ZBrushCentral

Polypainting query

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I am very new to all this and am slowly making progress, but have a question about painting a tool.

  1. draw out the DemoHead ztool (which has two subtools, the head and the eyes) and press Edit
  2. press the “colorize” button and switch “Zadd” off and “RGB” on
  3. I select a colour from the picker to paint on to the head, but the eyes instantly go that color. Why?

I only want to paint the face, not the eyes. I don’t understand why this is happening (as the eyes subtool is not even selected in the subtools window). Is there a way to prevent this happening (as it’s very distracting having things change when they are not what you actually want to paint)?

Thanks

#2

When the “Colorize” button is off the subtool takes on the selected color. It’s only a display thing and doesn’t affect its polypaint. If you turn on colorize (or the paintbrush icon in the subtool list) for the eyes subtool they will go white and won’t be distracting while you’re painting the head.

#3

Before you start painting a tool, you need to fill the object with a base color and material.

  1. Select color and material
  2. Go to ZPlugin menu
  3. Click on Subtool Master
  4. Click on Fill
  5. in the pop up window, choose Color & Material and then click OK

This will fill all your subtools with the color and material you selected.

Alternatively, you can fill each subtool with its own color and material by selecting a subtool, choosing the color and material you want and then going to the “Color” menu and clicking “Fill Object”

Once you fill each subtool with a base color and material you can then paint on each subtool with any color/material you want and it will not affect the other subtools.

#4

Aha! Thank you both very much! I was thinking the instant colouration of the eyes meant they had actually been painted. But it’s kind of just a preview of what they’d look like if they were actually painted with that color.

Rather counter-intuitive… (or maybe I am just dense!)

#5

No, I’m sure you’re not dense. ZBrush is completely different from every other program I use, from the interface to the navigation and everything else. It has taken me a while to really understand how it all works, but once you start understanding, it all starts to make sense. Just keep practicing and asking questions and you’ll get there.

#6

Thanks! It is slowly starting to get clearer, but I don’t want to flood the forum! I am trying to search for answers first.

I mostly work with Photoshop and with DAZ Studio, so this is all very unfamiliar feeling. Ideally, I want to be able to create organic models to then export as OBJ and render in DAZ/LuxRender. Presumably there is some way to create different materials zones on a model and to then export a MTL file with the OBJ?

#7

Maybe this video tutorial will help with exporting to Daz. The guy is pretty annoying, I think he may be drunk, but anyway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSsnn3LwsPQ

#8

Ha ha! Thanks. I’ll take a look