Zbrush Micromesh - using more complicated mesh than Drust video

jdgmntDay

I'm trying to make a camo net to wrap around a sniper rifle, and I've almost got it. The micromesh techinique is perfect for this except for one bit - the mesh I'm using already has thickness. It's a tilable mesh chunk I made in Maya because I wanted the normals to really pop. I think what's happening is the micromesh chunk is being placed in the center of each polygon is replaces, and as the wrappings are bending, the edges furthest away from micromesh's centerline are getting further and further apart. The sniper video Joseph Drust put together shows how to weld points back together, but I can't use this as my micromesh chunk has useful verts closer together than the gaps that need welding. This blows up my mesh and won't work at all

Has anyone else got any ideas on making a camo netting wrapped around a weapon? How else could I get an effect like this?

The chunk I made in Maya.


Close up of the geo pieces not welded together


From a distance it looks awesome...


But close up and on a 4k map, you can see the gaps

jdgmntDay

Hmm, I had a thought I could just make the mesh chunk skinnier initially then inflate it, hoping the edge geometry would be pushed sideways slightly like it would be in Maya, but it looks like the normals for that geometry are still pointing straight out, not sideways at all. Back to square one...

Obscura

Because of the resolution (you are saying its a 4k map), it would be a lot better approach to bake just one little part and use as a tileable texture, if possible. You won't need to mess with the micromeshes, and you would get good resolution... Its not solving the problem if you must want to use the micromesh, but it does, if you not must. At least I think this would be a better and more professional direction.

CheeseOnToast

Not a solution, but a workaround. Export your micromesh back to Maya. Select only border edges using selection constraints then do a merge verts. Mess with the tolerance until it gets all the verts you need.

I've hit this kind of problem myself before. I'm interested to see if there's a proper solution.

jdgmntDay

Hmm, I hadn't thought to try it in Maya. ZBrush says the mesh is 8mil points and the obj is over 500MB, so i think Maya might have a fit doing that. But I wonder if something like meshlab would let me do that.

I was thinking more on this last night and I think I found another way that doesn't involve insane polycounts. Obscura had mentioned tiling textures, and while I didn't want to just put down a tiling texture on the low res because I want the bending and deforming I get from the high res, I could do it a different way. The low res of the camo wrapping is the same as the hi res, just subdivided and sculpted on. It also has UVs laid out in 0-to-1 so I can uniquely paint it. I could take the high res level I was using for the micromesh, create a second UV set in Maya and unitize those UVs, then apply a tiling normal map with alpha made from the mesh chunk I was using as micromesh. Then I'd have all the same stretching as the micromesh without any of the geo. Then bake the color info from this unitized UV set to the 0-to-1 UV set and I'll have my normal map and alpha map lined up perfect and without those ugly gaps. I can then just overlay this new normal map on a standard normal map bake of the high-to-low wrappings, and ta-da!

I'm not certain how to bake from one UV set to the other, but I think this is a much easier problem than selecting and welding only a few verts out of an 8mil vert mesh haha

Obscura

You not must have to bake them together, a lot of engines can handle multiple tiling maps on each other. Actually its a fairly simple shader, if your engine doesn't support it by default, and you can't node it up, you can ask the programmer, and it shouldn't be a problem. Its called detail map. So you can bake the bending,stretching,wrapping from a sculpt to a lowpoly mesh, and "overlay" the tiling pattern on it inside the shader. It will look the same good, if not better, because you can get the 4k look with a little, even 512 tiling normal on it, cause you can set as much tiling, as you want.

This works with normal,alpha, color, roughness, or anything that you include into the shader.

You can solve this with only one uvmap, if the shader built in a way where you can set the tiling of the different maps individually. If you can't set this per map, then you need 2 uv. One for the not tiling stuff, and an another for the tiling one.

We do the exact same thing at work with brocade patterns on cloths.

jdgmntDay

Ohh, you were thinking a detail map, okay. Now I understand your other post better. That's a great idea! Hmm, this isn't going into a game engine where I can make my own shaders, I was going to render this out of Marmoset - do you know if I can set detail maps in the materials there? I see I can import Substance materials, so I suppose I could make one there and hook it up? Is there an easier way?

Obscura

If I remember correctly, TB can handle detail maps, but I'm not sure if it can do it on every channel, so its better if you try it out.

-I took a look at it, and unfortunately it works only with normalmaps
-Maybe the Substance material can be a solution, but I started thinking that You won't be able to solve this properly in toolbag, with detail maps. However, that would be the best solution, still.