ZBrush UV management not fit for purpose? Help, please!

#1

Hello folks

As a ZBrush beginner I’m very pleased with the program so far EXCEPT for when it comes to UV’s.

I’m happy to create the UVs in Zbrush, but there seems to be no way to offset them.

OR - I can split the model into subtools and create a UV for each subtool - which at least more or less fills the island - but there is no way to edit the UV (Zbrush’s optimisation is poor, to say the least…)

OR I can export each subtool, adjust the UV in another program and import, but now I have to align OBJ’s by eye…

OR I can create a high poly model, UV it, paint it and then use another program to retopo it down to an animatable size…

It seems to me that either i am missing something simple, OR that creating a custom set of offset UV’s involves three separate programs and a bit of bodging by eye.

Can anyone help?

There must be a simple workflow for this… or is UV management the next feature pixilogic needs to address?

#2

since your new are you talking about uv maps
then yes you can
http://docs.pixologic.com/reference-guide/tool/polymesh/uv-map/

are you making the uv with this?
[http://pixologic.com/zbrush/features/UV-Master/](http://pixologic.com/zbrush/features/UV-Master/)

not sure if this helps but if you import a obj from another 3d app
then try this in zbrush >tool>deformation >unify

when you make UV make sure its the last thing you do,
in other words dont sculpt it, just paint on it,
if you do sculpt later then remake the uv with the UV Master

#3

I’m happy with creating the UVs, it’s working with them after they’ve been created which is the problem.

I have a figure, with one UV for the head and another for the body. I want to enlarge the UV for the head to fit the whole tile and then offset it one space in the U direction.

So far the closest I’ve come to what I want is to split the head and body into two subtools and create separate UVs for each. I can then modify the UVs in another program, but importing them back into zbrush means the subtools are now separate objs and have to be realigned by eye.

And if you merge the subtools then, of course, the UVs don’t remain offset and just stamp over the top of each other.

It’s all become very fiddly - I’ve spent a day trying solutions and nothing has really worked - surely there must be a well established way off doing this?

Workflows anyone?