ZBrushCentral

Projection master , mimicking standard brush , drag rectangle rotation ? [Solved]

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi ,

i’ll try to explain this clear enough.

Normally I would handle this with polypainting, but i’m trying to retexture a creature exported from skyrim and i’ve tried by importing the obj , dividing the creature 5-6 times (without smoothing , otherwise i get a lot of mesh splitting) and then i convert the texture i imported onto the model to polypaint. Even at 10 million poly’s it’s still not ideal in some placed to paint due to poly distribution , but its sort of acceptable. But then when i convert to polypaint back to a texture I only get a texture that is about 80% correct compared to the polypaint I did.

So this is just to explain why I turned to projection master instead and amazingly this works really well, i doubled the original texture with a clone, giving me amazing detail with project master. But there is one thing I am missing terribly, when polypainting I tend to use the standard brush in RGB mode with drag rectangle stroke to drag alpha’s onto the model in fast succession and rotating them along the way by just holding left mouse button and moving. However when using projection master I can’t rotate with any of the brushes and draw rectangle stroke. It only seems to work with dot or freehand, but this isn’t ideal , because in that case i’m still missing the on the fly scaling. This slows down my process of texturing a lot. Is there a way to get this behaviour I love so much in polypainting into projection master?

Thanks.

(i’ve been using zbrush for a long time, but i’ve remained a noob when it comes to UV mapping because that’s where 3d starts to bore me and it’s exactly why I love zbrush so much, because it tries to hide that boring stuff from me ;p)

#2

Ok , i thought i had found a workaround with this link from kriss costa , who managed to do exactly what I wanted and gets the same drag rectangle functionality in projection master.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=30094

But i see he uses Zbrush 2.0 and when I try to follow his method and do exactly the same thing, it doesnt seem to work. My zbrush keeps drawing a square plane even with Zadd on 0 and an alpha selected. Did something change from 2.0 to 4 that broke this?

Ryan kingslien also uses same method with 3dplane.

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?33715-Pixologic-Release-ZBrush-Learning-Series-Texturing-with-Photoreference

Anyone able to help with this? I’d love to be able to use the method Kriss and Ryan use, either i’m doing something wrong or it no longer works in ZB4.

If you have watched the videos , this is what happens when I try it :
at that point i dropped it with projection master , selected plane 3d , put zadd on 0 , selected an alpha and a texture. Dragged onto the model , it scales and rotates like I want it too , but it appears to not only be coloring , it doesnt take on the shape of the alpha and coloring of the texture.

problem.jpg
problem.jpg1634×784 259 KB

#3

Ok I didn’t give up , found a workaround that seems to work in zbrush 4 with projectionmaster.

The directional brush (2D) seems to support the scaling and rotating with the dragrectangle stroke, while the others didn’t.
So in the end i won’t need the 3d plane method above.

it ended up being a lot simplier then most stuff I tried, but i sorta assumed no brush would scale and rotate with drag rectangle if simple brush and paint brush didnt.

Just thought i’d post it for the rare case that someone runs into the same issue I had :wink:

#4

Yes, the Directional brush is the way to go.

Alternatively you can use the Image Plane plugin which will detect that you are using Projection Master and load the image on to the plane, wrapping it on the model. Once loaded, you can turn off Edit and turn on Move, Scale or Rotate to reposition using the Gyro. If you want to use Image Plane then make sure you have the latest version from the Download Center as there was an issue with positioning in 4R2.

#5

Another issue i’d like to mention maybe for the next bugfixes release of zbrush (didn’t find any method to report bugs).

When in projection master mode (so model dropped) , loading in a new texture from your harddisk into the textures panel will crash zbrush 100%. Loading the textures before dropping a model onto the canvas is fine.

#6

I can’t reproduce this issue. Can you give exact steps to reproduce, and also give your system specs?

Thanks,

#7

Since you didn’t have the problem I found out it only happens on the current project i’m working on , so it must be a combination of model + texture of some sorts.

if I don’t load the texture onto the dragon but just use a new blank texture , it doesn’t crash either. So it’s only the dragon combined with the texture mapped onto it.

It worked fine for me too with a polymeshed cilinder.

Here’s the obj + texture (flip V for it to be correct) I work on, if i try to load a texture during project master with this , zbrush crashes. I’ve started loading all my textures in advance now, so it’s not that big of a deal if this only seems to happen with my project :wink:
https://rapidshare.com/files/3059808869/dragon.zip

it’s a converted NIF model to OBJ from skyrim and the DDS texture in PSD converted.
Modding the texture ingame, which is working nicely with projection master and zbrush.
(result so far : http://www.skyrimnexus.com/imageshare/images/3199993-1326136185.jpg)

my specs are i7 4.2 ghz , 6 gb ram , win 7 ultimate 64 bit , geforce 285gtx , HD operating system : 640 GB , 7200 RPM , other 3 disks (1, 2 , 2 TB), 750 watt power supply, and ofc zbrush 4R2

#8

Many thanks - great dragon. :slight_smile:

I still couldn’t get a crash. I did notice that the mesh has an error - an edge is shared by more than two polygons. But I can’t think that that is causing the crash.

#9

strange , no biggie since i can avoid it if i’m careful. I’ll just test it on my pc at work aswell next time i’m there, to see if my home pc is the cause.

#10

Ok i tried it at work , also crashes.

here’s the exact steps.

opened zbrush
imported dragon.obj
changed to basic material instead of the reddish matcap
went to tool->texturemap , clicked on the gray square to import the psd texture.
went to tool-> UV MAP , flip V
drew tool on canvas , went into edit mode
launched projection master.
Drop button
selected directional brush
went to texture->import , took sample picture from default windows picure.
Zbrush messages me about abnormal termination and it saved a recovery file that will be available upon launching zbrush.

pc specs at work i7 2600K , 12 GB ram , solid state 120 GB , win 7 pro 64 bit.

#11

I followed the steps exactly but still no crash. Perhaps it is related to Win 7. I have Vista.

#12

yeah I suppose it has to be one of those rare cases where vista performs better then 7 :wink: