Transferring Textures to Multiple UV Tiles (UDIMs) in ZBrush Using Polypaint and Polygroups

[@AndreNMailho]

Amazing workflow Jason. Thank you so much for it.

[@alexbobyr8076]

Thank You for the great tutorial.

[@DrJasonKennedy]

You're welcome, Alex. Glad it was useful.

[@Hannibal217-t5p]

exactly what i needed, thanks! :D

[@luisfmts]

Sweet! Will try it later 😄

[@WillFalcon]

13:40 you could just invert hidden polygroups by shft ctrl + drag, anyway exporting textures without plugins from zbrush is a nightmare.

[@stephaniebellgardt]

Please correct me if I'm missing something here, but I was trying to do this exact thing the other day and I accomplished it in what I believe was a simpler workflow. To clarify, I had only the original base mesh and single-tile 8K textures that came with it. So I did not have the original ZBrush sculpt (if you do have this, then this goes even quicker). Here's what I did: 1) Started with the original 1K basemesh in Maya, then duplicated that and added desired number of UDIMs 2) Brought 1K basemesh into ZBrush, where I applied the original polypaint and displacement detail from the single-tile maps (skip this if you already have the original ZBrush file) 3) Brought in my new UDIM basemesh and re-projected onto that from the 1K basemesh -- so now I have my UDIM model with all the original painting and sculptural detail. This (as far as I can see) eliminates the need for doing anything with polygroups or having to deal with applying UDIM maps one by one. 4) Exported all UDIM textures at once from the MultiMap exporter

[@DrJasonKennedy]

If I understand you correctly, you are only using single-tile textures, correct? If so, yes, that is a much simpler workflow. What the workflow in the video addresses is when you have textures across multiple UV tiles. To my knowledge, ZBrush does not natively handle these well. Please correct me if I am mistaken. (Just saw this now, so sorry for the late reply)

[@antonio4740x]

Wait, this nightmare is the only workflow for exporting UDIM textures from Zbrush? Thanks I guess, but holy hell, Zbrush should enter 2020's

[@DrJasonKennedy]

It is certainly a feature I would like to see updated, too.

[@tombriggs5348]

One more way zbrush doesn’t play well with other apps is this: every other app on the planet can handle uvs in the range 0-1. If you lay out uvs in Maya or Blender or whatever, you need to shrink them slightly so no uv actually has a whole number value. So a uv set from Maya going from 0-1 will be screwed up in Zbrush when it comes time to export the maps. Instead you must set the ranges to be from about 0.01-0.99 or less, within the bounds of the tile. Just another idiosyncrasy of Zbrush.