Mudbox serious painting problem

Bummer6

I hear people praising the crap out of Mudbox's painting feature, so I decided to try and paint one of my low-poly characters in Mudbox since my school doesn't have 3D coat and using Zbrush for this stuff is a pain.

Anyway, here's what one brushstroke looks like... Am I doing something wrong or is the program just incapable of painting on a low-poly model? I checked my UVs, there is nothing wrong there and there are no UV seams where the tearing occurs.

GlowingPotato

that's weird. Try scaling up the model a little, mudbox have some issues when sculpting/painting small objects.

oglu

may i see the uvs...

Bummer6

tried scaling it up by A LOT and it didn't affect it in the slightest.

Here are my UVs

Synaesthesia

Your UVs aren't the problem, although they do need more spacing between the shells to accommodate bleeding. What you need to do is increase the polygon count of the model you're painting. Use Mud's subdivide tool and uncheck the option to smooth the model. The more polygons it has to work with, the better the paint results will be.

Bummer6

Synaesthesia wrote: »

Your UVs aren't the problem, although they do need more spacing between the shells to accommodate bleeding. What you need to do is increase the polygon count of the model you're painting. Use Mud's subdivide tool and uncheck the option to smooth the model. The more polygons it has to work with, the better the paint results will be.

The main reason I thought I would like mudbox was because I assumed it could work with a low-poly model considering it paints directly to the UV map. So you're saying that there is nothing that can be done to make it work? I guess the only thing I can do is switch software then.

pior

There actually should be no need to subdivide - you are correct in assuming that Mudbox is indeed capable of painting straight to a lowpoly model with UVs - I personally use it all the time for this very task. The issue here must be coming from somewhere else.

It might come from the UVs being overlapped, and/or some odd combination with the X symmetry option while painting. Mudbox has always had quite a few bugs/missing features in that regard, but there is usually a few ways to get around them.

Would you mind uploading an OBJ of your model ? I'd love to give it a try.

GlowingPotato

Bummer6 wrote: »

The main reason I thought I would like mudbox was because I assumed it could work with a low-poly model considering it paints directly to the UV map. So you're saying that there is nothing that can be done to make it work? I guess the only thing I can do is switch software then.

Just increase the divisions to paint, you wont modify UV's or topology... the only thing you will export from mudbox is the texture maps.

Synaesthesia

Bummer6 wrote: »

The main reason I thought I would like mudbox was because I assumed it could work with a low-poly model considering it paints directly to the UV map. So you're saying that there is nothing that can be done to make it work? I guess the only thing I can do is switch software then.

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you can subdivide the model in Mudbox and paint on the subdivided model. You can subdivide it without smoothing it so the geometry stays intact. A few subdivision levels should give you enough polygons for Mud to properly paint on the object you're working with.

After that, you just export the textures you're working with and you're good to go. I use this method at the office frequently as many of our older models are 800 polygons or less and need to be subdivided to paint on them correctly. The UVs are still critical, but a lack of subdivisions will cause errors in the painting.

Give it a shot and let me know if it works. If you want more details, I can load up my copy of Mud and illustrate what I'm talking about.

Lycka till!

Bummer6

Thanks everyone for being so helpful! I'll try subdividing without smoothing later today. Here's the .FBX for anyone who'd like to have a go at it.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24168211/quaakexport.fbx

oglu

its cause of the overlapping uvs...
move one side to the next uvs tile and it will paint fine even on the lowres version...

i tried it and its working...