Zbrush Polypaint question

[ian_ruff]

Hi everyone,
trying to learn Zbrush here and I've been watching (and watching) the tutorials from the Pixologic ZClassroon series. They're very good and informative. But, I trying to learn how to paint on the models and then edit in Photoshop. Mainly I'm very comfortable in Photoshop and want to learn how to paint unwrapped model textures. I realize that Zbrush isn't probably the best place to learn this but its so intuitive that I feel very comfortable in it as well.

My problem is that in the video about Polypaint it appears to have different menu options than my version of Zbrush (3.1.2) and I can't seem to find the equivalent. In the video for Polypaint it says to go under tools/texture and click color to texture to create (what appears to be) an unwrapped skin of the model. In my version there is no tools/texture, just tools/texture map and all of the options are greyed out.

Does this sound like something that one of you have run into? I'm sure its something super simple that I'm just overlooking. Any help greatly appreciated.

[devoid]

if all the other are greyed out try the "enable uvs" button. that should get it so you can use color to texture.

[ian_ruff]

Thanks for the response devoid. Although I don't see an "enable uvs" button I did find that if I set the subdivision to the lowest level I can do things in the UV Map tool which does make the options under texture map active. But, I'm not getting the results I expected. Hmmmm, more exploration needed. I guess I thought that this would give me a nice unwrap file to edit in Photoshop. I could be misunderstanding what these things do. . .

[ian_ruff]

On a side note, I discovered Zspheres today! That is very cool and answers a question that I was forming regarding Zbrush on how you would do base meshes in it. I guess that's the way.

Anyone feel free to bash me on my ignorance of 3D modeling. I'm totally new to it and learning on my own. . ..

[garethcowboy]

why would anyone in this nice community want to bash a learner?:P
as for the UVing the modeling, I'm no expert in zbrush but I'm afraid you are right about it not being the best app to do that.
As far as I know zbrush gives u very good auto UV for poly painting or colr->texture converting, but those UVs would be to complicated and hardly usable for manual painting textures in photoshop. There're some primitive unwrapping like cylindrical or planer unwrapping, but I dont think they'll help much unless you are dealing with super simple models.

Try a more conventional app that gives you control over unwrapping UVs. It's a fairly precise job. I know roadkill for maya is used by many great artist and it's not hard to use, but I found maya2009 just too darn good for that already lol But you can basically use any 3d app that deals with UVs. Again I'm no expert so anyone please correct me if I'm wrong.

p.s. the enable UV is in the texture subpallet in Tools pallet. press it to enable the primitive unwrapping or auv .etc buttons. You can only do UVing at the first subD level, as you've tried out. Be aware that the disable UV button beside it actually delete your model's UV. So you either undo or reUV your model if you accidentally press it.