problem with polypainting :(

NAIMA

Ok I amsorry if this sounds stupid to many of you but I am not beeing able to get the polypaint to work ...

the proces I did is the following :

I have sculpted and detailed a mesh ... ok

then I set the zbrush to rgb and switch of the add or subtract so I can paint over ....
I fill the object with a material and start painting .. I use mixed techniques of drag and drop texture or mask alpha etc ....

when I finally finish and I am satisfied with the texturing I save the tool ..

I switch off and relauch couse for some reasons the Zbrush stuck in loading ...

I reload the tool and the paint is all there ...
I switch on color on polypaint tab and then I am at the point to export ....

1 I decide to decimate first the model but when I do it looses all the paint and color I have done and switch back to a red color and material

2 the other time I did switch the resolution of the mesh to 1 then GUV tiles and then up again to the max subdivision this created a texture but when I set texture on , again it turns all my mesh to red loosing all the changes done till now ...


how Can I do to export my polypainted object preserving the polypaint and decimated so that zbrush doesnt crash when exporting and be able to use in xnormal?

It 's whole evening that I am trying and I can't get it to work .... not saying also that everystep I take Zbrush gets stuck in loading for some minutes ...

cryrid

1 I decide to decimate first the model but when I do it looses all the paint and color I have done and switch back to a red color and materia

Have you told Decimation Master to preserve polypaint in it's preferences? If not it will throw that information out the window

NAIMA

No or well i pressed preserve uv and freeze borders , you mean those?

cryrid

Nope.

Preferences: Decimation Master: Use and Keep Polypaint

bugo

if I may ask you, why do you want to keep polypaint if you can export it to texture and have better density on pixels? The decimated polypainting is not going to look sharp enough.

cryrid

DM uses the polypaint to judge where it would need to place the verts to maintain the detail, just as it tries to maintain the same surface. A mesh that has been decimated down to 200k should have a better looking polypaint on it than trying to paint the same thing on a 200k subdivided mesh. There will be a small drop in quality no doubt, but because it is diffuse only, I don't think the difference is anything that a pair of eyes will really be able to tell unless its actively looking for it or the decimation was too strong.

Another issue is that by using UVs, the quality is at it's mercy. If your highpoly sculpt is properly unwrapped then you might not have anything to worry about, but unwrapped highpoly sculpts certainly aren't always the case (especially in zbrush). Using the auto unwrapping options presents it's own set of problems; if polygons start getting their own UV islands to themselves and DM has to start hacking some away in order to do its job, there's going to be distortions. I don't know how much this image will really show with gif's limit of 256 colors, but you can see that while the texture image has a bit more noise towards the bottom right, it's also noticeably distorted along the top of the back and looks blurrier in areas despite using a high resolution

NAIMA

Thankyou ...

Another question is , I can't find in the preferences any option for import export and preserve uv ... how can I do to export with the high poly model also the polypaint info ? is there any button to press or is something automatic?

and how can I be sure it was exported ? as I do not read any info box showing up telling me that the polypaint info was exported ...

Also just to understand the polypaint is just eehwn I use the rgb or mrgb to paint the model no? because is what I did , I haven't checked any polypaint button befoure start painting .....

bugo

If you have color in it and you have "colorize" on, it should have been exported. You should only use RGB mode to paint the model, M means ur painting the material also.

NAIMA

Another problem , I recently painted another part of my model , a subtool ... once satisfied I saved and I went to do other stuff ... now after some hours I reload the ile and I find the subtool is with the classic red material and seems not to have kept the material I applied why?

cryrid

I've seen at least one other person report that problem, though it's not something I've ran into.

NAIMA

mmm so it could be a bug?

Ace-Angel

Did you save it as a Tool or Project?

NAIMA

tool

Ace-Angel

That might explain, I have tool lose it's material several times on me too, but I don't have that issue with Project, also, did you use Layers? I also have issues with Polypaint and Tools if I save them...so yeah, bug.

NAIMA

no didnt use layers I yet didn't study them , bt if I save as project what changes compared to tool?

cryrid

Projects include:

Document size and colors.
Every loaded Tools and their SubTools
Current Tool/camera position
All maps assigned to a Tool or SubTool.
Floor visibility and grid settings
Perspective value
Light/Material/Render settings
Timeline settings

the new under history, and probably more.

As a result, it can be a much larger file size.

NAIMA

valuable for the final file but I can't find in the usual document save , I get save document or save tool or cancel .... where is this other project to save?
thanks for answers btw ...

cryrid

Under the File palette (File: Save As)

NAIMA

Ok found thanks ... now another small problem ... I was happypolypainting untill I decided to start painting the leather parts after I did the metal ones ... all of a sudden so I select the leather belt and select a new material but ... puff all my other painted stuff revert to that new material too ... what's happened and how can I recover ?

here is a picture of what happened....from this ....



to this ....

cryrid

Was the original material painted into the polypaint with MRGB, or were you just doing color with RGB only?

NAIMA

MRGB and I used color/fill object then repainted over with black rgb because it didn't take the desired darker base on wich I wanted to paint over using the cavity masking with a ligher color ...

NAIMA

I seem to find no difference if I paint i Mrgb or rgb anyway if I change the material ball it changes the material of the object doesnt happen for other object to wich I applied the same process I have no idea why ...

cryrid

Is that 4r4.2 ?

NAIMA

4R3

NAIMA

just updated , but when I press different material it changes it for the whole object -_- ....

Thousand

as long as you don´t fill the object with a material, it will always switch to the material you choose.
to avoid this, you acitvate "M" instead of "RGB", select the desired material, then goto color > fill object.

NAIMA

but I did this :

selected material

MRGB

Color / fill object


then I painted over in RGB but stil same results ....