zBursh sculpt and texture masks?

mobpapst

Hey guys,

i've found this two images while googeling a bit and it's a sculpt and texture sheet. i try to understand whats the technique and the best way to create masks for this in photoshop in case of texturing:

I would say that the sculpt is made out of different pieces (concrete, tiles, etc). but how can i create a good mask to define every part of it (for example every tile etc) because the most stuff of this object will be baked down i suggest.

maybe you got some techniques or workflows how to get good masks directly out of zBrush to texture a game ready model like this.

thanks

musashidan

Are you talking about a material I'D mask?

In ZB you can break all the pieces to polygroups, and assign your different colours:
Autogroups>Polypaint from Polygroups

and bake the polypaint to a texture using polypaint to texture.
Texture map>Create>New from polypaint

mobpapst

yes i'm talking about id masks which i can later on use to definde the different texture parts. i know that there are different types of polygroups but i need to have first a lp because otherwise it won't work because the hp has no uv. to make it more precise i will use these pictures:

most of the floor tiles from the hp will be baked on the lp (which will be flat surface). so i don't get any geometry there. some of these floor tiles are green, some have a pattern and some are grey. how can i mask exactly these different floor tile-parts out to have an id mask which i can use later on in photoshop to create a layer mask out of it.

Nars

Maybe you could try a "hack" for it Mobpapst, I'm not sure it works but you could try it, after sculpting all the details, export SubDv1 to Max/Maya, make the uvs for it, export it back and apply a morph target to it (so you get all your details back) and then do as Musashidan said?
In theory it should work, but like I said, I've never tried it.
Let me know how that works out.

musashidan

- Just merge all high poly subtools to a single tool
- Auto groups to assign polygroups to non-contiguous geometry(or organise your polygroups as you want to mask them)
- use the polygroups to polypaint feature to assign vertex colour(no UVs required)
- decimate the tool
-export to your usual baking software and bake matID high to low

mobpapst

thanks for your answer i'll try it out. but one question on this. would't it be better to decimate all stuff lower before merge them together in matter of dealing with too many polys? i made the experience that changeing polygroups with a high polycount needs very long time or generates a crash.

is the bake matID high to low a feature that xNormal has?

musashidan

By all means decimate then merge. ZB is flexible like that. Use whichever suits you/your machine

xnormal has a vertex colour bake feature. You'll see the checkbox in the row of options once you add your mesh.

mobpapst

thanks mate thats an enormous help. my only solution would be to mask out the parts of the normal map .

musashidan

Great. Glad you worked it out

mobpapst

Hey there again,

I've another question on this. i got a model out of different pieces in 3ds max. my hp has some different parts and i gave them different id's (multi sub material). i exported the hp out and want to bake a base texture but i only got "red" results. I used both options: "draw using this color" and "write object id if no texture" but still the same results. which format is right to export the color ids on my hp and which options i need to choose and how does it work in xnormal?

musashidan

Make sure you have colourise enabled in ZB when you export your .obj
.Obj is fine and will store your vertex colour information.
In Xnormal bake a 'highpoly's vertex colour map' instead of a 'base texture' map.

mobpapst

is it only possible to use the zBrush option or can max do this aswell. because sometimes i only need hp's out of zBrush and sometimes out of max

*edit* i worked it out with substance painter now but i didn't know that i need sperate materials because a multi sub wont work

musashidan

Yes, of course. I was going to give you a way to do it from Max but I wasn't sure if you were using it.

One easy way is to add a vertex paint mod to your highpoly and using the vertex paint bucket fill each element with a different colour.
Then export your highpoly as an .sbm(check the Export Normals and the Export Vertex Colors check boxes)
>import(low .obj & high .sbm to XN
>uncheck the Ignore per-vertex-color box
>bake a 'highpoly's vertex colour map'

Note: if your .sbm exporter is missing you can find it here:

Program Files\Santiago :\S.Orgaz\xNormal\x64\3dsmax_plugins

And copy/paste it here:

:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 20XX\plugins

musashidan

mobpapst said:

is it only possible to use the zBrush option or can max do this aswell. because sometimes i only need hp's out of zBrush and sometimes out of max

*edit* i worked it out with substance painter now but i didn't know that i need sperate materials because a multi sub wont work

Oh, you have access to Painter aswell? Well in that case , here's another solution:

Assign your multi-sub material in Max to your HIGH-poly
Now set up your high and low in SP and bake your ID map. In the ID map options make sure to change Vertex Colours to Material Colours from the Colour Source dropdown.

Also, as you're just baking to a plane you can disable diffusion(no padding or dilation needed as there is only a single UV island. If you leave it on you might get errors)

mobpapst

thats nice. it workes out quite well. also good that you mentioned it with the diffusion and the padding because otherwise i'll get no "full" colors and have some bad errors by selection the different colors.

musashidan

Yes, the colours have to be solid for the masking to work as it should. So padding or diffusion on a single island like this leads to errors as the texture bleeds onto itself.