a better than average chance I’m overlooking something based on a previous lifetime’s experience :wink:

Thanks so much for this info, I’d failed to find it anywhere in the manual or the tutorials or forums. But the tutorial descriptions had a tantalizing reference to the ability to do it. Plus the time spent learning workarounds was well-spent, still a newbie with Zbrush and there’s lots to learn.

EDIT:
I’ve been unable to get a texture back out with any nudge modifications intact, but other changes are being kept which already represents major progress.

I’m going to re-read the manual and watch the tutes on the nudge tool to see if I’ve overlooked anything. Specifically, I’m wondering if there is any way to “bake” the nudge mods to the texture in a manner similar to alt-turning the Restore dial? That’s actually what got me into this issue to start, was looking for a good workflow for using the nudge tool, then re-importing the nudged image to do further nudges. Nudge.

Thanks for the quick and useful help, though – even when I think I’ve got one tiny corner of the program figured out I realize there’s lots to learn. If the nudge mods should show up in the texture when it’s removed again from spotlight, I’d appreciate any guidance on what exactly needs to happen first. I feel I’ve tried all combinations I can think of and would at this point be satisfied even if the the answer “Can’t do that”.

I did discover that alt-turning the Restore dial when nothing but a nudge has been performed results in an Abnormal termination. Incidentally, this is a separate issue from the Abnormal Term arising when trying to use nudge without a tool loaded and on the canvas in Edit mode from the best I can observe.

Thanks, nudge.
Thudge.