ZBrushCentral

Painting/Texturing Blender Created Model

I have a fairly simple ship model that I created in Blender, which is intended for use in a small video game. I’m currently using the latest trial version of Zbrush (at the suggestion of a friend) to see if it can accomplish the texturing portion.

I have a basic understanding of Blender (after going through a good number of tutorials for it), but extremely little knowledge of Zbrush (most of the tutorials for this program have left me more confused than enlightened). I finally stumbled across the PolyPainting tutorials that are linked through the Help option at the top of the program and thought I’d found exactly what I needed. Unfortunately, I cannot get the “finished” textures to work properly.

I followed the steps of the Painting a Head tutorial, using my ship model as the base. Everything seemed to go fine until I got to the section “Converting Poly Painting into a Texture Map”. Here, I found that I could not complete step 3 as the Tool: Texture: Col>Txr option was not clickable. I tried a going through a couple of other tutorials related to that, but even once I exported the texture I tried to create (both as a PSD and a Bitmap), I only ended up with a solid black square. I also tried the “Set Up Your Model for PolyPainting” first, to no avail.

My model was created completely in Blender, has no UV maps from that program, and only the base material. I exported it as an OBJ using the basic options and imported into Zbrush.

I know I must be missing something, but I cannot seem to figure out what I’m doing wrong. I would really like to Polypaint that model and create a texture from that painting or to otherwise create a texture for that model in Zbrush. Can anyone offer some advice?

The reason you can’t create a map is that the model has no UV mapping. As a result, the Col>Txr button wouldn’t know where to put the color information on the map.

Go to level 1 of your model. Make sure that UV’s are enabled. Then assign a blank texture to the model that is the desired size that you wish to export from ZBrush. At subdivision level 1, click Tool>UV Map>GUVTiles. Then go to the highest subdivision level. You should now be able to use the Col>Txr button to create your texture.

You’ll need to export the model from ZBrush as an OBJ, since that’s what holds the UV’s. You’ll also need to flip the texture vertically before it will wrap correctly in your other program.

Thanks. Things are working much more smoothly now. :slight_smile: