ZBrushCentral

Tileable Maps - Issues

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Here’s my process:

  • Select the Plane3D tool and drag it onto the canvas, activate Edit Mode
  • Click ‘Make PolyMesh3D’
  • Snap the plane to the front view and click tool>UV Map>Create>Uvp (planar map)
  • Subdivide several times with smooth off (tool>Geometry>Smt)
  • Sculpt the plane with wrap mode activated on the brush (brush>curve>wrap mode

The problem I keep having is the consistency of my map export. Most times I click on ‘Create DispMap’ in the tool>displacement map palette I end up with something with a bunch of vertical bars. This leads me to believe that my UVs aren’t correct so I try doing a planar map again and checking it with tool>texture map>create>new from UV map. This usually results in a yellow square with a thick black bar on the bottom and right side of this test texture map (clearly incorrect). I’ve tried bringing in my own polyPlane from maya to avoid have to deal with the UVs inside of ZBrush, but I keep running into the same problem. I was able to get it to work properly once but I have no idea what I did differently.

I just tried one more time and this time I got a proper dispalcement map but there’s a thick blank border around the texture… ugh.

Any idea what I’m doing wrong here?

#2

To check your UV’s inside of ZBrush, Click ‘Tool:Texture Map:Create:New From UV Check’ and not ‘New From UV Map’. If you see any red in the resulting texture map, ZBrush doesn’t like your UV’s. Don’t use Uvc, Uvp or Uvs. They don’t work too well. Unwrap in UV Master, it works much better. The UV’s you imported from Maya were probably touching the borders of the UV space. ZBrush doesn’t like that. All islands have to be in from the border a bit. UV Master does this automatically.

#3

That’s strange… Wouldn’t it require UVs that extend to the border to have a texture that seamlessly tiles? Ill give UV master a shot tomorrow but I fail to understand how the standard UV layout for a polyplane could be unacceptable to ZBrush. So is the standard methodology to take your UVs and scale them in slightly… ?

#4

I forget the exact technical explanation. Something like the UVs that lay on the border are seen as extending past the UV space and get wrapped back around. It’s only a problem when you need to texture a seamless plane, and if that’s the goal then the document itself serves as an excellent workaround since it’s planar and doesn’t care about UVs.

#5

Actually it doesn’t serve since the document is not a plane and you can’t paint seamlessly over it . And that UVp not working that give you red surface every time is very annoying indeed. Would be nice if Pixologic fix it at least

#6

There’s a few things that I’m having trouble getting my head around:

  • When I start sculpting with my polyPlane filled to my canvas I’m still easily able to accidently rotate the view. Is there any way to lock the camera so that I don’t do this… There’s something about sculpting a tileable pattern that makes me want to start my strokes slightly off canvas but this of course rotates the view.

  • If I start sculpting deep enough near the edges, the polyPlane is no longer filled to the canvas since the edges are now further back or forward in Z. This seems inevitable but is there any way around this other than being extra careful when sculpting near the sides… This makes it pretty difficult to maintain a tileable pattern. I almost wish I could drop it to the canvas and still be able to use the sculpting brushes so that I could use the ~ key to pan around to address the “seams”.

#7

The same camera position is sometime necessary when you make textures from of screen renders. Other than that I am not sure I understand what is the problem. You use wrap mode with brushes, right? so the strokes should repeat to each other pretty well.(When the plane is faced to a camera) For long stripes across the whole texture it’s better to use imported alpha made in any vector soft

#8

I’m not sure why you’re sculpting a plane. The other primitives are lots more fun.
http://www.pixologic.com/docs/index.php/ZAppLink