first thing is why does Zbrush not have the ability to customize all controls of keys and mouse? is there a way to save the model view and the texture scale while doing projection painting? this would really be a great help. I tested texture painting in both mudbox and zbrush and no matter what I tried and how subdivided my mesh was in zbrush the resolution of the same textures always appears worste or blurry in zbrush. Is there a way to bake from a high poly model to a low poly model? I searched and I cant seem to find this feature. I would really appreciate some answers from the big guys at zbrush.
Zapplink has some options under the Document Palette which will let you store some custom views.
I tested texture painting in both mudbox and zbrush and no matter what I tried and how subdivided my mesh was in zbrush the resolution of the same textures always appears worste or blurry in zbrush
First things first, are you projecting onto polypaint (vertex colors), or onto a texture? In the latter case, the number of vertices will not matter as much as the resolution of the texture / how efficient the UVs are laid out.
You’ll also likely want to balance the ratio of your image pixels to document pixols as well. If you have a large image but it is scaled down when you project it onto the mesh, I don’t think you’ll be getting the full quality out of it.
Is there a way to bake from a high poly model to a low poly model?
Nope. Zbrush only makes using a mesh’s subdivision levels, so to transfer maps in it you would have to import the new mesh as a subtool, subdivide it to have adequate geometry, and then use Project All to transfer sculpting and polypaint to it.
Fortunately it works very well with tools like xnormal, which is capable of reading polypaint data when baking.
Well what I was doing was projection painting. Painting a texture unto a surface using a HD picture. So the sliders I see in the texture panel for width and height should correspond to the width and height of my original image that I am projecting from?
You could try Spotlight, mesh needs to be dense for this to work well. Are you trying to sculpt at the same time? There are lots of settings which can be accessed, a good look in the docs can help you there.
Well what I was doing was projection painting. Painting a texture unto a surface using a HD picture.
There are multiple ways to do projection painting in zbrush, and the method you’re using can have an impact on the result (for example: Projection Master to Texture Map vs Spotlight to Polypaint)
actually I subdivided my mesh quite a few times, now its at 23 million faces and I am painting using spotlight
There would be two things to check in that case. The first is the vertex density of the area you’re painting in (23million might not even be enough if 98% of those verts are found in other areas). The second would be the spotlight size of the image. AFAIK with spotlight, you are essentially punching through the image that you see on your screen and not the actual size of the image itself. So if you have a massive HD image but you have it scaled down to 50x50 pixels on your screen, you’re only projecting those 2500 pixels.
the density was evenly spaced and all was just fine last time i check with the model. what about the settings i see for height and with how do those affect the resolution of the texture i am painting?
If its evenly spaced across the entire mesh, then it could likely mean that most of the vertices aren’t where you want to project them. As for the sliders:
The Texture Width and Height sliders display the width and height of a selected texture. Textures created by pressing the New button are defined with the values in these sliders; otherwise, changing them has no effect.
well I need resolution in every place so it was important that I have a even spacing of faces which I made sure of, I think the issue was with how I was using the texture. I am now painting the model with better results. I must admit that its abit slower painting in Zbrush than mudbox, also I don’t have to worry about resolution when I paint so I think Mudbox will remain my number one tool for painting textures. I am now learning Mudbox and I see that it doesn’t really fit into my pipeline when it comes to painting textures.
Now that I have some more time to do so, I should clarify what I meant earlier.
Evenly spaced polygons are the ideal thing to have for sculpting and painting. But when its spread over an entire mesh, it quickly means that a lot of vertices are located in areas where you’re not currently working on. So even a large sounding number might still be insufficient to achieve the detail you might need.
As for polypaint, it does have some pros and cons. There’s a big benefit when you’re working on a sculpt without having the lowpoly model finished and UV’d. This way if you have to come back and retopologize the model afterwards or change the UV layout around, and its not going to affect the sculpt. The downside is that you can’t paint different maps (like specular) at once. If you would rather use a UV based texture map instead of polypaint, projection master is something to consider.