So Happy

In my last post I described how we had been unable to find any solutions to baking diffuse maps from Z-brush since the polycount was too high. It turned out that we had been up all night and wasted most of the morning in vain as the polypaint I had created would not be able to be used.

Being the way I am, I refused to accept this.
After two and a half hours of intense googling and experimenting in z-brush I found a possible solution to the problem in xNormal. I tried exporting one of the subtools again and noticed that it said "exporting polypaint" which meant that they would have followed with the .OBJ-file. Apparently xNormal has default settings which ignore per vertex colour, which was exactly what we were trying to export.

As it was impossible to find a clear step by step answer to how to solve this I will try and explain it as best as I can, hopefully it might give someone less of a headache sometime.

I used color to paint the high poly model and then merged together all parts that belonged to the same piece. For example the chest piece has a logo on it which is easier to paint as a separate sub-tool so that the colours do not bleed, but it is easier to manage fewer files, so when I was done I merged them into one sub-tool.

The next step is to simply export the sub-tools one by one as .OBJ-files. The polypaint will automatically follow.

In xNormal you must then uncheck "ignore per vertex color" in two places. One is on the high poly itself in the high poly tab and the other is in the "bake options" tab.

After that it is just a matter of choosing your preferred settings and bake the maps.

I will after all be able to use my five hours of work, I can continue placing basic colours on the high poly so I can see where all details should go and then fix the details in Photoshop and get a hand painted look. It turns out that the only part that was in vain was part of the stress we felt yesterday. From wanting to give up and cry, everything feels so much better now and I am so happy!