simmsimaging

One thing that would be very useful is adding this function as a brush option. It's something I love in Zbrush and (really wish existed in Photoshop too). Very handy when you want to paint a smaller area of your model but want to keep the brush texture size consistent. By having an adjustable edge fade you can contract the size of the brush and keep the core texture the same. Having an adjustable edge hardness to that fade would also be great. Any chance of that? Thanks /b

Here is one imported for PP painting. This actually seems much better to me. I imported with the base mesh at 17K and the texture at 8K, and also opted to try subdividing on import so it was about a 70K mesh and 8K texture. I don't think there was really any difference in the detail though. Should the mesh res affect how much detail you get in PP painting? (I didn't think so, but not sure). So this is better for sure, and I may have sort of stumbled onto another complicating factor that might be a source of a lot of my problems: when I scaled down a brush in 3DC it really gets super coarse looking. It almost seems that 3DC is interpolating the source image down very roughly. Is it possible that the interpolation algorithm used to scale down brushes for painting could use a tweak, or is that just me? b

Definitely better - but it's still not really fine detail. There is a level at which 3DC matches ZB, but then it just falls short IMO. Here is an example. It's the same mesh as my example in ZB above, but exported to 3DC. I exported a 17K poly mesh and imported through MV. I chose mesh resolution of 20 Million, and texture is 8K. This crop is approximately the same size area as the ZB example. I exported the main alpha brush I used in ZB, so that would be the same too. I think the difference is quite apparent. Don't get me wrong - I am not a 3DC witch-hunt. I *want* to be able to use it. Just can't seem to find a way to get what I need out of it. b

Yep, but I export my normal map at 8K, not 1K. I get that there are limits, but I don't impose such strict ones myself

I'm definitely interested in the Ptex possibilities - and I've watched your vid already for sure The thing is: I can get damn close to that detail out of Zbrush using normal maps and reasonably hi-res meshes. I'm not trying to get super low poly models out. I'm working on a pipeline right now (with the help of Artman and a few other people) to get high res geometry out to use rather than resorting to maps. At current normal maps and *fairly* high geo seems to be the way, and I can dispose of the displacement map hassle (and loss of detail that may come with that). In that case I can definitely get this level of detail out of Zbrush. I would be happy to see something close out of 3DC, at least to see something like it in the viewport so I can tell what my bump/normal maps look like as I create them. Does that make sense? b

It's getting close for sure. I don't think it's quite as sharp and tight, but let's say it's tight enough though: how do you get it out of there in a way that can be rendered in Max/Vray and hold that detail? Re: you other post: If you can't step down from surface mode then you have to nail it in one - which is acceptable in my mind, but getting that detail out of the voxel room and onto a renderable and paintable mesh has proven tough for me too. b

Tried it, but when you go back to Voxel mode and export it all just disappears. Maybe if you stay in surface mode only, but going back and forth does not seem possible. I didn't get too far with this workflow though, because exporting from Voxels to paint (quadrangulate and paint - didn't want to retopo) gave me a crazy blocky mesh and I more or less just gave up on that approach and went back to Zbrush. Is it doable this way? b

Maybe this will help clarify and there will be an answer on this question Attached are two screen caps of some detail I hacked into a current working object. At the moment this one is sub-d'd up to almost 18M points in Zbrush, so it is admittedly dense. However you can see how zoomed in that detail shot is by comparing it to the overall - it's quite micro detail. Can I get that level of detail in 3DC? If so, how? I've tried voxels to no avail and sculpting can't get close, so painting a depth map seemed to be the way to go - but I've never gotten even close to this except to paint it as a texture map only, and then load that as a bump in Max/Vray. Don't get me wrong - I know 3DC can paint that level of *texture* detail on a high enough res map (via Per Pixel anyway) but no way have I seen anything close in the depth channel in the viewport. Because I can actually *see* this detail in ZB it is much easier to create there. b

.... I kinda thought that I could: my understanding is that was what painting via a depth map would allow, versus sculpting actual geometry. However, I can do more with actual geometry in Zbrush than I can do with textures in 3DC - and not by using "billions" of polys, maybe more like 3-10 million. Still a lot mind you . That is the part I still don't really get and I've never been able to find an explanation - it just doesn't seem to come up, which is surprising to me. Anyway, I'm not sure how the zooming in of your reference impacts, because that is about as good as I can get out of 3DC at any zoom. If there is a way to get real tight detail I would love to know how. b

Maybe I misunderstood or mis-wrote: layers is great, but for single textures. What I don't need is spec/bump/color at the same time. Your screen cap kinda highlights exactly what I"m talking about: you see it as fine, but to me it's all to coarse and there are artifacts everywhere. I don't know if that's just the screen smoothing of 3DC (which always seems poor on my models) or if that is how coarse the depth would actually be. I tend to just paint bumps etc as a black and white color texture and just use it as a bump later - can't get anywhere close to the same level of detail when using depth. b

Totally agree with this. I find the visualization of spec in particular is largely useless as it does not interact with the surface attributes in any kind of meaningful way. I might paint depth maps at the same time as color maps, but since you can't effectively control the options for depth in a single brush it's rarely useful to me - plus I find the screen representation of depth is very crude/rough. My .02 would be to disable that stuff and ramp up the texture size or mesh size that 3DC can move around b

Yeah, the original mesh was around 6-8M poly's (forget now) and I decimated it because this is one of several pieces in the final image and the poly count was getting out of hand. Even using proxies the rendertimes were skyrocketing. Also wanted to play with sculpting more and couldn't sub-d beyond that on my system (didn't want to use HD geometry because I wanted actual geometry to work with). Really the only way to get the hi-res final mesh that I want is to live with minor artifacts, not decimate the mesh, or find a way to UV a high poly decimated mesh outside of ZB. AUV/PUV/GUV all create useless UV's - that is where that artifact problem with the baked textures was coming from. Unfortunately I have no other practical way of doing UV's for a 1.2M poly object. b

Thanks very much for taking the time to do this Artman - I really appreciate it. I think this method will work great for most things. There is a loss of fine detail between the original mesh and the new mesh, which is something I'd hoped to save, but it's the level of detail that could be done with a normal/bump map which could be painted up in 3DC anyway. Or I could go back to your first suggestion with this model and use this method and texture bake back to the original full res mesh. The only problem with that route is the messed up UV's you get out of Zbrush with a decimated mesh. It's certainly worlds better than where I was - thanks again for all the help. I owe you one. b

Really appreciate you taking the time. I just PM'd you a link for the Ztool version of the mesh (already decimated - this would be my "final" hi-res mesh) b

I did try it that way but It did not even give me an estimated time. However, last night I decided to try again and it ran for 7 hours but was just hanging - no result. If I uploaded the mesh would you be willing to give it a try? This is driving me nuts. b

It may just be that your maps are more forgiving - not sure. Here are two images. I UV'd the object in Zbrush using PUV, sub-divided to 2-3M polys. Exported a lo-res (about 30K) poly's and then decimated to create a 300K Decimated hi-res and exported that. I imported the non-decimated lo-res into 3DC and roughed out this map. Both were imported into Max and the same map was applied to both - you can see the different results. However, the results are even worse when I do this using the two decimation level approach. The UV's from the decimated lo-res are even more screwed up compared to the hi-res decimated mesh. My feeling is that decimation is not going to be very useful for real accurate detail, unless I'm doing something else wrong. b EDIT: just to be clear - this is a map painted on the lo-res UV"d object, and then applied to the same, and then applied to the result of the decimation process. The map painted for the lo-res pre-decimated mesh do not work on the decimated mesh very well.

It's looking like this problem is coming from the UV's out of Zbrush. I redid the process and I can get the artifacts in Zbrush as well. It is something to do with AUV tiling on decimated meshes. I am not yet sure if this happens with GUV/PUV or other modes as the mesh is too dense for that, so I'll try it on lower res. I am really just getting the vibe that you should just make sure you have some decent UV's long before you ever think about decimating, then you should be able to use one of several methods outlined in this thread. b

You are correct: I was not able to import my decimated meshes - but mine were nearly twice the size or yours (900K +) so maybe that's why yours worked and mine didn't. Anyway, you are right that if you have it UV'd prior to decimation then you can work as per normal and just paint on the lo-res mesh, but the decimated UV's and the lo-res non-decimated UV's do not match exactly and you get texture artifacts/oddness when using the maps painted for one on the other. In some cases that may not matter, but it is not accurate enough for my use. For me it is better to have a more exact match of lo and hi res, so either both are decimated, or neither are, and then the painted maps work no problem - but getting lo and hi decimated meshes is proving problematic. Right now the only hold up is you have to UV *before* decimation, because doing it after causes other issues. In most cases this should be fine, but in this one case I screwed up the UV's. b

Thanks for sharing that detailed workflow. If you are importing your high res decimated mesh then for sure you can import and paint right on it (although I'm finding it should be UV'd prior to decimation, as the decimated mesh doesn't seem to work with AUV and it's a hassle to UV any other way). The high res mesh is probably why it's lagging though. It would be perfect if 3DC could be optimized to paint on hi-res mesh like ZB. Then all this lo/high res stuff would be redundant. b

Painting in ZBrush is possible, but I much prefer the tools in 3DC - for texture painting it's hard to beat. Polypainting can be very fast though, and for some stuff it's fine. If I run into too many snags I may have to switch to that route, but I'd prefer to stay with 3DC if I can. b

I can't seem to win on this one - I tried the 'project all' approach but Zbrush just choked on trying to transfer the details on the 600K mesh (600K active points in Zbrush, so actually I think that's 1.2 M polys). I'm about ready to toss the model now. On the upside - I think I have figured out a pretty good workflow for use with other models (as long as I don't botch the UV's like I did this time ): In Zbrush: - lo-res mesh, apply UV's, then subdivide and sculpt as needed. - pre-process for Decimation Master with "keep UV's" on. - when pre-processing is done set your DM poly count for the hi-res version and apply (for example 20% decimation). Export that result as an .obj. - Then undo, and reset the DM poly count *but do not re-do the pre-processing* and you can generate another mesh from the same computation, and it seems to have matching UV's. Set that one to a 3DC painting friendly sort of res (i.e 2% decimation) and export that. - import lo-res to 3DC and paint away. Export maps and apply them to the hi-res model as per a normal workflow. This gives you a hi and lo res decimated/optimized mesh that has matching UV's, much like a normal workflow would, but with a fraction of the poly overhead. The nice thing about this workflow is that (1) you get a fully detailed hi-res mesh to render without needing/using displacement/normal maps and still have one you can texture paint for all other maps and (2) If you want to sculpt *really* high detail in some areas you can then take your hi-res decimated mesh and sub-divide that further and continue sculpting. The result is kinda like getting HD sculpting with *way* lower poly counts. For example: original mesh at max level was about 15M polys. Not the limit for my system, but I was unable to sub-d further without blowing through my memory limit. After Decimation Master I had that at about 1M polys and still had virtually all the fine detail. I sub-d that mesh up to about 6M polys and was able to sculpt in more detail - equivalent to what I would have need 50M poly's to get without decimation. I'm pretty happy with this so far - but needs more testing to see how it holds up. b

Thanks - I will give this route a try. The GUV thing wasn't working - Zbrush would not assign the GUV's to even a 600K mesh, just hung and hung. Clearly the best thing is to not decimate my meshes - too bad I can't get the right details out of them with maps. This is proving almost as troublesome! I'm getting tempted to just physically sculpt the stuff and take a picture of it b

I think it could be res related, the attached is the new map (painted at 8K via Per-Pixel on the new "medium" res mesh made as per Artman's direction) but rendered at 2K via TExture Baking. It's not just lo-res, it's totally messed. Is this expected? b

I tried this approach and the result is actually worse. I was not able to output as hi-res a final map - Texture Baking tool would not let me go higher than 4K for some reason - but the artifacting is pretty much the same, only larger due to the res difference I think. Any other thoughts as to what would cause this? The new mesh is much closer to the topology of the hi-res. Must be a setting thing or something I'm doing wrong. Thanks /b

K - I will try that. Thanks Artman.