ZBrushCentral

Polypainting Difficulties (Resolved)

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

In ZB4 I’m no longer able to transfer polypainting to the default primitive “tools” in ZB4. I’m following exactly the same procedure I used in the last version, and since its still loaded I’ve done a “side by side” comparison of the two ZB versions to be sure I’m not losing my mind here.

Any time I try “New from Polypaint” I either get a texture made up of a single color from the many painted on the object, or, if I “Polypaint from Texture”, I get what appears to be a blended color. I have in all attempts subdivided up to level 4 or 5 before painting.

There seems to be some problem with the polypainting not working with the default UVs for these tools. I can use UV master and change the UVS and polypaint works, but I need to keep the original uvs.

I’m really (literally) losing sleep over this problem so any help/advice/suggestions would be very much appreciated.

#2

hmm…just tried, same problem here. Not that I ever use those, but yeah, if you do, that could cause a problem.

A UV check on the object also comes out pure red.
Doing a Morph UV on the object also shows the problem as well.

#3

Thanks for testing this Goast, that was very kind of you.

I can now eliminate the possibility that it’s a download problem or some conflict. I’m wondering if its a bug or an intended thing on the part of Zbrush and whether its fixable. I’m not a professional sculpter/3d artist, but I have a specific need here that Zbrush fulfills as a 2.5D/3D painting program and I’ve spent countless hours and alot of cash on tutorials and books (not to mention all the time and tedium of getting up to speed on each update). Now I’m worried that after all this effort I may be out of luck and have to switch to something else. Frustrating to say the least.

#4

Is there a reason that you can’t assign a different/new set of uv coordinates to the object?

#5

The uv needs to be converted to a texture which describes the vertex position in space. The uvs have to be laid out in a grid filling the uv space fully in order for a secondary program I use specifically for converting the uv’s into this position texture to work. The painted texture has to align with this.

I tried re working the UV’s in Modo and importing it, but for some odd reason Zbrush no longer will paint on this type of grid-like mesh.

#6

I’m not able to reproduce. Are you guys on a Mac or a PC? I’m on a PC. I’ve tried it on low level meshes and subdivided meshes and so far the poly paint works fine in transferring color to an object UVmapped in UVLayout.

#7

I’m running it on a Dell XPS M1730 Intel ® Core ™x Extreme, CPU [email protected] GHZ 2.7Ghz, 3.00 GB of Ram, NVIDIA GForce 8800M GTX

I’m delighted its working for someone else here which makes me hopeful someone can find a solution, maybe some setting or something I’m overlooking. I’m following the exact same procedure I used in ZB 3.5 which worked beautifully for me. I really tearing my hair out with this.

#8

I reread your posting Teyon. You wrote: “works fine in transferring color to an object UVmapped in UVLayout”

My specific problem is I can only use the default uvs set to the basic tools. Is this what you tried? Remapping the uvs isn’t going to work for me.

#9

Well, it looks like the default primitive UVs are just plain ol’ overlapping. Morph UVs makes that pretty clear.

#10

Yaay! And thanks to everyone who posted…very helpful! And I was just about to post! I’m not experienced enough to have seen that in the morph thingy BUT I remembered something I learned from messing around with a free trial of Mudbox about texture wonking with UV’s running out of space so I went into modo and reduced the size of a properly layed out (for my purposes) UV and reduced it uniformly to 99.93%…works perfectly now!

So what is that called when Zbrushes own primitives have overlapping UV’s…is it a bug?

#11

I don’t know if ‘bug’ is the term to use, but the UVs being generated certainly are different compared to those in 3.5.

#12

No, that wasn’t quite what I tried. I had imported my own OBJ. I missed the fact you were using ZBrush’s primitives. I wouldn’t call it a bug per se but a design flaw if the included primitives have overlapping UV’s. It’s probably the case that the UV’s have not been generated at all for those objects, as ZBrush 4 is supposed to be able to handle exporting maps where overlapping (but actually mapped) uv’s are concerned. So I think a bug report mentioning the UV issue would be wise, as Pixologic may have overlooked it. I know that happened to us when we were developing Poser 8, a beta tester caught it and we had to go back and remap all the primitives before launch.

#13

Thanks Teyon, I’ll report it as a bug. I’m so happy I have a “work around” for this problem and I finally understand what’s happening. The pros probably wouldn’t ever come across this and I can see how it could have been overlooked, but newcomers to Zbrush and folks new to 3d modeling in general are likely to play around with the primitives before they dive right into more serious sculpting with the program and this could be mighty confusing.

#14

Would you be so kind as to uploading a set of base shapes to work with in Zbrush with your work around? I am using for Second Life, and the only shape that textures correctly for me is the Sphere3D currently.

#15

Wow Zerox…you are lucky to have the Sphere working correctly. The sphere and the torus are the only one I’ve corrected so far, but I’ll work on the others tomorrow and hopefully they will respond to the same fix.

I only just now worked on the Torus and it seems fine, but its faces need to be flipped which you can do easily right in SL. I’ll upload it now and try to get to the others tomorrow. Let me know if this works for you.

oops I named the file zb5…I’m already waiting for the next version apparently :stuck_out_tongue:

#16

I think you could probably copy the primitives from z3 and replace the z4 ones so that they have the old uv layout. You would obviously want to back up the z4 ones first though, just in case for whatever reason they don’t work/cause problems.

#17

Thanks Nstine. I tried that, too, but unhappily it didn’t work out.

#18

Thank you Nancyan. You’re a lifesaver!
Can’t wait for you to get the cube up, the cube is the first shape that I realized wouldn’t work, so I have extra animosity towards the cube LOL. :slight_smile:

#19

This is exactly the issue I am having with Zbrush 4 and I have checked an old toolset that I created in Zbrush 3.5r3 for this very purpose and the exact same thing happens when I try to convert the polypaint to texture, so importing older primitives hasn’t resolved the issue. Like a couple of the other people here I am using these for Secondlife so messing with the UV isn’t an option. I’ve tried all my old shapes and none of them work. :confused:

#20

Ok Wow, now even my sphere won’t work when I try to pick up the polypaint. What is going on here?! First it works, and now it doesn’t. Nancyan, when you upload the other shapes that you do, please upload as well the sphere? Thank you so much.