Reusing polypainted maps

Cadu · May 2013

Using zspheres and dynamesh i got a 3 level subdivided tool with some triangles. After setting the uvw seams (still in zbrush) i polypainted for testing some things without any pretention in using it later.

My question is about reusing this same polipainted texture in a better organized mesh, without triangles and better topology. There any way of doing it inside zbrush?

Can i Qremesh it and somehow reuse those polypainted texture?

Thx for any help!

cryrid · May 2013

You can store it on a duplicated subtool, and project it back on later once you have your topology and UVs finalized.

Cadu · May 2013

But when i make any topology modification i lose my uv seams. Putting a saved texture back is worthless as it get off its original uv coordinates.

cryrid · May 2013

It's polypaint (vertex color) data, UVs are irrelevant.

Just keep the polypaint on a duplicated subtool. Don't convert it to a texture, dont worry about it's UVs. If I were using one just to store polypaint, I'd probably even delete the UVs to free up some memory.

As long as your new mesh occupies the same space and doesnt have its form significantly changed, it can have whatever edgeflow and UV changes you need to make. The polypaint should project over just fine.

Cadu · May 2013

Ok, but being a paint on vertex, the higher the count, better the resolution of the painting. Taking a low mesh polypaint and projecting over a higher mesh will cause me problems?

I trying to create a planar diffuse map and after that create normal, displacement etc. In this case i will need to define a uv map type, right? Cause i cant create a new map from polypaint without doing that.

Testing around i managed to recover the polypaint using two tools with the same polycount (withour doing the qremesh retopo yet), just to see how far i could go, but i had to use Adaptive Uvtiles cause the planar type without mapping was messing with the colors. The way to go in this case would be planar mapping with seams?

cryrid · May 2013

Converting a polypaint to a texture first wont be any different. It's just extra steps with larger files and no real benefit. If you want to store polypaint, you're going to store only the information you have, and that's what will be transferred when you try to project it or use a texture. If the mesh has enough vertices then it will look fine, if it has even more than it needs then you'll just wind up with a few of the more densely packed verts sharing the same color (no visual difference).

Is your mesh planar? If so you wont need UVs at all and you can just stick with screenshots and renders. Otherwise, I wouldn't use AUVs for a final mesh. UV Master or some manual UVs would be the better way to go.

Cadu · May 2013

Exactly. Doing more tests i managed to Qremesh my original dynamesh tool (80k polys) to 100k. I set Qremesh to maintain the same polycount, but instead it increased a little.

Without any problem or uvmapping so far i managed to project the polypaint to the new retopo tool. Below the results:

First tool after dynamesh

Second tool after qremesh

Second tool after qremesh, polyframe off and projected polypaint from the first tool

Thx alot for the help Cryrid!

Reusing polypainted maps

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