ZBrushCentral

Tate Mosesian (environment piece) question tutorial

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hello All,

I’ve been following the tutorial of Tate Mosesian (environment piece).

I’m having some problems following it. Tate uses a box (655,362) that has been dynameshed.
He then uses the trim and some alpha brushes and surface noise,etc.

After the sculpting the brick he fills it with a base material and base texture.

I can’t even fill it with the base texture. As it gives UV warning. I didn’t see that back in the tutorial.

From there he goes into projection mode (colors)
loading some stone base textures.

He then uses the alpha brush with a stone texture. Drag brush to draw on textures onto
the brick. He picks it up in projection. But when I do all the same things my textures look terrible not
projected nicely at all. I’m not sure if this matters but I doesn’t feel right.

Does the brick need UV’s from the start?. If so, ur better of making lowpoly version with UV’s and
subdivions.

He didn’t show or mention this in the tutorial.

Secondly he has got 55 bricks drawn for tilable setup. when I draw 15 bricks I already
get a memory warning. This on 4gig (64 bit) machine. I noticed that you need to
spilt your Subtool when you draw you bricks on the grid. I was looking in the mem settings.

Then only can I draw new bricks. Not mentioned btw.

I think you would at least need 7-8 million poly’s for the whole brick setup

-bricks (55) 5
-morter wall 1,5
-Pebbels 1

Can you still acomplish this on 4 gig machine? Or would I need to make space swapdisk/mem settings?

I love the tutorial but It plays terrible (every 10-20 seconds it starts to buffer)
Is anybody having these some problems? All other tutorial play fine.

Thanks

Decor

#2

Does the brick need UV’s from the start?. If so, ur better of making lowpoly version with UV’s and
subdivions.

If you’re going to dynamesh it down the line, nah.

But when I do all the same things my textures look terrible not projected nicely at all. I’m not sure if this matters but I doesn’t feel right.

The project quality will probably depend on the vertex resolution (if polypainting), the texture resolution (if projecting to a texture), as well as the size of the texture on your screen in relation to the mesh. Basically if you have a super high-res texture that you want to project and you have it scaled down, you’re not going to get that extra detail.

Can you still acomplish this on 4 gig machine? Or would I need to make space swapdisk/mem settings?

If each brick is it’s own subtool, then you’ll be able to hit your system maximum with each. If you can only handle 4-8 million verts comfortably (zbrush is currently 32bit), you can still have 4-8 million verts per brick (the file size will probably be large on the other hand).

A standard thing to when working on textures is to drop the tool to the document. This converts the model into an image (with some added depth and material information), so you wont be able to sculpt on it but you’ll be able to have the same detail for practically free (and can still change the lighting, swap the material to get a normal map, etc)

#3

I had memory issues also and went back and watched his video again. I am not sure how he is retaining the polypaint and detail because when you watch the video on making the brick at the 11:50 mark he has it at 1 million points but then at the 12 minute mark he switches to a completed brush and the active points on the subtool are 65 thousand with all detail and polypaint. It seems that how he reduced the subtools and retain the details is missing. Any insight to this would be appreciated.

#4

Once you’re done and happy with a mesh, you can run it through Decimation Master to cut down the file size.

#5

Decimation master saves polypaint?

#6

Hi,

Can you get the polypaint to work?

In the video at (5:28) Tate has put on a ( Sketched Shaded) material. He then loads in some base textures.
Goes to the TextureMap and picks base texture.

I’m getting a UV warning. Need UV’s!!! How come you don’t see this in the video? What’s Happening?

My base brick stays (with the Sktehed Shaded) Material… In tate video the brick turns to the (base stone texture)
He fills it MRGB and Colorize on. He picks it up Polypaint from Texture.

I’m doing the same steps, but my Polypaint from Texture doesn’t even turn on :frowning:

Do you have such problems?

#7

I think your seeing these problems because you don’t have UV’s assigned to the brick. Tate took his brick (box) from Lightbox so he probably already had UV’s on it (he just didn’t mention that). Just go to Tool>UV Map and make sure you have UV’s. ‘Delete UV’ and ‘Morph UV’ will be greyed out if you don’t. Turn SDiv in Tool>Geometry to 1 then click on ‘PUV Tiles’ in Tool>UV Map then turn SDiv back to highest. After that, his steps should work.

#8

Preferences: Decimation Master: Use and Keep Polypaint

#9

Thanks Cryrid! Been using Decimation Master for awhile and never looked in the preferences before…boy do I feel dumb:D

Going over this some more and reading some other threads if you test a brick that is only taking up 1/10th of the screen space then you can lower the subdivisions back down after painting and sculpting or you could decimate it. I think I would lower the sub divisions then after you made your new made your new tool and split it to subtools you could sculpt or paint on the individuals if needed. I would think that as long as you only adjust the interior subtools you should be ok on your tiling.

As for the polypaint showing up when using the IMM brush after reading this thread http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?170779-Questions-and-Answers-for-the-Insert-Multi-Mesh-Repository
I realized that if you turn off colorize in the polypaint when inserting meshes and then turning it on when done the poly paint will show up.

#10

Currently following the tutorial as well and have reached this stage (I have my 10 bricks / 40 sides and have made the IMM brush). Turning off colorize, as you said, before drawing the brick and then switching back on does then show the polypaint, however if you have applied a grid as polypaint, as Tate does in the video, then you can’t use your grid to know where to draw the mesh in.

Anyone worked out what settings he has for the polypaint to work when first drawn? It’s obviously possible or it wouldn’t be shown in the video.

Fantastic tutorial, and I’m really pleased with my bricks using this method, but there are a few sections that need clarifying.

#11

Why not? what’s the matter with yours?

#12

I’m an idiot. If you have mrgb/rgb turned on when you draw in your bricks and have colorized/polypaint turned on, then it also fills the brick with the currently selected colour at the time you draw it. Turning rgb off maintains the polypaint from the IMM brush.

#13

HI all,

Thanks Zber2 so much for the info. I wasn’t sure if the brick needed UV’s.

What would be a good way for getting the uv’s out ?? Wouldn’t you get
better results with layout uv’s instead of PUV uv’s?

I was thinking of using dynamesh to sculp my HighPoly brick/rock.
Then using Decimation to make a lower version and uv map it with
UV master. Then project the high details back onto the low mesh with
nice uv’s.

Just wondering if PUV could also work as It would be hard / impossible retouch it
in photoshop. Not sure if that’s needed.

Our would Qremesher be an option? or just use the new Retopoly brush on my highpoly mesh.

Tate is using 655,363 poly/points when he starts to polypaint.

Anybody got some info on this?

#14

I think the thing to keep in mind is the final output you’re aiming for. If you’re doing a 3d environmental asset then retopology, projections and UVs matter.

If you’re creating a texture on the other hand, they’re not going to be important at all. You can just decimate down at a percentage level that keeps all the needed surface detail, so you wont need to project any details back. The final polygon count of each brick wont matter because each would be their own subtool when you’re editing them, and you convert them to pixols if you drop them to the canvas. The mesh will still have polypaint so UVs wont matter at all. And since you’re just exporting the document in a sort of WYSIWYG way, you’ll be able to do touchups in photoshop just fine.

#15

Can anyone help me here, I am following the tutorial and at the stage where you set up the grid on the plane. I am using the plane from the image plane folder in zbrush and I have my grid texture which is 2048x2048 but when I hit ‘polypaint from texture’ the texture appears at a ridiculously low resolution, if i check ‘texture on’ in the texture map box it reverts back to the intended resolution.

Im not sure what I am doing wrong. Thanks

#16

What you’re seeing is the difference between textures and vertex colors/polypaint. The quality of a texture depends on the image resolution, but for polypaint the quality is going to depend on your vertex density. If you want to transfer the data that millions of pixels in an image contain, then you’ll need millions of vertices. If you subdivide the mesh a few times before using ‘polypaint from texture’, you should see a better result.

#17

Ah ok, I had a little suspicion that it may something to do with point resolution. I have taken your advice and of course it is correct. Thank you for the swift reply, I appreciate the help :slight_smile:

K