Zbrush polypainting question

montressor

Dear All,

I would like to create a texture for lower poly model. I have a struggle with painting faces, because when I paint it paints at the vertexes, and when it does it paint all the faces connected to that vertexes in ever directions. For example I have a telescope with extruded rings, and I would like to make the tube grey while the rings yellow. When I paint the rings it repaint the tube's part as well. Is there any way to paint only by faces?
Or make a mask select the appropriate faces?
Thank you very much

cryrid

You'll want more vertices for polypainting one way or another. If you don't need the extra density across the entire mesh that comes from subdividing, then you'll at least want to split the vertices where you want the sharp transition to be (set the zmodeler edge-action to unweld, target: edgeloop complete' ). 

musashidan

The Polypaint name is a bit misleading as you are actually painting vertex colour information to the vertices. That's why it's necessary to paint textures in Zbrush at a high resolution and bake the vertex colour information to a map for later application to your UV'd low-poly.

What you can do, however, is turn of the SMT(smooth) button and divide your mesh to 2 mill or so. This will retain the shape but allow for PP. Make sure to duplicate your subtool first.

Also, you will need UVs for when you save the texture from your PP. If you're just painting with solid blocks of colour then you can establish your polygroups to match the colours. UVmaster with polygroups on. And also, the advantage of this is that you can ctrl+shift click to isolate polygroups and just fill each group with their respective colour(fill object>RGB button enabled)

ExcessiveZero

musashidan said:

The Polypaint name is a bit misleading as you are actually painting vertex colour information to the vertices. That's why it's necessary to paint textures in Zbrush at a high resolution and bake the vertex colour information to a map for later application to your UV'd low-poly.

What you can do, however, is turn of the SMT(smooth) button and divide your mesh to 2 mill or so. This will retain the shape but allow for PP. Make sure to duplicate your subtool first.

Also, you will need UVs for when you save the texture from your PP. If you're just painting with solid blocks of colour then you can establish your polygroups to match the colours. UVmaster with polygroups on. And also, the advantage of this is that you can ctrl+shift click to isolate polygroups and just fill each group with their respective colour(fill object>RGB button enabled)

You don't need the High poly Uvs if you have a Uved low poly you are going to bake to, you can say export and import the highpolys vertex color to Xnormals then bakedown the polypaint with vertex color ticked, at least as I understand it.

musashidan

ExcessiveZero said:

You don't need the High poly Uvs if you have a Uved low poly you are going to bake to, you can say export and import the highpolys vertex color to Xnormals then bakedown the polypaint with vertex color ticked, at least as I understand it.

You don't need the High poly Uvs if you have a Uved low poly you are going to bake to, you can say export and import the highpolys vertex color to Xnormals then bakedown the polypaint with vertex color ticked, at least as I understand it.

musashidan

ExcessiveZero said:

You don't need the High poly Uvs if you have a Uved low poly you are going to bake to, you can say export and import the highpolys vertex color to Xnormals then bakedown the polypaint with vertex color ticked, at least as I understand it.

It's the lowpoly uvs I was referring to. You don't ever need uvs on a highpoly bake mesh.

You don't even need to bake the vert colours in xnormal if the lowpoly is unwrapped. You just grab the PP at the highest level to a texture and export the lowest level.