Hey folks.. I've asked around a lot and I can't find the answer, so I'm posting this thread.

I'm curious if there's a way to paint directly on the texture of a lowpoly model in zbrush, without the use of projection/polypaint/etc. Basically, the way you would paint on a model in Bodypaint.

There are definitely workarounds for this, like tesselating the lowpoly and maintaining hard edges for polypaint. Also, projection and ZApp Link... but I'm looking for a mysterious secret 'unicorn' feature where I can just paint straight on my texture of my low poly.

As far as I know, zBrush doesn't allow you to paint directly on the texture. Part of its charm with using vertex colors instead was that you weren't locked up with UVs while painting, allowing you to change them at any time (even zapplink seems dependant on the vertex count once you pick it up from the projection master). So unless you subdivide the lowpoly model many times (smoothing off) like you said, my guess is that it can't be done. That said, why would you need to paint on the low-poly model specifically this way instead of using the various work arounds?

you can always subdivide with the low poly with smoothing turned off. that should keep the model hard. If it doesn't store a morph target before you subdivide and load it once you have subdivided and the model should pop back into shape if it changed. You can always do this with in your 3d program first. subdivide it to make it it doesn't screw up and bring that into zbrush for painting. The uvs should stay intact. Then save out the texture after poly painting and that should fit the low poly model.

The work around to working on the texture directly would be to load a flat plane and load the texture on that. Paint on it then save that out. It wouldn't be very easy though, at that rate it would be better to use photoshop.

afaik, only polypaint with txt>col and back again when you're done painting
maybe we'll get a better way to do it in v4 or 5