Hi Rob,
Hmm… Where did your boss get those objects? The model looks okay in the shaded mode, but the wireframe mesh is horribly triangulated. It looks like a low-poly version of a higher resolution object which has then been run through a Polygon Reduction filter. Ugh. Well, that will make things a bit more difficult but not impossible.
Okay, first things first. Don’t hit the Divide button. You don’t need to. The only reason to hit the Divide button is to add more polygons. More polygons are only needed if you want to sculpt details onto your mesh. (Sculpting involves the manipulation of the polygons which deforms the shape of your object. Painting (in this case) refers to the creation of texture maps which affect teh color and shading of your object, but not its overall form.) Since you only want to paint textures onto the plane, you don’t need more polygons. And therefore you don’t need to hit the Divide button. 
As an aside, the tearing you see when you do hit Divide may be caused by overlapping points that have not been welded or merged together. On a 3D object, points can occupy the same space, but that does not mean that they become fused together into one. Unless you tell the software to do so. If your plane has overlapping points (indicating areas that are not fused together), they may shrink when you try to divide the object in ZBrush. Try opening the object in Modeler and pressing the “m” key to bring up the Merge Points window. Accept the defaults (Automatic Settings) and press OK. A message will appear telling you how many points were merged. If it’s anything higher than zero, that may have been the problem.
Okay, since you don’t need to Divide your object, you can simply use ZBrush to paint the textures. The only problem is that ZBrush really prefers quad polygons (polygons with four points). It will tolerate triangles, but it really wants quads. In my experience, when I’ve brought a highly triangulated object in and tried to texture it, I’ve ended up with weird streaks that are nearly impossible to remove. But you won’t be able to tell if this will happen until you try it. So do the following.
In Modeler, click the T button at the bottom of the interface. This places you in UV Texture selection mode. Then click and hold the pop-up menu to the right. (It should currently say “none”.) Choose “New” to create a new UV. Set the Mode to Atlas. Enter the name “PlaneUV” and click Create.
Press the “q” key to assign a new surface to this object. Call it “Plane” and press Okay.
Open the Surface Editor and click on the “Plane” surface. You’ll see a list of surface attributes. The first should be Color. To its right shoudl be an E and a T. Click on the T. This will open the Texture Editor.
In the Texture Editor, choose the Layer type as Image. Set the Projection to UV. Then select the PlaneUV from the UV selection pop-up menu. Close the Texture Editor.
Go to the File menu and choose Export | OBJ to export the object as an OBJ file. This will save an object that ZBrush can use.
What you’ve done is created an Atlas UV map which should minimize any UV distortion (that’s a longer discussion) and you’ve applied the UV to the object’s surface which ensures it will load into ZBrush correctly.
Now you can load ZBrush and import the OBJ you created. Rotate it in ZBrush so that it is looking from the Top down. Then hold down the Alt key and click and let go in a blank portion of your canvas. This should size the object to the canvas.
Go to the Texture menu and enter 4096 for the resolution. Then click New. This will create a blank 4096x4096 image for you to paint onto.
Press the “g” key to open Projection Master. Select Colors and turn everything else off. Then click the Drop button to enter Projection Master. Once in Projection Master, you can use the variety of brushes to paint on your object.
When you’re finished, press “g” again to pick up your object. This will allow you to rotate it again. Rotate it so that you’re facing the side of the plane. Be sure to snap your rotation by holding down the Shift key. Then enter Projection Master and repeat the process.
If you’d like, you can use the ZApp Link plugin to gain the benefits of working in Photoshop along with ZBrush. Check the ZApp Link tutorials on this forum for more info.
When you’re finished texturing your object, flip the texture vertically by clicking the Flip V button in the Texture menu. Then export the image as a PSD.
Back in Modeler, open the Texture Editor for the Color channel. The Projection should already be set to UV and the UV map should already be selected. Click on the Image pop-up menu and choose “load.” Then load in the image you saved from ZBrush.
Save your model in LightWave. Then bring it into Layout. Adjust your lights and then render away.
If that doesn’t work, you’ll likely need to revert to using Photoshop. Try the links above for information on how to do that.
I know this is a lot of info to absorb. And this isn’t the most detailed of explanations (sorry!). But hopefully it should point you in the right direction. For what it’s worth, it’s highly unreasonable for an employer to ask someone with no 3D experience to sit down in front of two very complex programs and produce something. It’s not impossible, but I’ve been training people how to use LightWave for years and in my experience, it takes months to become comfortable and productive using the software. If you give yourself that time, I have not doubts you’ll be able to achieve your goals. So just keep that in mind when you feel frustrated and overwhelmed. There’s a lot to take in and it’s not easy. But it’s always worth it.
Cheers!
Steve
