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zbrush UV regions

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey, guys

I’m having some trouble finding good information about how zbrush handles uv regions, and what workflows work best. I’d prefer to have characters have all their uvs laid out over several uv regions, such that there are no overlapping uvs when selecting the entire character.

So, a few questions:

  1. Are there invalid uv regions? In my tests, objects in 0,1 0,2 and 0,3 seem to be ok, but objects in 1,1 1,2 and 1,3 won’t create a proper texture, in the multi map exporter, or the regular texture editor. Is it just that the only valid row is row 0?

  2. Is it true that one object cannot have uvs in multiple regions? Or can you do that, but need to do some special tricks to get it to work? The test object i have exports the proper number of maps, but none of the textures look right.

If there are any good resources for information on this, please let me know!

#2

I am not sure on regions outside of 0-1 in V, I’ve never had a need to work outside of 0-1 in V. I believe they work correctly outside of 0-1 in V though. What software are you using to unwrap and place your meshes outside of 0-1?

Zbrush does not support multiple UV channels, so 1 UV per object. There is no work around for this.

#3

Hey, thanks for the reply.

I’m using maya for laying out my uvs. Right now I have my character’s uvs laid out across 4 regions, 0,1 0,2 0,3 and 0,4, with no uvs stretching across more than one region. This seems to be working out pretty well so far with the multimap exporter.

I’m still surprised that upper V regions don’t seem to work, though. I use those all the time in Mari…

#4

What problems are you seeing in those UV regions? MME should be able to cope with UVs in any region (if I remember correctly up to 256 in any direction). What will cause problems is if any of the UV shells touch the exact edge of a region. ZBrush will wrap those points and you will get streaks across your maps. Scaling down the Uvs a tiny bit will solve the issue.

Outside of MME, ZBrush can handle multiple UV regions but can only display one map at a time, therefore you need to use polygroups created using UV Groups and mesh visibility to work with the different regions.