Zbrush pattern follow help.

Evil raz

How would I use surface noise stripe pattern to follow around my mesh?
Like this example:

Adam L. Gray

Well, you could model/sculpt it by hand, otherwise, I suppose an alpha brush with lazy mouse on it might get the job done, simply dragging it along the edge to lightly mark the lines, and then touch them up a bit extra. But I dunno! I'm sort of new to sculpting yet tbh

CheeseOnToast

You can uv the base mesh so that the trim border is a continuous tiling strip. When you use noisemaker to create the pattern, make sure you set it to use UVs instead of the default 3d projection. I went crazy with noisemaker using this technique on the bread basket below :

Chase

When you say uv the base mesh you mean the unwrap the low poly?

cryrid

For Noisemaker, you would UV whatever mesh you're sculpting on.

Ravenok

Cheeseontoast, how many parts is this basket made of?

I'm thinking the top and bottom ring are the same object twice, the walls around the basket's another object, and there probably is another one for the bottom of it (and ofc the bread and cloth, etc).

But I can't not wonder if you somehow did it with just 1 object for the entire basket?

CheeseOnToast

Hey man, sorry it took so long, been off sick. Here's a pic of the base mesh (i.e. lowest subdivision level) and its UV layout. The basket is all one piece, I just used masking to isolate the different patterns to different areas. You could also store a morph target before applying the noise, then paint out the areas you don't want to have the pattern using the morph brush.

Evil raz

CheeseOnToast wrote: »

Hey man, sorry it took so long, been off sick. Here's a pic of the base mesh (i.e. lowest subdivision level) and its UV layout. The basket is all one piece, I just used masking to isolate the different patterns to different areas. You could also store a morph target before applying the noise, then paint out the areas you don't want to have the pattern using the morph brush.

Thanks for the visual image. I got it now.
I think masking before applying the noise would be easier.

CheeseOnToast

Yeah it is. You can use polygroups based on UVs to make the selection and masking process really easy. Storing a morph target before you apply the noise is always handy, as you can then either tone down or increase it's depth selectively with the morph brush set to a really low intensity.

If you want the pattern to wrap seamlessly, you'll need to play around with the noise scale. I found that if I made UVs that are snapped to the edges of the 0-1 UV space this becomes easier. If you've done that, then setting the noise scale to a factor of 10 (eg. 10, 1 , 0.1, 0.001 etc.) should result in a perfect tile with no seam.

Ravenok

Looks great, it seems so crisp that I had to wonder how you did it.
Thanks

Chase

How'd you go about the wicker in the middle?

tristamus

In tandem with masking, you can also use noisemaker on a layer to control it's intensity even further. Really great...

CheeseOnToast

How'd you go about the wicker in the middle?

I made a simple tiling model in Maya then baked a heightmap from it in Xnormal. I used this heightmap as a custom alpha in Zbrush. Pretty simple stuff. You can grab the alpha here if you want to check it out :

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1889770/BasketWeave.psd

MisterSande

question: is the point of this method that you import a uv'd low poly inside Zbrush and than sub-d it so you can apply a noisemaker alpha pattern ?


also, how do you "straighten" out curved Uvs ?

tristamus

To straighten UV's, look into Nightshade UV, or UV Deluxe.

MisterSande

hey tristamus, sadly I do not use Maya I do have UVLayout and 3dsMax 2012.

CheeseOnToast

I use UV layout as well. Hitting "i" tags edges for vertical or horizontal straightening. On a regular UV strip like the ones shown above, hitting "r" automatically unwraps them into a rectangle. Check out the hotkey page online for other methods.

tristamus

CheeseOnToast wrote: »

I use UV layout as well. Hitting "i" tags edges for vertical or horizontal straightening. On a regular UV strip like the ones shown above, hitting "r" automatically unwraps them into a rectangle. Check out the hotkey page online for other methods.

Headus, I assume? Yes, me as well. I've been using it for years, it is still as great as ever! Great shortcuts there, Toast, I didn't know about all of those >D Very very very cool.

MisterSande

aye, many thanks I just purchased UVlayout so I am a big newb but im already loving the intuitive interface.