Exporting UV Maps on Zbrush
I have finally figured it out in about 3 hours, while playing around Zbrush, which I've finally got on my laptop! Hooray!
Now that I know how to export UV Maps properly on Zbrush, it makes life a lot easier. Because manually creating the UV maps on Maya, to me, is just too time consuming. Plus, it involves chopping up your model into tiny little pieces.
I'm writing and posting this so I will always have the steps saved somewhere, in case I forget. Also, I just felt the need to share haha.
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Last year, for my final Digital Design Assignment, I sculpted a character which I was going to use for my animation, I spent a lot of time painting my character, (which was a fish) making it look as detailed as possible. Only to find out that for some reason, I wasn't able to export the UV maps for my model properly, so I had no clue how to resolve this problem. I searched for tutorials on google, tried them and failed, so I turned to asking people if they had a clue on how to get the UV maps for my fish. I ended up with a few options, and it was a lot of trial and error. In the end, one amazing friend showed me exactly what to do, which was creating the UV maps through Maya, and then saving it as a jpeg, so I could paint it on Photoshop. So, in the end, I did get colour on my fish.
The frustrating thing was, how did something so simple end up being so complicated?! When I figured out how to export the UV Maps of my model within Zbrush last night, I kept thinking to myself, how?! Why?!! Omg... and I spent way too much time last year trying to figure out how to get my UV Maps, that I didn't have enough time to make my animation look the way it was supposed to!
Anyways, enough of my blabbering. The past is the past, and I still managed to get a not too shabby grade :)
How to Export UV Maps on Zbrush, so you can get colour on your sculpted model when importing into Maya.
Note: If you have all your layers at the lowest sub-level, skip reading that huge paragraph below...
Before you start, make sure all the layers of your model under "SubTool", are at the lowest sub-level. If you have sub-divided your model several times, and want to maintain the amount of the detail, and polycount, go to "Geometry", and select ZRmesher, and on mine, I have "same" and "adapt" selected. Also, you want to do this before you have coloured your model, because once you've clicked "ZRmesher", you will lose everything you've painted on it, which means, you have to do it all over again.
1. Select "Zplugin". (I personally like to drag it either onto the left or right divider, but you don't necessarily have to do it).
2. Under Zplugin > UV Master > Unwrap.
3. Under the "Tool" menu, scroll down to "Texture Map". Now select "Create > New From UV Map."
In the little preview window, you should be able to see a flattened image of your model, which is your model's UV Map. It should also be a hue of green and orange.
4. Now you want to press Shift + F on your keyboard. This allows to see your model's polygroups.
5. Go back to "UV Master", and now you also want to select "Polygroups", which is next to "Symmetry", which should already be selected. Once selected, simply "Unwrap."
6. Now, go back to "Texture Map", and repeat step 3.
(Texture Map > Create > New From UV Map)
Once that is done, there should have been a slight colour change in the UV Map, which you should be able to see in the preview window.
7. At last, you can now export the maps! To do this, you want to go back to your Zplugin menu, and select "Multi-Map Exporter".
8. Under Multi-Map Exporter, on mine, I have "Vector Displacement", "Texture From Polypaint", and "Vector Mesh", selected. Then, click "Create All Maps", and choose where you want the files to save to.
You should then have three saved files:
mtl. file- not entirely sure what it is and does yet!! But I will find out eventually.
9. Now you may open Maya to import your 3D model of your character etc.
10. Click on your 3D model, and hold right click > assign new material > lambert (if you want to, you can choose another shade). This will lead you to your Attribute Editor. Where it says "colour", click on the little box with the arrow, and selected "file". Now select your tiff. file (UV Map), and press "Reload."
If you can't see the colour on your model, try select "texture", which is that little checkered ball next. It should allow you to see the colour of your model, which you painted on Zbrush.
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