Hello,
I’m doing a 2.5D painting in ZBrush 2. The painting consists of 2 layers. I selected the second layer, chose the simple brush and made sure that ZAdd and RGB modes were selected.
I then hit Merge and all the modifications I made disappear. The modifications on layer 2 were done using the Colourize, Highlight and eraser brushes.
I have saved the file with the two layers, so all I have to do is select the 2nd layer and Merge. Any other tips ?
Actually, you want Zadd and Mrgb to be selected, with the intensities at 100.
Let me know if that does the trick.
Hi Matthew,
No it doesn’t, same thing.
I’ve even tried restarting ZBrush 2, but to no avail.
I suspect that what is happening has to do with shaded RGB vs. unshaded RGB. The brushes that you mention affect the unshaded color. When you merge the layers, the areas where you have used those brushes are being changed to another material. This is then hiding the work that you’ve done with the correction brushes.
Try baking both layers before you merge them.
Hello Matthew,
Tried baking but did not work. I’ll try and give a bit more background on the problem.
I have a scene called “Darkness”. It’s one layer with nearly all the light removed. I created this by selecting a very dark blue and covering the whole scene with the rectangular stroke. I then reduced the RGB intensity slightly.
I then duplicated the layer and created the sunlight using the colourise and highlight brushes. I then erased back any objects that were in shadow (which is why I created the layer) and named this “Sunlight01”.
It was my intention then to Merge down the layers and call the file “Sunlight02”.
In order to help the test, I tried the following:
TEST 1: Using the “Darkness” file:
TEST 2: Using the “Darkness” File
Hope this helps.
Oh yes, the only reason I duplicated the layer, is because I need to erase back to the image and not to the canvas. If there is another way of doing this without having to create a duplicate layer then this would certainly help.
Another question ! If I Bake a layer, perform paint strokes then erase back some of those paint strokes, is the eraser supposed to erase back to the original canvas colour or to the baking I just performed ?
Yet another question! I could in theory leave the layer and not merge down at all, however I have learn’t not to keep many layers at all as this can hurt the performance of your system. Does this apply in ZBrush 2 ?
Sorry for all these questions !!
After you have duplicated the layer, move the new one closer to the camera. You can do this by entering a negative value into the Z slider in the Layer palette. This will avoid conflict caused by the two layers sharing the same depth, and they will therefore merge as expected.
This is only needed when you use brushes that do not change the ZDepth already, which is why your first test worked fine and your second didn’t. The Highlight brush does not by default change depth.
The rule is that the first layer has priority when pixols share the same depth. So another option is to switch the order of the layers before merging them.
Regarding your second question, ZBrush performs exactly the same while working with 2 layers as it would with 8. The only time you will notice any difference is when switching between layers. In this case, the time it takes to switch layers will depend upon the number and size of the layers vs. the amount of RAM that you have.
Hello Matthew,
Yes that worked ! FANTASTIC Support. 
Many Thanks.
I discovered something when playing with Z slider in the layer palette, particularly when 2D Painting. The problem in entering a negative Z layer on layer 2 is that you have to guess each time, because you don’t know how far layer 1 is from the camera.
A better solution would be to select layer 1 and enter a positive Z value, eg. 0.5. When you do this, layer 2 then shows through (because layer 1 is further from the camera). You can then re-select layer 2 and merge down safely.
When I merge down and bake (so I now only have just the one layer), is the Z Layer now reset back to zero or in my example at 0.5 ?
You can tell the depth of any pixol at any time by opening the Transform>Info menu. When none of the gyros is active, the sliders in this menu will show the coordinates of the pixol currently under the mouse.
When you enter a negative value into the Layer Z slider, the layer will be moved toward the camera by the number of pixols that you enter. If Layer 2 is a duplicate of Layer 1, then a value of -1 will move every pixol on Layer 2 to be a single pixol closer than their equivalent on Layer 1. It really doesn’t matter what the depth is, since when you duplicate the layer all of the pixols will initially be at exactly the same depth as for Layer 1.