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Calegolas
03-02-2008, 04:23 PM
Hello there,

Actually I could have Posted this in Various forums but I think it fits here best.

Iīve seen several Artists Laying out their UVīs on the Low poly Mesh in Maya and then Export the mesh to Zbrush. (yes we do you will say...so what?)

The thing I want to know is why from this point on the UV Layout is being Ignored and not further Tweaked.
Iīve seen a digital Tutors maya to Zbrush integration DVD where they didnīt even layout the UVīs at any step.

I know from maya that when smoothing an object with UVīs layed out that you set some options that maya smoothes the UVīs and its Borders,too in order to avoid Texture wabbling/Distorsion.

What i (and and others, tooo) get back From Zbrush is a "smoothed" mesh while the UVīs are only subdivided preseving the rough layout of the basemesh.

So why does everyone neglect the Layout afterwards ?
Are there any adjustments to be made to get rid of distorsion? (maybe subD aproximation in the final render...)

To ilustrate this I made some quick screens:

Basemesh:
http://xs225.xs.to/xs225/08090/torm258.jpg

Back from Zbrush:
http://xs225.xs.to/xs225/08090/torz724.jpg

Would be happy to get some comments on this...

regards
hakanpersson
03-02-2008, 05:10 PM
I assume those dvds are made by lazy people, or perhaps they dont want to overcomplicate the process for the viewers. With textures painted in zbrush, they will most likely look very good, even if they suffer from extreme distortion. In your example I would not waste the time to make any updates to the uvs, and if I would, it would be a quick unfold in Maya at most.

You would not want to smooth the uv coords at any point, expecially not the borders. If you paint 100% in zbrush with polypainting, it wouldnt matter, since you convert to texture last thing out. But if you plan to texture in photoshop, sticking to the lowpoly makes alot sense, otherwise you will end up with a texture that only fits the highres(or at whatever subd level you grab the snapshot). And for creating lowpoly asset, theres even a gain in quality to distort the uvs, just to keep the uvs "pixelaligned".
Example is the AUVtiles in zbrush, which is probably the most distorted texture layout you can possible achieve, but its also the only one 100% accurate and lossless regarding polypainting (1 face=pixel).

Made any sense?
Calegolas
03-02-2008, 08:42 PM
Thanks for the quick anwer.

So you can say that it is basically a matter of neglecting because the efford of adjusting the UVs isnīt worth the improvement you will get whithin the texture.

And well, in ZBrush it doesnīt matter because the algorithm that creates the textureīin Zbrush simply "Knows" how to place the texture.

If you can agree then I think I got it
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03-02-2008, 08:42 PM
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