Run into an issue of tiling seam on a trim sheet
After I completed my sculpting on the trim sheet in Zbrush, I exported it into Maya to prepare for texturing in Substance Painter. However, I found that two parts of the trim don't tile well as expected, and the tiling seam is noticeable.
So, I went back to Zbrush again and resculpted these two parts. However, the new version still has the same issues as before. I did make sure to turn on the WARP MODE in Zbrush while sculpting. Also, I tried framing on a camera plane and then sculpting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdh0peG4oys).
I am unsure how to fix that, and I like the first version better, so if there is no way to fix it, I will stick with it. Should I just ignore the problem and hope it will be fixed in Substance Painter after applying texture to it to cover up the seam?
Does anyone know how to fix the problem or where I did wrong? Any comment is welcome!
Replies
An easy option is to offset the seam to the middle, bake a height map, and paint it out in Photoshop. Then you can use it to displace a plane or generate other maps.
That sounds like a good approach! Thank you!
To ensure I fully understand your method, are you saying I can offset the seam in Maya, bake a height map in Substance Painter, and then paint the map in Photoshop? And after that, generate other maps in Substance Painter based on the.height map? Please let me know if I'm using the right software to do the steps. More specific advice will be helpful to me.😀
You can do the same thing in zbrush. Duplicate the mesh and move it so the center of the mesh lines up with the edge of the texture/bake mesh and then fix the seam that you can now see in the middle -- see this image
Thank you for your image demonstration. It is very clear! Do I need to use the Dynamesh tool in order to merge duplicated meshes into one mesh before fixing the seam? Because I'm not really familiar with the Zbrush tool, not sure what tool I should use to achieve the goal.
You should definitely learn to use dynamesh. It's pretty simple and very useful.
https://youtu.be/u5aEcwKH5EA
I usually just export the depth into Photoshop and do content aware fill over seam area + a bit of manual content aware move tool. Then back to zbrush extrude and do a few extra touches if I feel it's necessary.
Or in Affinity photo since it has a lighting live filter that can show you a kind of shaded surface from your depth or as a normal map. Easier than just on depth image. They call it inpainting there plus patch tool
I think you shouldn't have to deal with this fix up process at all - it's an unnecessary step.
for horizontal tiling things it's easy enough to just enable symmetry on the texture border area - no need for wrap mode action.
But even fully tileable (with wrap mode) is quite doable, you just need to do the setup very carefully - and verify that it works early on.
This makes sure that you don't run into a situation like this where you need to deal with these extra steps to fix it up somehow...
If you use symmetry you'll get a 'butterfly' mirroring look on the seam. This works fine with a regular pattern but can look funny with things like wood grain.
I tried your method, and it works well on two of my trim sheets! That's awesome! However, the window&roof trim sheet is still not tiling properly, so I would fix it in photoshop. Thank you, though. The method your provided can use in most situations! Also, I tried both ways with or without Dynamesh, and the merge result is similar.
Thank you for providing the solution. I never knew there was a software called Affinity Photo. It sounds like an easy way to fix the seam with it. I might use it in the future, but now Photoshop should be good enough. 😀
I did make sure to turn out the warp mode and double-check if it works. It did work. However, if the border edge gets distorted or not straight, the tiling won't work correctly anymore. Turning on symmetry sounds good. I tried to turn on Active Symmetry in Zbrush (if that's what you mean). However, the result didn't turn out perfectly. It may be because my shape isn't regular. Thank you, though, for providing one more solution to my problem!