ZBrushCentral

Fill object with tileable texture/alpha

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,

i can´t find a proper way of filling an object with a tileable texture.
There are numerous occasions i could think of, where i would want to do this to create bumps etc.
In my case, it´s for a chainmail.
For something like fabric i might get away with manually applying the texture with dracrect, but for something like this chainmail that really wouldn´t look good.
The only way i could think of was to load an image into noisemaker.
Unfortunately that gave me some fine stretching, but behold! There is the UV Button.
Wich unfortunately doesn´t do what i want, but something weird, wich doesn´t look like the texture at all…

So any ideas on what i´m doing wrong with noise maker or how to achieve this differently, without using an external app?

#2

You were on the right trail with Noisemaker and the UV button, but the results should depend largely on your UV layout (stretched UVs would stretch how the texture gets applied; UV Master normally keeps things nice and consistent). Also, while it will be seamless from one face to another, UV seams can be a different story so you’ll have to try and match them to where clothing seams would normally separate fabric, or if there are any other bits of armor/surcoats/etc to hide them under).

Here’s one example of Noisemaker for Chainmail: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?161159-ZBrush-4R2-Betatesting-By-Geert-Melis

#3

Huh. Weird. UVs should be ok, i laid them out in 3ds max.
Thanks for the link, funny thing: The texture i am using is exactly the one from the tutorial link…found it somewhere else on the internet…

I didn´t set uv smooth slider to 100 like in the tutorial, maybe that´ll fix my problem.
Or it´s because of the texture format, for some reason i converted it to jpeg.
It just looks like a completely different texture when applied…

#4

Ok, so i checked again and something is wrong with the UVs…
Played around with the scale and then i could see, that the texture is actually applied, but seems to be stretched alot.
Wich is strange, since there is no visible stretching at all, when i apply it in 3ds max.
I´m getting the feeling that zbrush doesn´t like Max´s UVs…

#5

I’ve never experienced UV problems when they originate from Max. I’m willing to bet it’s a setting somewhere, probably in the Noisemaker dialog. Did you press the Uv button (just below the Open, Save, and Copy buttons near the top) so it switches from 3d preview to Uv preview instead? Also check your X, Y, and Z scaling.

Edit: I was talking about the buttons inside of Noisemaker, not anything having to do with UV Master just to be clear. It was hard to decipher which UV button you were talking about exactly so maybe you’ve already tried that. The 3d preview button projects based on the orientation of the object in relation to the screen within the preview window only (you may need to reorient the mesh using the shift key to snap, then close and reopen Noisemaker or just reload the alpha map to reset), while the Uv preview button projects based on UV layout. If the UV’s are correct, then it should be projecting properly. If it’s not, then yeah something is wrong with your UV’s and you may want to try editing them in another app. One thing that just occurred to me to ask is whether or not you’re using multiple UV sets? I suppose that could be the culprit too if you are (using the wrong set).

#6

yeah, i meant the uv switch in noise maker.

You know the feeling that you followed every step and still you seem to get problems no one else experiences?
Lately i seem to have these problems all the time…

The thing i don´t understand is, why the tiling works just fine inside max.
Another approach would be to just bake out the tiled map in 3ds max and use that as a mask in zbrush, but then i can´t seem to get a fine enough map, even when using a 4 k map.

And no, on that subtool i´m not using multiple Uv spaces.

For now i just used two layers and the 3D option in noisemaker and then blended the projections with the morph brush.
It´s not perfect, but still better then the uv option.

I´m gonna try it with a different subtool to see if it´s a general problem.

Another problem when using the UV switch in noisemaker: The noise comes out very faint, even when i crank it all the way up.

#7

ok, it´s just a problem with that particular UV set, it works fine on my other subtools.
Still weird, since i already tried unwrapping it with UV master and i still get the stretching.
And the noise is also still very faint compared to 3D mode.