Still not getting the most out of my texture

mdeforge

Hey guys,

Every few months I redo our human model at work (we do medical sims), and this time around we got a subscription to 3DSK for some high quality reference photos. They are fairly large, which did make a pretty nice difference when it came to using spotlight in ZBrush, but I noticed that the textures were still coming out a bit blurry upon export, so I took the last two days to painstakingly match up some of the reference photos onto my diffuse texture in Photoshop and mask in the high res reference right onto it. I could have used ZAppLink, but it seems that any time Zbrush is involved, especially if I export polypaint, reapply a texture as polypaint, and then export again, the image loses sharpness. I've been using 4096^2 TIFF's.

I basically looking for any suggestions or tips on how to bring more realism out of what I have. Go crazy.

cryrid

I could have used ZAppLink, but it seems that any time Zbrush is involved, especially if I export polypaint, reapply a texture as polypaint, and then export again, the image loses sharpness. I've been using 4096^2 TIFF's.

You'll loose information when converting to polypaint if the vertices aren't there to support all of it. If you combine zapplink with the texture and projection master, any changes get converted to the texture itself (so the sharpness should depend more on the texture resolution and the amount of document pixols)

mdeforge

Hey Cryrid, thanks for responding. Could you explain how zapplink and projection master work together? I've used zapplink before but am not sure what you mean about combining zapplink with projection master. They both do texture work... doesn't zapplink use projections anyway? Maybe that's it and I'm just over analyzing it. I saw this Youtube video that strictly uses projection master though.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTh0wSjF71U"]video[/ame]

Yeah I get that polypaint is dependant on polygons. I tried dividing my body mesh up into subtools based on their UV's so I could divide more (past 1.8 Million for the head), but I had trouble combining them again after. Although, I recently watched those Dynamesh tutorials that were in my news feed, and one of them talked about appending meshes together. Would that be a good way to recombine all my subtools together again then? One of the issues with this though is that I don't think I can keep my division levels. I'm drawn to the subtool idea because then I could use spotlight again without that much quality loss (since I could divide more), but if I lose my levels or if it affects quality, I'd rather go the projection master/zapplink route you mentioned.

cryrid

could you explain how zapplink and projection master work together? I've used zapplink before but am not sure what you mean about combining zapplink with projection master.

Normally zapplink+projection master will just convert the result back to polypaint. If the tool had a texture applied first however, projection master sends the result straight to it (so if you used it on a basic cube, you'd be able to paint as much information as the document and texture can handle even though you only have 8 verts).

mdeforge

I think I see the method to your madness now. Also found this link also that details it too. Great! Thanks for the help

Yeah, now that I recall, I had that converting back to poly paint problem before. I'll keep that in mind.