zbrush polypainting - xnormal baking workflow?

NAIMA

Hello , so far for texturing I used the baked maps like occlusion , cavity etc and photoshop work with minor seam fixing in mudbox ... but I woudl like to improve that workflow and start using the polypainting in zbrush to paint directly textures there and then export those textures to a material or something that I can later load in xnormal on the highpoly and bake on the low poly maps ...

is that possible ?

how do I do to polypaint and export a map without having to make any uvmapping on the high poly model? Is there any tutorial about that ?

thanks a lot for any answer... ...

WarrenM

I just did this over the weekend ... heh.

Basically, just poly paint as you want to in ZBrush. No need for UV mapping on the high poly model, you're fine.

Make your low poly mesh and add UVs.

Use xNormal and UNcheck "Ignore per-vertex-color" on the high poly model. Then you can turn on "Bake highpoly's vertex colors" on the baking tab and it will translate the vertex colors you painted in ZBrush into a texture map that matches your low poly UVs.

dreatern

I always do exactly as @WarrenMarshall told

I think the "polypaint to texture" with xnormal have more quality than the zbrush bake, seems more accurately. I could be wrong... (if anyone knows if xnormal quality (polypaint to tex) is superior or not, please say something.).
but after all this is a faster process because we don't need to worry about high poly uv and topology, just retopo using the HP model as a guide.

praetus

http://eat3d.com/free/zbrush_xnormal

Pretty much exactly what you're looking for I think.

WarrenM

That's one way but xNormal will bake a texture directly from the vertex colors of the high poly mesh. You don't need to do the intermediate steps he's doing where he assigns GUVTiles, converts the poly paint into a texture, exports it, etc.

Unless there's some advantage to doing it that way? Just looks like extra work to me...

cryrid

I think he's only doing it that way because the tutorial was made a few months before xnormal allowed for vertex colors

NAIMA

oh cool guys so , basically I can have a freehand paintover my mesh and then export what a material? or a map ? because I am not sure yet actually just looking into polypainting now ... but glat to know it seems easier than I tought ...

I wish still it could be solved that Issue here I am having with xnormal , perhaps you can take a look at it ?

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=103173

cryrid

basically I can have a freehand paintover my mesh and then export what a material? or a map ? because I am not sure yet actually just looking into polypainting now

It just requires a highpoly OBJ with the polypaint data, no UV's or textures needed. It will also only transfer the RGB polypaint values, not any materials in zbrush.

NAIMA

But does that add much to the weight of the hp modle .? As I usually have to decimate my pieces to export orit crashes zbrush...

cryrid

Demohead (912k verts) and UVS (UV Master default) = 97.1MB
Demohead (912k verts) and GUV = 97.4MB
Demohead (912k verts) and polypaint (no UVs) = 63.9MB

You can also have Decimation Master preserve polypaint.

NAIMA

Hi thanks a lot so the uv , polypaint have nonsignificant increase on the model export....

Btw dunno if I may ask but could you give a look to the thread I have linked ? Reports a problem with xnormal - 3dsmax- zbrush workflow with also the model samples .... As wevstill were not able to figure out how to fix it...

sundarius

Thanks for the Question asked and @warrenM Thanks for the reply i was breaking my head on how to go about doing it in Xnormal. You saved me