ZBrushCentral

Taking blur out of spotlight

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

I have been using spotlight this evening seriously for the first time. I am using a photo to lay down skin texture on a human form sculpt. I am also using spotlight radius. When I click “Z” in order to paint and hover my brush over the model or sculpt I see a clear crisp image of the photo that will be laid down on the sculpt, which is good; however as I begin to paint to lay down the texture the painted output is all blurry or fuzzy on the sculpt or model as opposed to that nice crisp look in the photo.

I watched the zClassroom videos on spotlight and when the zBrush-Tutor lays down the lizard skin on his lizard sculpt the paint laid is crisp like the lizard in the photo.

So I am a bit confused here. What am I doing wrong that I am getting blurry results when trying to paint using spotlight?

Thanks for answers in advance.

#2

I just figured this out :smiley: My polycount on my model was way too low. As soon I subdivided into about 5 million polys the applying the photo via spotlight, the output on the model was crisp as it is in the photo.

So as an observation, it seems in order to gain excellent quality textures you paint them at a high poly count and then save them. Then reapply them on the low poly count model.

#3

Not exactly. Spotlight works with polypaint, not texture maps. What you would need to do is:

  1. Polypaint a high res version of your model using Spotlight.
  2. At the lowest subdivision level, assign UVs (such as by using UV Master). This will mean that a texture image can be mapped to the model.
  3. Go back to the top subdivision level.
  4. In the Tool>Texture Map sub-palette, click Create>New from PolyPaint.

This will create a texture map which you can apply to the low res version of your model.

#4

Thank you Marcus for the clarification and step by step. I will practice this evening during my next session.