Zbrush: Tileable Sculpting

cycloverid

A couple questions I have regarding this:

1 - Using the WrapMode slider of the Brush tab, how can one get the stroke to tile perfectly along a plane? With a value of 1, my brush seems to wrap at an arbitrary position off the plane. See below!



2 - If I can get this to work, how can I get the plane to perfectly fill the document at a given resolution? If I'm making a 512X512 texture, grabbing the document and trying to resize the image in PS is a real hassle!


Thanks for looking.

Rhinokey

i dont know if you can do it that way, you can zoom the planet to take up your whole screen then press t to drop it down flat, then draw on it in 2.5 d and use the ` key (next to the 1 key) to slide the canvas around

go to document menu and change the size to what ever rez you want

G3L

yes i was wondering about making tileable textures in zbrush! the thing is if you go into 2.5 mode and drop it down flat, you can't use alphas and some of the cool 3D brushes. so what can we do about that?

Neox

cant you just create a document at 512x512 size and use f or zoom in?

Popeye9

If you are using zbrush 3 then you can use the image plane plugin. There is a good video tutorial by Joseph Durst on the pixologic website showing how to use it to bake materials but you can use to grab all kinds of different maps. If you are using Zbrush 3.5 then you will have to wait for the plugin to be updated.

Here is the link to the tutorials just scroll down and you will see his on baking materials

http://www.pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/

cycloverid

I just quickly wanted to answer my first question there. That plane in my pic was one that I imported from Maya. Apparently the Zbrush WrapMode always wraps at a certain distance, not based on UV's or anything like that. In other words, you can't use rectangular shapes or anything outside of that pre-determined square (annoying). If you use the Zbrush plane and don't try to change the size, you're good. Oh, it also doesn't work with the freehand stroke!

I'll try some of those other suggestions you guys put up regarding my second question. Thanks for your time!

EDIT:

Neox: Genius! It didn't occur to me that framing it would fill the screen.

cycloverid

Gah!

Just when I think everything is working great... I find out that it isn't. I'm actually surprised that this isn't a more well-known procedure.

To Recap, this is my workflow:

1.) Create a tileable alpha in PS to show basic height details.
2.) Displace a plane in ZBrush using this alpha.
3.) Sculpt additional details using the WrapMode function of the Brush.
4.) Save out maps using a document size at the desired map size. The mesh MUST fill the document completely. I don't want to deal with guesswork!

I was foolish enough to think for a moment that framing the tool would fill the entire document, but it does not. Just to be clear, Step 4 is the problem area still.

Having a workflow that will cleanly create tileable normal maps (not just perfect horizontal bricks) is important to me. Again, I'm surprised at how difficult this is turning out to be.

**Oh, and thank you all for your replies, I have read them all, and tried to apply these techniques, and I still have these problems.

Ben Apuna

Sorry I'm of no help when it comes to Zbrush.

Have you seen this tutorial by SHEPEIRO? The Polycount thread for it.

It doesn't seem to be tileable sculpting so it may be of no use to you, but the end result is a tileable lowpoly + normal map and that's what you want right?

cycloverid

Thanks for the reply Ben. This is unfortunately using the 2.5d sculpting, and doesn't work for sculpting on a plane like in my example. Perhaps there is no way currently to nicely create tileable normal maps (not using 2.5d).

If no one has done this, maybe Mudbox has some solutions?

Ben Apuna

For Mudbox there are these tutorials put up just the other day by aphexx. The third one might be of particular interest to you. It's not the cleanest workflow for a tilable mesh but that's a problem with Mudbox not tutorial itself.

Also this one over at the Area, using that method you can also crank up the opacity of the displacement layer to something like 2500 - 5000 to give some real depth to the sculpt.

wailingmonkey

cycloverid,

maybe this may help:

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=54052

it's for 3.1, but probably still applicable...

divi

you could tile the alpha in photoshop twice and sculpt with wrapmode set to 2 instead of 1. you'd just have to grab the filled document at twice the wanted resolution and cut out the middle section that tiles only once. that way it's even no problem if you forgot to turn off shadows happens to me all the time

cycloverid

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Ben: So cool! Thanks for the links. The first one looks great and should be exactly what I need.

Wailing: This is a very applicable link... but the fact that you can't easily clamp the exterior verts has me worried, and preferring mudbox's approach more.

Divi: Yes, that solution has occurred to me several times during this process! But, again, Ben's links look so much more convenient.


So far, MudBox is looking like the definitive software for tileable normal map sculpting and generation.

pior

if you just want to tile it horizontally ... you could maybe sculpt it on a cylinder? Or any kind of mesh that 'loops' on itself...

cycloverid

Pior: lol. A crazy suggestion. I'd try it if I could get the WrapMode function to work (ZBrush probably isn't a good candidate). I still wonder if any artifacting would be caused by the cylindrical unwrap.

Certainly not to be attempted by the faint of heart.

Ruffio718

Actually there is an artist who made a tutorial on tileable textures in 2.5 and how to make a normal map with them too.

here...

http://vimeo.com/2228433

ghib

cycloverid wrote: »

A couple questions I have regarding this:

1 - Using the WrapMode slider of the Brush tab, how can one get the stroke to tile perfectly along a plane? With a value of 1, my brush seems to wrap at an arbitrary position off the plane. See below!
Thanks for looking.

I can answer question 1 for you. I had this problem a few times and I discovered that if you goto the Deformation tab on your tool and click Unify it will sort this weird arbitrary wrap position to the boundary of your mesh.

Good luck with question 2 as I haven't ever been able to find a decent solution to this.

p.s. I really hope Andrew picks up on this soon as it will be a massive saver..

wasker

Speaking of tileable sculpting and stuff. What key is the 'Tilde' key on a European keyboard? and is there anyway I can see and modify my key binds?

the key is not § or ´ or ` or ' for me anyway.

divi

ö if you have that on your keyboard

wasker

That's it! thanks

Funky Bunnies

I haven't done much of this, so sorry if it's not totally right

1. but I'd go with pior's suggestion if you can. I'm not sure why you need wrap mode to work on a cylinder? why don't you just sculpt normally and bake? I've done this once before and it worked fine for a purely 1-axis tile

2. You're going to get weird bleedover unless you turn on axis constraints
(Transform->Modifiers). This is a pain to work with but it's the only way I know of to make sure that stuff doesn't start sliding around. If you do it this way you can probably use zmapper or bake onto another plane of the same size

but I'd be surprised if you can't find a script or plugin someone's made to fit the document to the size of the tool

Ark

Try using a torus as it tiles in both U and V.

cycloverid

Funky Bunnies wrote: »

I haven't done much of this, so sorry if it's not totally right

1. but I'd go with pior's suggestion if you can. I'm not sure why you need wrap mode to work on a cylinder? why don't you just sculpt normally and bake? I've done this once before and it worked fine for a purely 1-axis tile

2. You're going to get weird bleedover unless you turn on axis constraints
(Transform->Modifiers). This is a pain to work with but it's the only way I know of to make sure that stuff doesn't start sliding around. If you do it this way you can probably use zmapper or bake onto another plane of the same size

but I'd be surprised if you can't find a script or plugin someone's made to fit the document to the size of the tool

Funky:

1.) Why wrap on cylinder? -- Unless you have a very thin, curved cylinder, you won't get a square map on there. I guess I wasn't understanding his suggestion completely. It'd work, sure, but I'll consider it a last resort for now. Perhaps I'm not as crazy as some!

2.) Thanks for this explanation. I'll look into this and the script.


Ark: A torus?! Let's not get silly! I think weighing the disadvantages/advantages of such a beastly sculpt, one would have to conclude that the disadvantages are far greater here. If you think about it, the ideal shape here would be as close to a sphere as possible, and then your poles are pinching. As you push away from the sphere shape, you get a non-square map. This could perhaps work for a rectangular map? (Ex: 256X512 or better yet 64X512)


I love hearing new suggestions though, thanks guys.

pior

Well a torus unwraps as a square grid so I can see the point. If thats stuff like foliage you are doing ... I would expect it to work!

Sometimes it's just a matter of trying stuff. Also it's not just cylinders or toruses. A cube with no top or bottom cap, and rounded corners, could work just fine...

wailingmonkey

cycloverid,

actually, a torus is perfect for seamless stuff.

unwrap one and see for yourself (just need to set
up the proportions right so there's no stretching on
the final UVs).

I use this in XSI where I just import an unwrapped
torus (seam in entire middle edge and 1 that goes
around radius of tube, splitting it so there's two 'ends')
place a spatial texture projection on it, then bake
out using the unwrapped UVs.

<runs off to bake out some noise textures from Z3.5 on
his custom seamless torus>

Ben Apuna

Interesting ideas sculpting on self tiling meshes.

With a cylinder you would just have to match the circumference with the height and you'd have a perfect square map.

A Torus with the right dimensions would map perfectly as well, might be tricky to sculpt on though. Perhaps you could flatten it out with a morph of some type while sculpting the center then re-torus it to sculpt over the seams.

wailingmonkey

here's a quick example of the torus:




The downsides are a couple (for Zbrush, at least):

- my geometry is such that even tho my UVs are 'square', the actual polys
on the torus are stretched...so what I see in ZB is not exactly what I get
on the seamless normals (did an earlier test, and Z didn't like the overlapping
UVs I used to compensate for the stretch, so it borked the seamlessness--solution
would be to not overlap and put other half of the torus UVs in another uv-space)

- this example shows the use of surface noise...which is kinda un-precise to
begin with. so if you were going for a more inorganic texture (say bricks) it would
be more difficult to sculpt them for a nice result (probably directly relational to
your first response of 'don't be silly' when the torus was suggested)

anyhow, it's still a pretty good technique for the right stuff.

Ben Apuna

On second thought it might be easier to turn a plane into a torus depending on what 3d app you are modeling your base mesh in.

On the other hand I believe there are some scripts out there that can morph a mesh based on it's UV coordinates, renderhjs textools is one with it's swap UVW XYZ feature.



So you could do the bulk of your sculpting on a torus turned into a plane then morph it back to a torus for the seams. I'd put the main seam on the outer edge of the ring though as it's probably easier to sculpt on the outside edge than inside the hole.

cycloverid

Ben + Pior: I'm actually warming up to this 'circular wrapping'. I think the most practical use is for texture strips. Especially long, thin strips -- obviously a very common application in environment texturing. But it isn't necessarily limited to that. I still think that tiling in u AND v should use a different approach.

Wailing: This was perhaps a useful technique in this example. HOWEVER, I'm not sure why you couldn't just generate noise in photoshop, tile it, and generate a normal map that way.

Furthermore, if you tried to do a nice, clean brick tilesheet, I think you would run into more problems than you care to admit with this. So, for anything other than a moldy old donut, you might be out of luck!

arrangemonk

you guys are much too much into sculpting the oldschool way of subd + photoshop still has its value

pior

Dude we dont try to force any technique on you, just suggesting different ways to tackle the problem...

Don't onverthink it, try it man!