ZBrushCentral

Unwrap UV's with Multiple Subtools Onto One UV Tile?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Due to lack of planning and time restrictions, I did not unwrap my UV’s before moving my base character mesh into Zbrush for high poly sculpting. I am needing to project my detail from the high poly sculpt onto the low poly mesh via normal maps.

Not having my UV’s unwrapped is holding me up from doing so. I am trying to us UV Master to unwrap my UV’s. After I use UV Master my UV islands are separated onto individual UV spaces. I have been reading that you can do the following to combine the UV islands onto a single UV quadrant.

Is this process correct to unwrap the UVs to a single UV space?


  1. Use Transpose Master to combine all of your meshes
  2. Unwrap the combined mesh
  3. Use Groups Split to spilt the TM mesh into subtools
  4. Use UV Master to Copy/Paste the UVs to the original subtools

Thank you all!

#2

Well, what i do is just Create Uvs for all subtools. Unwrap All button in Uv Master does this. Then i merge down but keep the Uv button enabled. After all merged go again to UV Master and enable Use Existing UV Seams then hit Unwrap and you will have all your Uvs in the same UV coords. After that you can split and merge your mesh as you want (by polygroups, parts etc…). It will keep that UV space. you can merge them again and no loosing the Uvs.

Kind Regards

#3

Yes, that will work OK.

1 Like
#4

Thank you for the advise. Really appreciate it.

Wwhat do you mean by “keep the UV button enabled”?

Thanks!

#5

‘Uv’ button in ‘Tool > Subtool > Merge’

#6

yes the only way you can do,but you need to paste uv many time if you have a bunch of subtools…hopethere is a button call “paste uv to all subtools”

ps.the paste uv button don’even have shortcut lol:+1:

#7

There are several ways you can do it. Manually or you can use UnwarpAll and Merge All so no need to go subtool by subtool copy and pasting. Just press Keep UV seems and keep Uv enable in Tool>Subtool>Merge

BTW All buttons in Zbrush can have your custom shortcut. Cntrl+Alt+Click on the button you want to create a shortcut. Then just type your favorite. You can also customize the UI and have copy and paste UV buttons at any place in the UI.

#8

i am now using customize ui,this function appear many year but i don’want in the past…
but as i remember, unwrap all and merge with keep uv,that way only work if all subtools Exacly the same,including its rotation,if you use inert brush turn on curve mode to insert cubes around sphere,because all cube facing difference direction,the will be unwrap to little bit difference uv. so,you must copy the first one uv and paste to all cube.

#9

Agree. In The case of multiple cubes and you want to reuse Uvs from one to the others the only option is just copy once and paste over every single cube. This will cause all cubes to share same space in UV coords.

#10

Ok, I found this process to get some good UV’s.

  1. Merge all subtools into one ( merge visible button is below of subtool layers)
  2. Pick the new tool (the polygroups should have been preserved)
  3. Go to UV master
  4. click Work on Clone
  5. While in clone tool, click “polygroups” button of UV master
  6. Click Unwrap for default unwrap or do control painting if you want to custom markup the seams (you’ll have to click unwrap when done with control painting)
  7. Flatten to double check.
  8. Unflatten then click copy uvs.
  9. Go back to your original merged tool, not the clone, paste UV in UV master. It should copy over.
  10. If you want to break up your model into subtools again, use group split

After this, I need a little bit of help to get the UV’s back onto the multiple sub-d high res sculpted model.

Any advise? Thanks again!