Going Bonkers, Cannot Get Simple Texture Or Anything To Work!!

[system]

Hello Zbrush world,

I think I am about to lose my marbles because nothing seems to work on my model. I have invested a lot of time sculpting and modeling it. No trouble there. BUT....I can't get it to generate a decent texture map! I can't get in to ZMapper,

Here is what I do:

1. My model seems to already have UVs. So I bake them, colr>texture, and save the model as well as the texture When I open it in Maya, however, and take a look at the UV editor, it looks like a train wreck…and the model doesn’t look right.

2. I tried mapping out the UV’s using AUV tile AND GUV. Neither work. When I follow procedure and open it in Maya. the damn thing looks like it is covered in postage stamps. I know how to UV map my model with a third party application, but I do not know how to reimport the same map into Zbrush nor do I know how to “link it up” with the polypainting job I already have.

3. I can’t even get in to ZMapper. I keep getting a message on my screen that I have to follow a long procedure involving polygroups. It says it detects multiple UV regions. It says to go to tool palette> UV groups>Frame, but when I get to UV groups NOTHING happens. I don’t seem to have any polygroups to begin with…I got the original mesh as a freebie .obj from an old friend…

All I want to do is bake my polypainting into a texture, and eventually generate a displacement map and also a normal map. I have about 5 divisions of geometry and I have two other models in the hopper that I have to finish-soon. I really, really need help because this is the part where I always fall down (even though the models look great in Zbrush!!!)

HEEELLLP!!!

[aurick]

1) Pictures Help

2) Are you remembering to flip your textures vertically when you go between ZBrush and Maya? And by the way, AUVTiles and GUVTiles DO look like the model’s covered in postage stamps – if you only look at the unwrapped texture. But when you apply the texture to the model (assuming you’ve flipped it vertically) your texture will look right. The human eye can’t make much sense out of tiles-type mapping, but the computer doesn’t see it the same way we do.

3) This error is happening because your UV’s aren’t entirely within the 0,0 to 1,1 region. ZMapper is detecting overlap. If your intent is to have multiple texture maps, you need to break the model into separate groups for each map. Go to level 1 and press Tool>Polygroups>Uv Groups. This will assign groups based on the UV regions. Then press Tool>SubTool>GrpSplit to break the model into a separate SubTool for each region. You’ll now be able to create normal maps for each SubTool. If you did not want multiple texture maps, then your UV’s aren’t laid out right.

[system]

Aurick,

First, I have some images of what I have made. I opened up my original file (I have done no prep work for Maya in this file, thanks be to God I save every little nugget of progress :).) As you can see, in the plain model picture I have been working like a dog on the polypainting here-I don’t want to waste it!! The second picture shows what happens when I pressed the UV groups button. It shows a lot of multiple “patches” as you can see. To be absolutely clear, I do not need multiple texture maps on this thing. (He looks just peachy as is.)

The third picture is what my texture window looks like. As you can see, Enable UV is switched on. I am going to the texture menu and creating a new one at 2048x2048. I am going down to the lowest subdivision level to create AUV tiles, then up to the highest one to do color>texture in the texture menu. I flip the texture vertically like you said, and then I save it as a jpeg. I delete the very low level as it has next to nil helpful geometry. I export level two of my now four level model and open it in Maya 2008. Looks nice, yes? (It is at the level 2 so I can put on a normal map for level 4.)

Now, good sir, for the billion dollar question…What do I do now if I want a normal map? How do I go about that (details, please)? Should I opt for a displacement map or a normal map or both, and if so, how do I do this? Where do I go from here!!!

Need advice,

shadowcat

PS-What do you think about how it looks? (Like I said earlier, I am fabulous at the sculpting and the painting, but always fall down at output [for me this is the holy grail as nobody believes me when I say I can make very cool models if I want to because nobody ever gets to see them on my demo reels. :o

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