Tiling Texture Workflow

[ScrotieFlapWack]

Hi Guys,

 

So I have really been getting in to 3D - Coat over the past week or so and I am trying to transfer some of the workflows I have learnt over the last year to 3D - Coat. One of the most useful workflows I have come across especially for environment art is this:

 

http://pixologic.com/zclassroom/homeroom/lesson/environments-with-tate-mosesian

 

This is a workflow that uses the 2.5D canvas in Zbrush to basically insert meshes in a tileable way to bake your maps from for simple things like floors, walls anything that is tileable really

 

This is probably an old technique and with tools like Substance Designer on the market, kinda makes this workflow redundant, unless you have other methods.

 

Anyway what I would like to know is how can I transfer this over to a solid workflow for 3D - Coat. I have an idea on how to do this but it is a bit of a struggle when you can't do things like focus on the canvas to see your workspace, in 3D - Coat you can't really resize your viewport to a specific size so you never really know what size you are working with, at least I don't anyway. I have messed around with defining the measurements by setting my measurements to cm for UE4 but I don't completely understand how the grid works and if you have grid snapping in 3D - Coat.

 

My thought process for doing something similar to the above workflow from ZClassroom is to sculpt your high detailed objects (bricks, rocks, stone, whatever) and then save them as models so you can use them as presets by saving them into the model folder to use in the Voxel room. Once you have your objects you use the 'Instancer' tool and you can start laying them out around the viewport. This is where my question comes in, how can you be sure that you are working to the correct size you want your texture to be, ready for baking?

 

I guess you can easily make modular environment parts by doing the same method as above and then going to the Retopo room and making a low poly and baking. Is there a way to know what size you are working in whilst instancing your objects? The only thing that comes to my mind is making a 1024 x 1024 plane and instancing your objects over that.

 

I would love to hear other methods to get the same results, would be really cool to share workflows

Edited January 16, 2016 by ScrotieFlapWack