Chris Bostjanick's Demon Head

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Contents
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1 Maya to ZBrush 2 SubTools 3 Mesh Extraction 4 Sculpting 5 Layers

[edit]

Maya to ZBrush
I'm going to begin with working between Maya and ZBrush, and my preferred mesh topology for importing into ZBrush. First, when creating the base in Maya, I like to keep face spins, extrudes, and geometry twisting to a minimum. I keep the base geometry lightweight usually between 100 and 3,000 polygons (all quads), just enough to complete the base form. I also lay out all of my UVs when creating the base model.

Exporting from Maya. To go between ZBrush and Maya, I simply move .obj files back and forth. In Maya, use the File>>Export Selection menu entry to choose to export as an OBJ file, and in ZBrush, use the Tool:Import button to import the OBJ files. If you have multiple models, you'll need to do each individually.

Multiple model parts, after importing into ZBrush. [edit]

SubTools

When I model a complex object, I like to work on it as if it were composed of different parts. ZBrush's new Subtools feature is ideal for this. Once you've imported all of the different meshes making up your model, you can combine any or all of them into a single tool using Tool:SubTools:Append. You can still hide or show the individual parts of the model. Once all of the separate meshes have been assembled as subtools of the full tool, you can display any combination of them:

Original meshes assembled into single Head model.

Depending on how your meshes were created, they may not line up the way you want them to. I move the OBJs back into Maya to fix this. This needs to be done with a bit of care, as by default, Maya changes the OBJ vertex order when it imports, which will mess up things when you move the OBJ back to ZBrush (for, for that matter, various other programs). Fix this using Maya's File Type Specific Options, as shown here. Subtools were a big help in another way. I was really struggling for a while to decide what the hair should look like as a 3d form. Subtools let me explore several different options in parallel before making a final choice. Once I did the final, I could either just delete the unused hair subtools, or turn them off in case I did want to go back to them later on.

Different hair modeled using three alternative hair subtools. [edit]

Mesh Extraction
Now I want to add some additional submeshes to the ones that we already have. For what I want to do, mesh extraction is perfect. I just mask out the area I want to extract (see Masking) and press the Tool:SubTool:Extract button, with edge smooth, surface smooth, and thickness set to 1, 1, and 0 respectively.

I then exported the new subtools into Maya, where I converted tris to quads and did some more low-level mesh editing to make for more interesting skin, and then once again back to ZBrush. [edit]

Sculpting

There are so many great new ways to sculpt in ZBrush, too many for me talk about them all. So I'm just going to go over a few I used the most. First, I used the Flatten brush (see the Brush Palette) to smooth and give roughly flat surfaces on the teeth (mostly).

Lazy Mouse example. One of the most powerful new tools I've ever used is the new Lazy Mouse. It's just amazing, and everyone can easily take advantage of this new tool to sculpt, paint, and do other tasks with great precision. When you activate Stroke:Lazy Mouse, the brush point is dragged behind the mouse cursor, which means that big changes of direction in the mouse turn into small changes of direction of the brush. It's really easy to use this and you'll get it right away, but hard to describe. I used to couple of the lazy mouse modifiers (again, see the Lazy Mouse reference), and here's a quick picture of the effect. Notice how nice and smooth those serpentine strokes are! LazyStep gives me the dotted line effects, but of course, you can use the lazy mouse with other strokes, brushes, and alphas for many more effects.

I used the lazy mouse for a lot of the detailing on the facial muscles. Isn't it nice to see how the smoothness of those muscle fibers makes them look stretched and taut? [edit]

Layers
Layers are another feature I found to be extremely handy. They let me separate out different types of detailing, turn them off and on, dial in how strongly they were applied, and in general allowed me to do a lot of experimentation without irrevocably committing to any one choice.

Base mesh.

With 'bone cracks' layer applied.

Layers are so easy to work with that it's not even necessary to explain them here, but I'll mention two things:

I found it was best to keep layers for detailing mostly on high subd levels. They're really at their best when you don't make overlarge changes between a layer and the base mesh. Don't forget to name your layers!

Now alphas work in full 3D! I used this to add cracks and other surface details very quickly. In this case I used some 2k grunge maps. This is a great place to use layers. Also, I found that I really liked using alphas with the DragDot and Spray strokes.

Once I had some cracks I liked, I used the new Cavity Masking feature, another great new feature that lets ZBrush automatically mask small surface details. I just turned on Tool:Masking:Mask By Cavity, and then could paint more depth into the cracks without affecting the surrounding surface.

Automatic cavity masking (left) makes it easy to mask the cracks for further painting (right). Cavity masking has just a few simple settings, and you'll easily figure them out by playing around for a few minutes. And here's the final result!

Tutorial: Bird of Prey

From ZBrushInfo
(Redirected from Image:Bop final bird.jpg) Jump to: navigation, search by Joe Lee Before getting started on this project, I tried to surround myself with as much reference and inspiration as I could before taking the plunge on the Zbrush canvas. I have great admiration for master bird carvers such as Floyd Scholz and I have always wondered if such wood carving techniques could be transfered over to the digital sculpting world. Some of the new features in the Zbrush 3.0 have convinced me that this is as good a time as any to try. [edit]

Basic Form
So the first thing I wanted to do was to go to the Tool palette and select a zsphere and begin blocking out the form.

Once you establish the direction of the head, I usually check it in the Preview window to make sure the front of the head is facing out the z axis and right side up. If it isnt, reposition and press, Store. Next I want to place the eyes, which will help establish a constant reference when I later sculpt around the eyes. Checking reference for eye spacing and size is encouraged. On this occassion, I loaded up a polysphere which is now part of the selection choices in the library of tools. Reselect the zsphere head tool, then go to Tool:Subtool and Append the polysphere. Select the polysphere subtool and scale and position to the proper size and location using the Transpose feature.

Once the polysphere eye is in place and selected, we can press Tool:Clone. Select the zsphere head subtool and Append the clone of the polysphere. Select the polysphere copy subtool and press Tool:Geometry:Del Lower to clear away lower subdivisions of the polysphere. This is essential to be able to mirror the polysphere copy on the x axis, which can be pressed under Tool:Deformation:Mirror x. You should now have a pair of eyes. This would be a good time to label your subtools if you like. I will refer to the main tool as birdhead, and the subtool eyes will be distinguished as simply left eye and right eye. The next part is just shaping the birds form and just kind of sketching out the qualities of a raptor. It wasnt long while I was blocking out the form, that I noticed the nape of the neck was showing more rectangular spacing in the geometry than square. Also the spacing toward the bottom of the birds bust was by far wider than that of the head area. This will have an effect on my ability to try get consistent fine detail with the feathers even once the subdivisions are as high as I can go. The more equidistant the spacing through the body, the more consistent the detail sculpting will be across the bird.

[edit]

Retopologization
I am definitely going to need to create new topology.

To prepare for the retopologization, I simply select the bird tool and ensure that only the birdhead subtool is active (and not the eyes). Now: 1. Select Tool:Zsphere and draw on canvas.

2. Ensure Transform:Edit mode is on, and then press Tool:Rigging:Select and select the bird tool. 3. Press Tool:Topology:Edit Topology and you are ready to begin creating new topology. Because the topology in the beak area is significantly denser than the rest of the body and the physiology of the actual bird beak is different from the feathered part, it seemed like an ideal place to break the two apart by creating separate topology.

Note: Before building new topology, be sure x axis symmetry is on for both meshes (press x to toggle). This definitely helps speed things up. As you may have noticed, I overlapped some beak geometry onto the head. This was to make sure I had plenty of leftover geometry to secure into the head mesh when its built. When youre finished, press Tool:Adaptive Skin:Make Adaptive Skin. Select the bird tool with the subtool eyes and Append the new skin you just made and rename accordingly.

Next well create new topology for the head of the bird. When it came to the opening in the mesh up by the bird beak, I needed to delete the rigging selection to gain access for closing the gap. To do this: 1. Unpress Tool:Topology:Edit Topology. 2. Press Tool:Rigging:Delete. 3. Press Tool:Topology:Edit Topology and you can now reach geometry that was previously occluded by the rigging mesh. Closing this off gives me extra geometry to work with for making modifications between the beak and forehead if needed. By no means is the new topology the best solution for the form, but it is certainly better than before. Make an adaptive skin and Append it to bird tool. I then deleted the zsphere bird head tool from the subtool list and focused on trying to bring together the remaining subtools together to become more raptor-like.

[edit]

Feathers
After spending much time trying to fine tune the qualities that make a bird, an eagle, I then start to make note of the feathering of these types of birds. The next section will go into time spent preparing the alphas and figuring out the layering process. [edit]

Creating the Feathers

When I started looking into the feather options, I didnt know if I would go with a stencil technique or use the sculpting brushes. This time I decided to go with the sculpting brushes for nothing else but the fact that the DragRect stroke enables me to put down feathers quickly at any angle and size like the directional brush.

The first alpha I tried, I noticed that there was an auto fade that caused a loss of definition at the tips of the feathers. I didnt mind the top of the feather fading but I needed the bottom tip to be as crisp as I could get it. I decided to increase the size of the alpha, made sure the feather was aligned to the top and the essential details were kept in the center. After trying the first test alpha feather, I then made a few more feather alphas for added variety so as not to have any major discernible repetition. Pressing Alpha:Flip H on any given alpha can also buy you one more alpha variant to break things up even more.

Return to the bird tool in Zbrush, and subdivide to level 6 or 7. In this case, 7 was the highest used. Now clone the Birdhead subtool and Append it twice to the subtool list. I renamed one clone FeatherSet.01 and the other FeatherSet.02. Well save the BirdHead subtool as a backup and move it down the list using the arrow keys which are located at the bottom of the subtool list.

As a little safety precaution for the FeatherSet subtools, well click Tool:Layer:New for both subtools. Now if anything should go astray, we can always slide the layer slider back to 0 and start over. A morph target is also a good alternative if its not already being used. Now set:

Alpha = the feather alpha. Brush:Std. Stroke:DragRect. Z Intensity = 25, with Zadd.

Click and drag feathers in the direction they would flow on the actual bird. Space them so that there is minimal overlap or at least little to no noticeable overlap of the feather details.

Cycle through your feather alpha collection finding the best alpha with a curve in the feather that compliments the form of the bird. Dont forget to horizontally flip your alphas if the bow of the feather needs to run the other way. You may find you can get away with applying these feathers with Transform:>x< on to activate x axis symmetry. However, when feathering the front, top, and back views, it will become apparent when to turn off the symmetry and go freestyle. When you have given the FeatherSet.01 subtool a good first pass, select and turn on the visibilty of FeatherSet.02 while FeatherSet.01 remains visible. Adjust the Z intensity of the standard brush to 28 now and draw a new set of feathers through the FeatherSet.01 subtool until they appear to overlap (or underlap) the feathers of FeatherSet.01.

Due to the nature of the auto fade of the sculpting brush alphas, the displacement intensity of the outer edge is less than the center. This makes it possible to slide the top of the feathers under existing feathers. Once the bottom feathers around the neck are placed in a fairly filled out fashion, we can begin painting a mask on the undisplaced geometry. Begin with either feather subtool while the unselected subtool is hidden. Work your way around until the bottom straight edge is masked. When masking is complete, press Tool:Masking:Inverse followed by pressing Tool:Masking:HidePT.

Left to right:Masking, Invert Mask, and HidePt. Repeat for the remaining FeatherSet and adjust masking if necessary. You can toggle the visibilty of the two subtools to check if the masking was thorough enough.

Once both featherset subtools are completed, you can turn on the visibility of the beak and both eyes to inspect the piece as a whole. I would frequently have either the beak or one of the eyes selected in order to view the feathers in the same value. [edit]

Sorting the Feathers

Next we need to tidy up the feather overlapping by either pushing or pulling the feathers that are not properly settled such as the example shown here. Notice the crashing of the middle feather into the left most feather? To fix this we can first set a morph target in the selected subtool by pressing, Tool:Morph Target:StoreMT. To lift the middle feather out of the other, well set:

Brush:Elastic. Alpha = Alpha00. Stroke:Dots. Z Intensity = 15 with Zadd on.

As we build up strokes over the feather, you can see it gradually lift out from the bunch, leaving the feathers detail. If you look closely, I accidentally pulled too much of the underlying surface through the inactive subtool.

Switch to the Morph brush, adjust brush size and intensity to suit, and push back any over extended surface. Give the model a once over and look for any more areas that need this kind of attention. We are almost to the end. [edit]

Fluffing the Feathers

Remember that extra subtool that was our backup, named BirdHead? Select it and make sure it is at the highest subdivision. Turn the visibilty of the clones off. Create a New 3D Layer if you havent already done so and begin drawing on feathers like before except this time, they are not to touch each other. You dont need to cover the whole bird but check your reference. In this case, the back of the neck is a good area along with the side of the neck. Basically you just want to break up the silhouette and give a feel of some depth to the feathered area.

Now under Tool:Layer move the layer slider back to 0, go to E Smth and S Smth and slide both down to 1. Lastly, move the Thick slider down to 0. Press Make 3D.

You should now have a new subtool created based on the strokes just made from the BirdHead subtool resting on the very surface of the subtool from which they were made. Next:

Return to the BirdHead subtool and make it visible. Move the 3D Layer slider back to 1 so the feathers are visible once again. Reselect the LayerSkin subtool with the feathers and press Tool:Geometry:Divide once. Select Brush:Zproject. Select Alpha:Brush00. Set Stroke:Dots.

With Zadd on, well now brush over the layerskin feathers until they take on the detail of inactive subtool above it. You may find you get better results projecting, by rotating the model to where the area you wish to project is parallel to the screen. Also make sure X symmetry is off for this part. If you wish, you can sculpt in more detail to make these feathers unique.

After you are satisfied with the indiviual feathers, well paint a mask over one of the feathers. Invert the mask, and invoke Transpose mode by pressing w. Create an action line on the feather by clicking near its top, and dragging to near its bottom. You can now use the Transpose rotate feature and lever the feather away from the body.

Dont forget the middle circle of the Transpose action line can be used to twist the feather on the axis of the action line. Clear the mask when done and select a new feather to begin the adjusting process. Feel free to turn the visibility of the Birdhead subtool on to get an idea of how much to rotate the feather from the rest of the body. When you have all the feathers positioned, turn on all essential subtools for evaluation. If there are still sorting issues with the feathers, use the Elastic brush like mentioned above or even try the Tweak brush to correct aggressive clipping.

And finally... Looking back in hindsight, I would have liked to have tried consolidating the the subtools into fewer, by Zprojecting details from one entirely onto another. This may require retopology again but may be worth a try in the future. I hope this tutorial was helpful and assists you in your getting desired results in your future projects. A big Thank You to the Pixologic Team!

Amazon Tutorial
From ZBrushInfo
(Redirected from Image:Amazon final.png) Jump to: navigation, search by Rene Morel

Base mesh, posed in and imported from Maya.

The model was subdivided, a corset mask was painted, and the corset was extracted using Tool:Subtool:Extract Mesh.

To make it easier to work with, parts of the model outside the head were hidden, and then the cap area was masked and the cap was extracted using masking and Mesh Extraction:

The SnakeHook brush made it easy to create the chin strap of the cap:

Lazy Mouse was used to sculpt smooth seams, and for many other things:

Sculpting a pattern on the hat using an alpha:

The low-res cloth was imported from Maya.

Gloves (another extracted subtool) being detailed with the Std brush:

The sword (imported from Maya) was detailed using alphas along with the (on the pommel) the Std, Pinch, and Flatten brushes:

In this case, the seams were first sculpted, and then flattened out using the Flatten brush.

I moved the sword around with the Tweak brush, using a large brush size and a local shift of -100. If your brush will completely cover what you are moving, this works fine. But Transpose will let you do a lot more.

Realistic bulges of the skin at the top of the corset were made with the old standby Std brush.

Finally, I used the Blob brush to add some more irregularity to the cloth, and give the appearance of worn and stretched areas. The finished composition:

SubTool Hair Sculpting Tutorial

From ZBrushInfo
(Redirected from Image:Sph headstudyfinal.jpg) Jump to: navigation, search by Joe Lee The following are some of my observations while learning the new features in Zbrush. It is my hope that this process will help shed light on achieving a unique look as well as open new ideas for other techniques. [edit]

Sculpting Hair Using SubTools and ZSpheres

The goal was to add hair to a preexisting head. Looking for a suitable base form for the hair, I settled on the Sphereinder3D tool, which has been a resident in the ZBrush tool library since I can remember. I immediately opened the Tool:Preview window so I could see the changes I am about to implement below. Going to Tool:Initialize, I set:

Coverage to to about 270. In the Deformation section, I set Rotate with only z highlighted, to 45.

In the Preview window you will see what will be the front of the head.

Returning to the head, I pressed Tool:Subtool:Append to add the hair base to the Spereinder3D tool. Tool:Deformation:Offset was used to properly position the hair base. Once it is in the general vicinity that I like, I pressed Preview:Store to make this the new default position of this tool.

[edit]

Hair Blocking and Sculpting

Now on to shaping the hair. I pulled on it with the Snakehook brush and a Dots stroke. Keep in mind that you want as evenly a distributed mesh as possible so I used the Nudge brush and Smooth brush to even things out as much as possible. If you were to pull the front of the hair down the forehead some, you would notice some streching from the rest of the hair base. Use the Smooth brush from the dense mesh area to the sparse mesh area and you will see it average out more cleanly. The Nudge brush also speeds this process up as well. You want to do this before dividing.

I then proceeded to block in the hair with the Standard and Pinch brushes. Stroke was set to Freehand with a Mouse Avg of about 4 and the LazyMouse was pressed.

The trick I was trying to pull off was the illusion of the hair growing from under the head so I needed to try to keep the beginning of the hairline just under the head. I wanted to give the hair base enough runway to start a stroke under the head and get it to surface as a strand of hair. You may need to toggle on/off the visibilty of the head subtool to get the look you want. If you get to a point to where you are starting to like your results then save everything. I kept my hair base a primitive 3D tool until near the end after I divided it several times. But at some point you may want to make a polymesh 3D tool out of it. Its up to you. If you plan on going with mesh projection later on, it may not be necessary as you will most likely retopologize.

[edit]

Adding Strands of Hair with ZSpheres

My next step at giving some dimension to the hair is to add strands of hair that appear independent of rest of the head. For this I used the new Convert To Main feature that has been added to the Zsphere tool. After selecting the Zsphere tool, I went down to Rigging where I pressed Select to choose the hair base ztool I just finished working on.

Go to Topology and press Edit Topology. You can now click across the hair base where you want the strands to flow. When finished with a strand, I typed e (scale) and went back to click on the parent zsphere again to reselect it and then typed q (draw) to redraw a couple more strands from the origin.

When I was ready to start shaping the strands, I pressed Convert To Main under Topology. Now unpress Edit Topology and the zsphere strands should appear.

To get them to appear thicker than what they are, press Scale and then hold down the Alt key while you click and drag to the right on the zsphere stem that lies between the first and second zsphere. This should grow the branch without scaling the zsphere's positions. You will now want to scale individual zspheres to taper the size you see fit as well as move in and out of the hair base.

To cut the strands loose from the parent, Alt+q click on the stems that lead the parent zsphere to the strands. When you are ready to append the strands to the rest of the head, go to Rigging and press Delete and the zspheres will now be added to the Subtools. Once the zsphere hair strands are added to the subtools, you can refine the integration of the strands with the rest of the subtools. The LazyMouse was a key player in carving lines down the curving strands. Dont forget to use the ReplayLast stroke feature for emphasis and further definition of strokes you liked. Heres an image to help see a process that helped define the hair strands.

Steps 1 and 3 are tool preparation steps. Step 2 works best if applied in a single stroke. On that note, step 4 works best if the model is not moved at all since step 2. Step 5 will help even out the mesh from all the pinching but should leave the newly created creases when the Smooth slider is set to higher than 50 (try 100 first). I hope this walk through will help give insight to some of the new features in the latest version of Zbrush. Please post any insights or improvements you may have found as I too am still learning. Good luck with your future creations!

The finished model.

Cyborg Head Tutorial

From ZBrushInfo
(Redirected from Image:MakingLayerV2 50.jpg) Jump to: navigation, search by Damien Canderle

Start with a PolySphere and block out the general shape and proportion of the character. Keep your polygon count low in the beginning and focus on gesture and basic form.

As you sculpt try not to focus on edgeflow or stretched polygons. Design first. Rework topology later.

Our design sculpt is intended to represent around 80% of the finished model. Its main purpose is to suggest forms that we will later make more precise. Notice how the plates at the back of the head do not have sharp edges and that the columns protuding from his head are stretching the polygons. This is exactly what we are looking for in a design sculpt. Keep it loose and gestural.

Our design sculpt is finished. Now its time to re-topologize the model and fine-tune the form. Select a ZSphere and in the Tool: Rigging subpalette press Select and choose the Design sculpt from the popup.

Press Tool: Topology: Edit Topology and begin to redraw topology around the significant forms. For the back of the head those are the the individual plates and the columns protuding from his helmut. Take note of the edgeflow so you can see how that impacts further stages of the sculpt.

Around the face, we create edgeloops for the eyes, nose, mechanical jaw and other elements.

Now, let's project all of the design sculpts detail into the new topology. Press Project in the Tool: Rigging sub-palette and then press "A" on the key board of Tool: Adaptive Skin: Preview.

Notice how the new edge flow allows us to get much more refined form in the mechanical details. While designing this level of form may not be important to us. When it is, we simply re-topologize the model and continue.

Here we are continuing to detail the model. For the back of the head plates we have used the pinch brush with the elevation set above 0. We have also used the Lazy Mouse to get clean, smooth lines.

Here we have added more detail to the face. We have added wrinkles and details such as the neck scaring and how the mechanical jaw interacts with the flesh.

Its the little details that make a character. Details like the nuts, bolts and grommets really help sell the character.

In preparation for painting, we create polygroups. This allows us easily mask off areas such as the mechanical jaw while we texture the organic parts of the face.

The face texture is roughed in. Right now we are looking at the model in Flat Render mode.

The face texture is further defined. The eyes have been painted and more detail has been added to the nose area as well as veining all around the face.

Now we are ready to texture the mechanical jaw. For this, we will use ZApp Link to send the character to Photoshop and do our texturing there. Before continuing, make sure you have masked the organic facial area. You can do this by holding down CTRL and clicking on the face area. Make sure it is darkened before continuing.

Inside of Photoshop we position some metal photoreference and get ready to send it back to ZBrush.

Back in ZBrush and in Flat Render mode we can see the final textures.

Here it is rendered with real-time shadows and a custom MatCap material in the viewport. This is all real-time rendering. Below is the final sculpt:

The Making of "Birth" by Francois Rimasson Featuring: Transpose, ZSpheres, SubTools, and Mesh Extraction
From ZBrushInfo
(Redirected from Image:Rimasson birth1.jpg) Jump to: navigation, search This tutorial has been split into several parts, to avoid long load times for your browser. They are:

Part 1: Introduction, Creating a Figure with ZSpheres. Part 2: Sculpting and Posing. Part 3: Details, Texturing, Shading, Rendering, and Compositing.

by Francois Rimasson

Contents
[hide]

1 Introduction

2 About Zbrush o 2.1 Basics: Tools, Editing, and Navigation in Zbrush o 2.2 Basics: Sculpting o 2.3 Basics: Hiding and Revealing o 2.4 Basics: Masking 3 Using Z-Spheres To Create a Stick Figure o 3.1 Polygroups o 3.2 Polygroups Visibility o 3.3 Creating a Rough Shape from the Stick Figure

[edit]

Introduction
This Project is going to guide you step by step, and to allow you to create a whole scene with Zbrush 3 from scratch, to sculpt, texture and finally render it. This is an extensive tutorial, but there's still a lot I won't go into, such as interface configuration or ZScripts. [edit]

About Zbrush
Zbrush is different from other 3D and painting programs. It's a mix between 2D painting, and 3D modeling software, with good rendering capacities. In ZBrush, you don't have a 3D workspace, but a canvas. The canvas can be painted on, and can also be sculpted in and out (like a bas-relief carving, but with much greater depth). When doing pure 3D modeling, you simply manipulate the model with a (usually) blank canvas as the background. Your model can then easily be incorporated into a previously painted scene, and lighting, rendering, and so on, will all work to produce an illustration with true 3D appearance.

Of course, many artists use ZBrush as primarily a 3D program, and that's largely what we'll be doing in this tutorial. Because of this integration, a model in ZBrush can be thought of as a tool, which also includes 2.5D brushes, a 3D primitives, ZSphere skeletons, and of course standard 3D models, which are normally referred to as polymeshes or meshes. A new feature in ZBrush 3 is that a single polymesh can be split into multiple subtools, enabling you to work on multiple items at the same time. To paint and sculpt a tool or the canvas, you will use 3D and 2.5D brushes, different kind of strokes, textures, alpha maps and materials. The picture on the left was created from scratch in Zbrush, all the models are created, sculpted, posed, textures, lighted, and rendered without (almost) the help of any other application. Before beginning this tutorial, let us have a look to the basic functions of Zbrush, as well as the main menus. [edit]

Basics: Tools, Editing, and Navigation in Zbrush

The Tool Palette (palette is another name for menu in ZBrush) is one of the most important menus. It's where you load, save and edit all of your models.

Select the Sphere 3d primitive and drag it on the canvas.

Near the top of the canva, you can find the Edit, Draw, Move, Scale and Rotate icons. After you draw the Sphere, all these icons except Edit are now active. You can use the Move, Scale and Rotate tools (respectively : W, E, R keys) to transform the sphere, or stay in Draw (Q key) to draw other spheres. For the moment, enter the Edit mode, and press the Make PolyMesh3D button in the Tool menu. The sphere primitive is converted into a standard 3d Mesh. Sculpting brushes will work much better with standard 3D meshes (polymeshes).

Edit Mode mode will let you edit and sculpt the sphere. When this mode is on, the Draw, Move, Scale and Rotate icons will allow you sculpt, move, or pose your current tool.

In Edit Mode, to Move, rotate and scale the current tool, you'll have to use the Transform icons, on the right of the canvas area, or the following combos:

To rotate your Tool, just click drag on an empty area of your canvas.. (or on the Safe area around) To move your Tool, press the Alt key and click-drag on your canvas.. To scale your Tool, press the Alt key, click-drag on your canvas, then, release the Alt key. To center your Tool, press .

A safe area (one that you can drag on to do the above) appears around the canvas that will help you to move rotate or scale your tool, even if your model one fills all the available space on he canvas.

For now, activate the Local transformations. If will help to focus on the part of the model you're working on. [edit]

Basics: Sculpting

The various available brushes, which are going to serve you for sculpting the model, are all in the Brush menu. Each has a different effect, and can be combined with different strokes and alpha maps. Before beginning, take time to experiment with them.

On the top row, you can find the buttons to controls the color, opacity, and material of the tools when the Edit Mode is off, and the depth, color, opacity and materials of the 3d brushes when the Edit Mode is on.

Press S to change the Size to the brush.

Press U to change the Z intensity of the brush. Press I to change the RGB intensity of the brush. Press O to change the Focal Shift of the brush. You can also show for a moment a Hotbox that includes all these options by pressing the Spacebar.

Image:Birth Symmetry.gif You'll find in the Transform Palette the Symmetry options. Symmetry will save you a lot of time. Symmetry in X, Y and Z can be switched on and off by by pressing respectively, X, Y and Z keys. [edit]

Basics: Hiding and Revealing

(Upper half of figure):

Press CTRL + Shift and drag a rectangle to keep visible a section of the sphere.

The remaining part of your model is hidden. (Lower half of figure):

Press CTRL + Shift and drag a rectangle as previous. While you draw the rectangle area, release the SHIFT key. The rectangle becomes red, and the underlying part of the model is hidden.

To invert the model visibility, press CTRL + Shift and drag a rectangle on an empty area of the canvas. To reveal all the model, press CTRL + Shift and click on an ampty area of the canvas.

The Lasso tool allows you to quickly create freeform selections by pressing CTRL + Shift and dragging out a lasso.

[edit]

Basics: Masking

(Upper half of figure):

Press CTRL and drag a stroke to mask a section of the sphere.

(Lower half of figure):

Press CTRL+ Alt and drag a stroke to unmask a section of the sphere. In the same way as for sculpting, selecting an Alpha has an influence on the stroke.

(Upper half of figure):

Press CTRL and drag a rectangle to mask a section of the sphere.

(Lower half of figure):

Press CTRL + Alt and drag a rectangle to unmask section of the sphere. To invert the mask, press CTRL + Shift and click on an empty area of the canvas. To clear the mask, press CTRL, and drag a rectangle on an empty area of the canvas. As with hiding faces, you can also use the lasso tool to mask them.

Now, go out of Edit Mode, and clear the Document, using CTRL + N. (If you're editing a tool, all but your current tool will be erased.) [edit]

Using Z-Spheres To Create a Stick Figure

To start, we will build a simple stick-model using Zspheres, which are a quick way to create a stick figure, and to create a model from. This model will be a template on top of which we will create the final topology of our girl.

Select the ZSphere icon in the Tool palette, Click-drag it on the Document, and enter Edit mode.

Activate X Symmetry, using the X Key. You can also find the Symmetry options on the Transform Menu. You can notice that your cursor becomes green when it's over the symmetry axis.

Now, we will create the Spine and the head of our model.

Select the Draw icon, and start to add a first Z-Sphere. Pay attention to create this sphere on the axis of symmetry. Go into Move mode (W key), and move it just above the original Go into Draw mode and add 2 other Z-Spheres the same way.

To shape your Stick figure you can Move, Rotate or Scale each Z-Sphere individually, or select the Link between each Z-Spheres, to transform the downstream hierarchy. If you want to delete a Z Sphere, just Alt + Click on it.

It's time to add arms and legs to our model. Here is what the skeleton and the poly model should look like at the end.

[edit]

Polygroups

You can preview your poly model, and go back to the Zsphere display at any moment by pressing the Preview button, in the Tool:Adaptive skin subpalette; or the A key

You can Switch on and off wireframe and polygroups display by pressing the Draw PolyFrame button, or Shift +F

Polygroups are just a quick and easy way to group part of your model, and to isolate these parts later. Polygroup options can be found in the Tool:Polygroup subpalette. The creation of these can be made according to UV sets, or using to the visible polygons. If you import a model exported from Maya in .OBJ format, which has selections sets, these sets will be converted into polygroups. In the same way, these groups will be preserved when you will export your model again. [edit]

Polygroups Visibility
Hold CTRL + Shift and click on a polygroup, or the junction of two polygroups: the rest of the model is hidden.

Revealing the model or inverting the visibility works as usual.

Have a closer look at the poly model, and especially at the hands. You will notice that our poly model has multiple colored parts. Each part is in fact a polygroup. A new polygroup is created each time the ZSphere hierarchy is split. You'll have to add an additional Z-Sphere on both side of the palm, so that fingers have good topology. When you will model your character, ensure every finger is in a separate polygroup. It will help us later. When you have finished, save your model. Note: Because of the reddish clay shader, polygroups are not really visible. You can switch to a more neutral shader, or change the Render mode to Preview.

[edit]

Creating a Rough Shape from the Stick Figure

Let us look more closely at the Adaptative skin sub palette. You will there find all the needed options to controls the model we'll generate.

Press A key to preview your Poly model, and make sure that the Minimal Skin to child button (MC) is on. Set the Density to 4. Hit Make Adaptive Skin. A New 3d model is created and placed in the Tool Palette. Switch to this new model.

The model we created has multiple subdivision levels. You can move back and forth between these levels as you model, by using the Lower Res and Higher Res buttons, or using D and Shift + D keys.

Tutorial: Birth 2
From ZBrushInfo
Jump to: navigation, search This tutorial has been split into several parts, to avoid long load times for your browser. They are:

Part 1: Introduction, Creating a Figure with ZSpheres. Part 2: Sculpting and Posing. Part 3: Details, Texturing, Shading, Rendering, and Compositing.

Contents
[hide]

1 Creating New Topology o 1.1 Before Beginning to Sculpt o 1.2 Creating Polygroups o 1.3 The Advantages of Working with Layers o 1.4 Erasing Layer Information o 1.5 Detailing the Eyelid. o 1.6 Shaping the Breasts o 1.7 Detailing the Ear o 1.8 Shaping the Hand o 1.9 Symmetry 2 Posing the Model o 2.1 Twisting

3 Oops, I Missed the Hair!

[edit]

Creating New Topology

Select a new ZSphere tool. Clone your model, and hide a part of the legs. Make sure that the subdiv level of the model is at 2 Press CTRL and click on all the polygroups, one by one, to hide the whole body, except the fingers and toes. To spare time, we are going to keep this geometry and to use it as starting point for the final model.

In the Tool:Rigging subpalette, select the whole model, and activate the Projection Mode, so that the model which will be generated is projected on the Template.

In the Tool:Topology subpalette, select the cloned model only fingers of which are visible. Enter the Edit Topology Mode.

An orange wireframe model should appear over the fingers and the toes. This topology is composed of multiple Z Sphere chains, and was generated from the topology you selected. These chains of Z Spheres defines the contour of patches, from which a 3d mesh is going to be generated Set the Max Strip Length to its max. This parameter indicates the maximum length of one of the side of a patch, so that it can be generated Like a standard Z Sphere model, you can Move, Scale, and delete part of the topology as you like, and also can preview the final model at any moment, by pressing A.

We are now going to create the rest of the topology, by beginning by connecting the thumb with fingers, and then, we are going to create rectangular patches which are going to define the remaining topology.

Press CTRL and click on a Z Sphere to define the starting point, and draw a four segments ZSphere chain. Create a second chain. both of them snaps automatically on top of the underlying model.

Pay attention that both chains have the same number of segments. If a chain has less segments than the other one, press CTRL and click on a segment to select it, then add an additional segment.

Press A to check the generated mesh, then A again to switch back to the ZSphere model.

Continue to add patches, until the model is ended. Open the Adaptative skin sub palette, and Hit Make Adaptive Skin.

The final model is generated and placed in the Tool Palette. The number of it's subdiv level is controlled both by the Density slider in the Adaptative Skin sub-palette, and by the Subdiv Parameter in the Topology Palette.

Here is what the final geometry should look like. [edit]

Before Beginning to Sculpt

Now, the serious things are going to begin. The model on which you go to work will be the definitive model, (or almost). The first thing which it is always necessary to do before sculpting a model, is to crease the border edges. Here, the only ones are the openings of the eyes and the mouth. When you go to smooth the model later, these edges will remain hard. The second advantage to hardening the edges of the model, will be when you have to calculate the cage of the model, to generate a displacement map; the cage model will be cleaner.

Go to the Tool:Geometry subpalette, and apply a crease. Subdivide the model five times, up to level 6, with the Divide tool, or using Ctrl + D. The model should be around two million polygons

[edit]

Creating Polygroups

We are now going to create polygroups, and for it, we are going to use Zbrush 3's new topological masking tools. {{Note|You can use these tools only if you're in Move, Rotate or Scale mode.}

First, go into Preferences:Transpose, and set the Mask Blur Strength to 0. Make sure that the X Symmetry is on, go into move mode, press and hold CTRL then click on the wrist and drag towards the hand to create a topological mask that isolates the body. Release CTRL.

CTRL + Click on the canvas to invert the mask, go to the {{Ctl|Tool:Masking:} subpalette, and hide the unmasked polygons, then go to the Polygroup subpalette and create a new polygroup.

|Always create your polygroups at the lower subdivision level.

In the same way, create another topological mask by drawing another line from the top to the bottom of the corner of the mouth, then, create a new polygroup, to separate the upper lip from the bottom lip.

[edit]

The Advantages of Working with Layers

Layers allow you to work with much more flexibility, and and to easily correct many kinds of errors. You will be able to work with a model at many different stages of development simultaneously. You can add details, then turn those details off and refine the major forms underlying them.

The layer submenu is in the Tool palette. All models start with no layers defined.

To create new layers, use the Tool:Layer:New button. If you wish to bake the layer into your sculpt, simply press Tool:Layers:Delete.

If you want to remove the layer and the sculpting from your mesh, turn off the visibility of the layer by pressing the eye icon and then pressing Tool:Layers:Delete.

When you create one 3D Layer on a model, the following layers have to be created at the same level of subdivision as the first one. They can on the other hand be edited at any level. [edit]

Erasing Layer Information

You can erase information in a Layer by using a morph target and the morph brush. To do this take the following steps:

Turn off visibility for the layer you want to remove information from. Store a morph target by pressing Tool: Morph Target: Store MT. Select the morph brush. Turn the visibility back on for that layer. Paint out the area you want to remove.

This model is fairly simple in terms of the abilities ZBrush offers, it does not present big technical difficulties. The challenge to make a beautiful result is essentially anatomical. You'll visit in the next chapters some techniques which are going to allow you to work more quickly and more effectively. [edit]

Detailing the Eyelid.

Create a topological mask around the eye at subdiv level 3, and invert it. (You can create the mask only in one direction, from the outside inward of the eye, because you're working in symmetry) If the Mask is too blurred, use the Sharpen Mask tool, in the Masking Sub Palette. Create another topological mask just after the first one, so that there is no more than a simple strip of polygon which is not selected. With the Tweak brush,shape the eyelid, clear the mask. Select the Smooth Edit Brush and set the slider to -100. This prevents the concave polygons from being smoothed. Smooth and reshape the eye socket.

[edit]

Shaping the Breasts

The Topological masking tool will help us a lot to shape and add volume to the breasts of the model.

Go into the Preferences - Transpose subpalette, and set the MaskBlurStrength to 7. Create a topological mask under the breasts. Select the Inflate Brush, to add some volume under the breast, and then, switch between the Tweak and Standard Brushes to polish the shape.

[edit]

Detailing the Ear

The ear is certainly one of the most delicate part of the human body, and it will be one of hardest to sculpt. For it, you need a closer look at the sculpting brushes parameters. These are (almost) all grouped together in the Brush Palette.

The Edit Curve determines, and can modify, the brush profile. To get a brush profile that mimic the Edit curve, activate the Accucurve tool. The Accucurve tool is also a quick way to switch from a rounded brush to a sharper one. It's a clever idea to have this button on your interface. Selecting an Alpha in the Alpha palette will also have a great impact on the brush look.

The circumference of the ear, the Helix, with its part bent back on itself is certainly the most difficult to be sculpted. For it, we are going to use the Gravity tool, in the Brush Palette.

Set the Gravity orientation gizmo to the right, and the strength to 100, and draw a first stroke to shape the recess.

Hold Alt and draw a second stroke to shape the fold. When you reverse the Stroke direction with Alt, the gravity is also inverted..

Put the model in a view of three quarter, and use the Snakehook brush to shape the auditory canal.

Use ths Clay and the Flatten Brushes with a low intensity to build up the earlobe, then the Tweak brush to highlight it with regard to the head.

The Flatten brush will also help you to create a sharp transition between the circumference of the ear and the head. The Samples parameter, which you can find in the Brush Palette, has a great deal of importance. This can change the sensitivity of the Clay and Flatten brushes, by averaging the orientation and height of the underneath surface.

To be able to draw very precise and controlled brush strokes with ease is going to make you win a great deal of time. To do it, the Lazymouse tool will help you a lot (see Lazy Mouse). Open the Stroke menu, activate the tool, and set the LazyStep to 0.03.

A digital red string is now attached between your cursor and the brush itself, and sculpting can continue.

[edit]

Shaping the Hand

Work on the hand is a good time to have a first glance at the Transpose tool, which is a new feature in ZBrush that allows you to quickly position, pose or deform your model. The hand, such as it is, is not very realistic. Fingers are too fine, are not spread enough. To use only standard sculpting brushes to correct it is not really going to give good results.

Ctrl + Click on the hand to hide all but the hand polygroup. Go into Scale Mode. Draw a topological mask to mask the all the hand, except a finger.

To create an action line, click on hand's surface and drag out the action line. The endpoints of the line will snap to whatever is under them. (To move an entire action line, drag the line itself to move it.)

Click and drag from the inside of the midpoint of the action towards an endpoint, to scale the finger. Go into Rotate Mode. Click on the Line's Endpoint, and rotate the Finger. Do the same for all the fingers and toes.

[edit]

Symmetry
In certain cases, the Topological mask works much better when the symmetry is not activated. When you do not sculpt a mesh by using a symmetry, you can nevertheless symmetrize it afterward.

To do that, mask the zone of the model which you want to symmetrize. Select the Symmetry Axis In the Tool Deformation Palette, apply a Smart Resym.

In case nothing is selected, the whole model is averaged.

[edit]

Posing the Model

Posing the whole model with the Transpose tool is really simple.

Create a new 3d Layer, dedicated to the Posing, and go to the 2nd subdiv level. The deformations will be made more easily, when the model has few polygons. You will have to, as for fingers, mask the part which you do not want to deform, adjust the Mask smoothness with the MaskBlur and MaskSharpen tools, and create one Action Line, and use that to deform the model.

To Blur the Mask, hold CTRL and Click on the model. To Sharpen the Mask hold CTRL + Alt, and Click on the model. During this phase you should not only pose the model, but also to re-sculpt it, to have anatomically correct muscular deformations, compressions, and skin folds.

[edit]

Twisting

With Transpose, you are not limited to rotating parts of a model, but also twist them.

To do that, create a Topo mask as usual, blur it until it goes from the elbow to the wrist. You can switch to Flat Render mode to better check the masking. Rotate your model to center the Action Line on the forearm. (The Action Line was drawn on the Surface of the model) Click and drag on the line's midpoint to rotate the forearm.

[edit]

Oops, I Missed the Hair!

When I created the model, I thought of modeling hair separately. I changed my mind afterward and decided to extrude the hair from the head. You're gonna do the same thing.

Go to the lowest subdivision level, and create a new polygroup on the back of the head. Hide all the model, except the new polygroup. Move the polygroup backwards using the Transpose tool, then, in the Tool:Geometry sub palette, create an Edgeloop. Repeat the operation a few times, that's all.

Begin by shaping and add volume to the hair using the Tweak and the Clay Edit Brushes, then, activate the Lazy Mouse Mode, switch to the Standard Edit brush to add details to the hair.

Tutorial: Birth 3
From ZBrushInfo
Jump to: navigation, search This tutorial has been split into several parts, to avoid long load times for your browser. They are:

Part 1: Introduction, Creating a Figure with ZSpheres. Part 2: Sculpting and Posing. Part 3: Details, Texturing, Shading, Rendering, and Compositing.

Contents
[hide]

1 Shading and Rendering o 1.1 Setting up a Standard Shader o 1.2 MatCap, a new way to shade your models 2 The Eye o 2.1 Texturing the Eyeball o 2.2 Positioning the Eyeballs o 2.3 Adding Eyelashes 3 Painting the model 4 Creating the Set 5 HD Sculpting and Painting o 5.1 Creating an Alpha From a Photo o 5.2 Creating an Alpha Manually and Using It With the Edit Brush 6 Creating the Illustration

6.1 Rendering the Shadows 7 Compositing and Final Touches

o

[edit]

Shading and Rendering

Before texturing the model, you will need to create a nice shader that mimic skins, with a Subsurface Scattering look, in order to have a better feedback. For that purpose, you'll use a new type of ZBrush 3 material; a Matcap material. It can be created in two different ways: By using a Ball picture rendered in a 3d application; or from within Zbrush. Using a good material from this point will also give you a good idea of what the model will look like in a final render. [edit]

Setting up a Standard Shader

If you can't use an external app to create a Shaded ball, you can also arrive at the same result by using a standard material.

In The Material Palette, select a DoubleShade Material, and set it as shown. Now, draw a sphere on the Document, to preview the material. Open the Light Palette, and

Adjust the lights to get a nice result. Four sun lights should do the job

You can do some experiments at your own will, or open the light setup also included in the Zip file.

Select the MRGBZ Grabber tool. In the Tool's modifier's palette, make sure that Auto Crop is on, and drag a selection on the document around the Ball. A copy of the Ball is stored in the Texture Palette. Change the specular settings of the material to have some variations of the material, and grab more pictures. Save all the pictures, the lights and your document if you want to make further modifications of the material.

[edit]

MatCap, a new way to shade your models

The Sphere on the left is rendered in Mental Ray, using the MiSSS Skin shader. The subsurface settings were adjusted so that there are no dark zones, and so that the translucence is really visible.

Select a MatCap Material in the Material Palette, like the Red Wax, open the Modifiers Sub Palette, If the Material Palette is greyed, select a 3d Primitive tool. Some tools don't allow you to modify the Material settings. Click on the Material texture 1 Slot at the lower Left corner, and select the one of the Ball pictures grabbed previously, or a picture rendered in a 3d app. In The Color Palette, select a brown color, then click on the Base Color Modifier. It will bring in the pink color of the material when you will paint it.

[edit]

The Eye
We're going to model the eye, now.

Select a Sphere 3d Primitive, and set the HDivide and VDivide to 24, in the Initialize SubPalette. Convert the Pritive to a Polymesh 3D. Select the Tweak Edit Brush, click on a Pole vertex to shape the Iris, then, hold Shift to constraint the translation to the vertex normal. Hide the Eyeball, except the Iris, and do a Crease, and create a new Polygroup from. Unhide all, and subdivide the eyeball up to level 5. That's all for the modeling, now .

[edit]

Texturing the Eyeball

Now, switch back to the Eye model, open the Tool - Texture subpalette and activate the Colorize option. You don't need any UVs on your model, as the color is actually stored on the model vertices.

Deactivate the Zadd option, And leave only the RGB activated.

To paint a model, you can simply use the same Standard Edit Brush as to sculpt. You only have to choose between different Alphas, different Strokes. and pick a color in the Color palette. To pick a color from your model, of simply from the canvas, click on the Color Palette, and drag the cursor to the area of the document you want to sample. As you created earlier several Polygroups, these will allow you to mask easily the white of the eye, and to bind the texture of the iris.

The Iris has a specific radial pattern. To reproduce it more easily, activate in the Transform Palette the Radial and Z Symmetry, and set the radial count around 25.

When the basic texture is created, you can deactivate the symmetry, and continue to detail the eye [edit]

Positioning the Eyeballs

One of the big novelties of Zbrush 3 is the possibility of grouping together several models, called Subtools. It is in this way that we are going to be able to add eyes to our model, as well as lashes, and a set later. At the moment, we have two separate models: a body, and an eye. Select the Body model, click on the Append button, and, then, select the Eye. You will certainly have to adjust the position, size and the orientation of the eye with the Transpose tool. After this has been, Clone the Eye, append the cloned eye as a new subtool (for the second eye in the figure), and adjust it's position. [edit]

Adding Eyelashes

Lashes are going to be created separately, from ZSpheres.

Draw on the canvas a ZSphere tool. Ensure its dark half points upward. This first Z Sphere will be the pivot point of the lash, and its orientation is very important.

Draw an additional Z Sphere from the light side, and a Z Sphere chain from the dark side of the first Z Sphere. Preview the model, and convert it to a 3d mesh using the Make Adaptative Skin tool Select the new 3d mesh, and delete the lower subdiv levels. In the Tool Deformation Subpalette, rotate the model on the Z axis of 90 degrees.

Lashes are not going to be put directly on the final model of the body, but on a template without any subdivision levels.

Select the model of the body. Clone it. Go to the fifth subdiv level, and delete the higher and lower levels. Create a single Polygroup from the model. Hide all the model except the head, and mask it all. Open the Brush Palette, select the MeshInsert Fit Tool, then select the Lash as the mesh you will insert.

Add lashes.

Lashes may not be directed in the right direction when you go to add them. If it is the case, change their orientation by using the Rotation slider, in the Deformation Sub Palette. You can also tweak them with the Tweak and the Transpose tools. When you are satisfied by the result, hide the Body Polygroup, and delete the hidden polygons. Finally, add the lashes as a new Subtool to the final model.

[edit]

Painting the model

To paint the model does not present any particular difficulty. Start with flat tint of color, to define areas like hair, lips, nails, then, using a low RGB opacity add color variations on fingers, cheeks, knees. To finish, select a spray stroke and Alpha 23, to add some blemish to the skin. [edit]

Creating the Set

To create the Set, we are going to start from a simple cube primitive.

In The Tool Palette, select the Primitive, draw it on the canvas, then convert it to a Polymesh 3d.

As most of the primitives in Zbrush, this mesh has poles, and that will not be convenient when you sculpt it. So we are going to change that.

Open the Tool:Unified Skin Sub Palette, set the resolution to 8, then click on the Unified Skin button A new tool is created in the Tool Palette. Switch to it. Subdivide the model one or two times. Open the Deformation Sub Palette. Spherize the mesh, then Flatten the bottom.

Draw a mask, to bound the shape of the new model, and Hide the Unmasked part

In the Subtool Palette, click on the Extract button. A mesh with some thickness is created as a new subtool. That's the one that we will use a the final model of the set.

Before sculpting the set in HD, give it a sharp look with the Tweak Edit Brush [edit]

HD Sculpting and Painting

Now that the model is in its final pose, we'll do some high-definition sculpting for details. HD Sculpting allows you to detail a single model up to one billion polygons. This works almost exactly as for normal subdivision, but keep the portion of the model that is being worked with at any time to a size that leaves your system responsive.

In Tool:Geometry HD, divide the girl model two times. This will be enough to add all the needed details. Then, hover your mouse over the area you want to sculpt and press the a key. A circular area around the mouse has been selected. The number of polygons of this area is determined by Preferences:Mem:MaxPolyPerMesh. You can then sculpt in that area. When done with HD sculpting, press the a key again to exit Sculpt HD mode. On this model, thanks to the HD, we are going to be able to add the skin grain, the relief tattoos, and all the details necessary to add exactly the realism we want.

You can detail the skin grain in two different ways. The first solution is to use a simple brush, a spray stroke, and the Alpha Brush 15, which will allow you to both sculpt and paint your model. Or, you can capture it from a photo [edit]

Creating an Alpha From a Photo

It's easy to create an alpha from a photo and to use it as a stencil or as a stamp with a 3d brush.

For this, you will need two additional pieces of software; Photoshop or something similar, and a little help from Jpeg Enhancer to remove Jpeg artifacts from photos. Here's what to do: 1. Open the original photo in Photoshop, and do a High Pass filter to remove all the relief and shadows but the skin grain. Save the picture in .Psd format and open it as an alpha in Zbrush

2. Set Alpha:Alpha Depth Factor to a value between 2 and 12. It may vary according to the shading of the picture. 3. Adjust the Alpha curve to get a nicer depth effect, and fill the document with the Alpha, using the Alpha:CropAndFill button. 4. Select the GlowBrush Tool, and activate the ZAdd Button. Press and hold the Alt key (which is a shortcut to access the Smooth sculpting brush), and use the tool on your document to smooth it, except for the creases. 5. Grab the whole document, or a portion of it with the MRGBZ Grabber tool. The new alpha is stored in the alpha palette. 6. If you intend to use this Alpha as a stencil, set it to be the current stencil using the Alpha:Make St Button. [edit]

Creating an Alpha Manually and Using It With the Edit Brush

In some cases, you will have to create your own Alphas from scratch. We are going to need it to stylize the hair, and to make it look like a clay sculpting. 1. Create a New Document. 2. Change its size to 400 * 400, and Store Depth History. Storing depth history will allow us to add a constant depth layer. 3. Now, draw a 3d plane on and parallel to the canvas. You can easily snap a tool by rotations of 90 degrees, by pressing the Shift key while you rotate the tool.

4. Switch to the Layer brush, select Alpha 15 and a Spray stroke. 5. Draw a first stroke, by paying attention not to draw on the edges of the Canvas.

6. On the Layer Palette, Displace vertically the canvas, This will allow us to create tileable alphas.

7. Draw an additional stroke, and repeat the operation one or two times.

Drawing, scrolling the canvas vertically, and repeating, gives a tileable alpha.

8. When you're fully satisfied with the result, press Alpha:GrabDoc. Note: With this technique, you can create your own Alphas, textures, and stencils. Because it's possible to create an Alpha from any part of the document, you can also convert any visible object, and use the grabbed picture as a brush. 9. Now, switch back to the girl model, select the Clay brush and the new Alpha you just created.

10. Open the Stroke menu and activate the Roll option. You are now ready to give the hair a detailed look, which looks like clay.

The rest of the models presents no technical difficulty. The blue tattoos of the girl are sculpted and painted using the Lazy Mouse mode, which gives us perfect smoothed curves. The hair is sculpted in HD using the Clay brush with lazy mouse mode too. [edit]

Creating the Illustration

Actually, in Zbrush, you can't render multiple subtools at the same time. To do it, we are going to snapshot each HD subtool on a separate layer, and we will need the help of the Zapplink plugin. 1. Create a new document which will have the size of the final image, place your tool on the document, and switch off the visiblity of the girl, the eyes and lashes Subtool.

2.In ZAppLink, store the position of the tool on the Custom 1 view.

3.Select the Set subtool, which is the bigger one, open the Geometry HD subpalette, and press the Sculpt HD button. The whole model is displayed in HD. 4. Open the Transform Palette, and Snapshot the tool on the layer.

Open the Layer menu and create a new layer. 5. Draw your model on this new layer, and recall it's stored position using the Zapplink Palette. 6.Switch on the visibility of all the subtools.

7. Now, in the Render menu, set the Flatten option Off.

8. Select a BasicMaterial and set the Specular and Transparency values and the Transparency curve as shown.

8. Paint the Set subtool and the two red balls subtools with this transparent material. The HD model of the set should appear on the underlying layer. 9. Select the girl model, render it in HD. 10. Save your document, and turn Edit Object mode off. 11. Export the Document in Tif or Psd Format. 12. Turn off the Set subtool. 13. In the Alpha menu, grab the document, and save the related alpha. 14. Turn on Set, grab the document again, and save another picture. We will use them as masks later in Photoshop. [edit]

Rendering the Shadows

To have a better control over the final image, we are going to need to render the shadows on separate layers.

To do it, select a new BasicMaterial, and set the Ambient, Diffuse, Diffuse curve and Specular parameters as shown. The picture should look completely white, but don't worry. This kind of material doesn't have any shading, but will catch the shadows.

To use the Light menu, click on a light to select it, and click again to turn it on or off. The placement sphere in the upper left of the palette shows where the currently selected light is placed, and also shows the combined effect of all lights currently turned on. Drag the small yellow rectangle to change the placement of the current light; click it to toggle it from a front light to a backlight, or vice versa. On this Document, two lights will be enough to get nice shadows; one front light and one backlight. Switch on the ZMode only for the key light. When you're fully satisfied with the result, render each light separately, and export the document as .tif or .psd. Here are the five pictures you should have saved.

[edit]

Compositing and Final Touches

In Photoshop group the shadow layers together, and set the Blending mode of this group to Multiply. Use the Alpha picture of the girl model to create a mask so that the backlight shadow layer dosen't affect the Set. Then, give to the Key shadow layer a parma tint, and to the backlight layer a blue tint. The drops of water are simply painted in Photoshop. Set the Layer Style to add Drop shadow and Inner Bevel effects. Use the second alpha picture to mask the background, and to composite the sky. That's all.

Tutorial:ZProject and SubTools

From ZBrushInfo
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Introduction
Click here to download the movie.
In this tutorial by Sebastien Legrain we will look at how you can use the ZProject brush to transfer sculpting information from one mesh to another mesh. Learn more about the ZProject Brush click here.

We begin with a base mesh that we want to transfer to another mesh. We will call this the Source Sculpt.

Here is the mesh we want to project our previous head into. He will call this the Target Sculpt.

Make sure your Target Sculpt is selected and in edit mode on the canvas. Press Tool: SubTool: Append and choose your Source Sculpt from the popup. Press Transform: Transperancy

1. 2. 3. 4.

Select the ZProject Brush from the Brush Palette. Set its elevation to 100. Press ZAdd on the Shelf. Hold Alt down while sculpting on the surface of your Target Sculpt. This will, basically, push your Target Sculpt backwards till it encounters the Source Sculpt. Depending on your own setup you may not have to press Alt or toggle Zsub on.

Continue to rotate your model and rub on the surface with ZProject. We are nearly finished. The hair is done, the eyes, the nose, the mouth.

Our finished Target Sculpt. The Source Sculpt has been hidden from view.

Wrap Mode Tutorial

From ZBrushInfo
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Overview
Wrap Mode allows the artist to create tileable geometry. As the artist sculpts off the edge of the left side of a plane, the stroke will continue on to the right side.

This feature allows artists to quickly and easily create tileable normal maps and bump maps for texturing and in-game use.

How It Works
Let's take a look at how to use new ZBrush 2.5 features to sculpt a tileable plane of bricks. This will be a true 3D sculpture. Once completed, displacement, bump, or normal maps can be generated for tiling in other applications.

Lay Down a Brick Pattern

We want to start with a basic brick pattern first--an array of approximately rectangular displacements on the surface of the plane. With ZBrush 2.5, this is easy. 1. Set Transform:Wrap to 4. A value of 1 or more means that strokes will wrap from side to side, or top to bottom, making a tileable texture. Values of more than 1 also repeat strokes automatically across the surface of the plane, allowing just a few strokes to lay out an entire grid of bricks. 2. The first iteration of brick geometry should produce bricks of uniform height. To do this, first press Tool:Morph Target:StoreMT...

3. ...and then select the Layer sculpt brush. With a morph target stored, Layer will sculpt above (or below) the surface of the morph target, not the current surface. This is great for creating smooth, uniform-level surfaces. 4. Put some bricks on the surface. The geometry below was created with two brush strokes. In this image, the setting of WrapMode to4 caused the repetition of strokes to fill in the entire surface.

Establish Irregularities
With the initial grid of bricks laid down, it's time to add some irregularities to make the wall more realistic.

1. Press Tool:Morph Target:Del MT, and then Tool:Morph Target:Store MT. The morph target now includes the basic brick geometry, and so using the Layer brush again, we can stroke out an additional layer of geometry on top of the bricks.

2. Next, set Transform:WrapMode to 1. At a setting of 1, strokes will wrap top to bottom and left to right, but will not repeat within the plane. This is ideal for breaking up the repetitiveness of our sculpt, while still maintaining tileability. In this case, we'll sculpt the grooves between the bricks. This will break up what was previously a flat plane, and also change the shapes of the bricks.

3. After some more of this, we end up with a nice base brick wall, with no internal repetition.

Add Details
The wall is looking pretty good at a coarse level, but shows none of the real-world pitting and granularity of real brick and mortar surfaces. Of course, this is where ZBrush excels! A plane of just (!) a million polygons or so will allow us to sculpt all of this detail in.

To do this, we'll use (and show off) a new feature of ZBrush 2.5: Layers. Layers will allow us to not only sculpt in the details in the normal manner, but then to adjust the magnitude of the layer sculpting afterwards. 1. Press Tool:Layer:Create. This creates and turns on a new layer in which our detailing will take place. The detailing will show up in the onscreen sculpt, but the original surface will be unchanged--the sculpting is (in effect) stored as a difference between the original sculpt, and what we do in the detailing. Note: Layers can consume a significant amount of resources; a single layer can require as much memory as the original sculpt. Plan out your model resolution and use of layers accordingly. 2. Now select Stroke:Spray and Alpha:Alpha23 (a sort of random dots pattern) for the sculpting. This will give us a nice non-repetitive irregular surface sculpt.

3. First, paint over the surface with the plane scaled fairly small. The scale of the alpha and stroke is relative to the screen, not to the model, so this will produce relatively 'coarse' effects on the brick and mortar surfaces.

4. Next, zoom in on the plane, and paint over it with the same settings. If necessary, you can look at only a portion of the plane at a time, moving it with Alt-Drag. Since the same size of brush and alpha is applied over smaller portions of the wall, the effect is to create graininess rather than the coarser irregularity above. Let's take a quick look at the wall as it stands:

Afterwards
That's all there is to sculpting a tileable brick surface. You can now use ZBrush's other built-in features to create displacement, bump, or normal maps. All of these will also be tileable, and can easily be used in other 3D applications.

Mesh Insert Grotesque Tutorial

From ZBrushInfo
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Introduction

In this tutorial, we will look at using the MeshInsert Brush to turn our Demo_Soldier into a mutant! A few important details:

MeshInsert does not work on meshes with multiple levels of resolution. Both the source mesh and the target mesh must have no levels of resolution.

In this tutorial we will use:

MeshInsert Clay Brush

First, we start with our Demo Soldier. It is located in the ZTool directory of ZBrush. Draw him on the canvas and press T to enter edit mode. Make sure that there are no level of resolution

In the Brush palette, click the MeshInsert thumbnail and choose model that you want to add to your currently selected mesh. Keep in mind, that it can not have any levels of resolution.

Once you have the MeshInsert Brush set up, simply click and drag on the surface of the model to add a head to the body. Continue adding heads. We will reposition some of them later using Transpose.

More heads added.

Use Tranpose to reposition the different parts. 1. Press R on the keyboard or Rotate on the shelf. 2. Press CTRL and click on the part you want to work on. This will mask all the other Polygroups and leave the one we clicked on editable. 3. Draw an Action Line and being Transposing. To learn more visit the Transpose page.

Once you have the different heads positioned where you want its time to integrate them into the body. To do this, we use the Clay brush. 1. 2. 3. 4. Set the Clay brush to 0 Select Freehand Stroke Select Alpha: Brush 00 Sculpt at the seams of where one mesh meets another

Here we have integrated much of the different meshes so they look like one skin.

In our final image we added some more sculpting to the surrounding area.

Tutorial:ZProject Bas-Relief
From ZBrushInfo
(Redirected from Image:Brush project face003.png) Jump to: navigation, search In this example, we will use the ZProject Brush with an elevation of 50 to create a Bas-Relief effect on a PolyPlane.

Start off with a model consisting of (at least) two visible Subtools. o Here, the plane is the active subtool, and will be sculpted. o The head is inactive but visible.

The target to be sculpted (onto which the other subtool is being projected) must be at the correct z-depth; polygons in the target will be displaced to 'fit' the inactive subtool (the face). The Transpose move feature is an easy way to move (and scale, and rotate) subtools.

We want to project the face forward onto the plane, so the model (plane and face) must be facing us. The face and plane were using standard ZBrush rotation (drag on canvas background); all subtools will be rotated, since they are part of a single model. Once the model is facing us, we use a DragRect stroke with a radial fade alpha. The stroke covers the face, to bring the plane forward to fit the face.

Once we shift the plane, we can see the projection of the face onto the plane.

Sculpting A Skull With Image Planes

From ZBrushInfo
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Introduction

In this tutorial we will look at sculpting a skull using image planes. We will use:

SubTools Transperancy

Masks 3D sculpting brushes

Setup The Image Plane

To begin this tutorial, we must first prepare our image plane. The second image from the top is a template that you can use to align your front and your side view. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Click the image to open a larger view, then right click the larger image and save it to disk. Call it ImagePlaneTemplate.jpg Then, open ImagePlaneTemplate.jpg in Photoshop as well as the images you would like to use for front and side views. Align your front view in the section marked Front in ImagePlaneTemplate.jpg. Align your side view with the section marked Side in ImagePlaneTemplate.jpg. You must keep each view in a square formatting and placed side-by-side. Save your image plane with an easy to remember label.

Our final image is below.

Bringing The Image Plane Into ZBrush

In this section we will bring the image plane into ZBrush as a SubTool and use Transperancy to begin sculpting. 1. Make sure that a ZTool is on the canvas and in Edit mode. If not, simply draw it on the canvas and press t on the keyboard to enter edit mode 2. Go to the Macro palette

3. 4. 5. 6.

Open the Macros sub-palette and then open the RapidStart sub-palette Press the ImagePlaneX button Load the image plane you saved from above Press Transform: Transperancy to turn on Transperancy

The steps above utilize a macro created to make this process easier for the user. Visit the Macros page to learn more.

Sculpting
Click here to download the movie.

Rotate the model to the side view by clicking outside the model and dragging to the left. While dragging you can press SHIFT to lock the model to a side view. Select the Tweak Brush from the Brush Palette. Move the edge of the model in to align with the image.

Turn to the front view and press Draw:Perspective. We are using Orthographic views so we will set our Draw: Focal Length to around 100 to remove as much of the perspective distortion as possible. If your image comes from photographs, simply adjust your Draw: Focal Length to the level that works for you.

Still using the Tweak brush sculpt the Front view. Focus mostly on the contour. Don't get into the interior forms yet.

Switch to the Standard Brush in the Brush Palette and begin working on some of the internal forms. Moving back and forth between the side view and the front view will help you judge your progress.

Here we have gotten farther along with the forms but we are still keeping it loose and very general. The key is to know what you want to put in there but only suggest it at this stage. We will slowly make it more and more 'realized'.

At about this point, we start sculpting the orbit of the eye. You can use the tweak brush and pull the hollow of the eye backwards or you can just use the Standard brush with Zsub on. Remember to check the front and side views often to see if you are on track. In the video we use masks. To learn more about Masks visit the Mask page and the following video tutorials:

Sculpting With Masks by Cesar Dacol Jr. (Quicktime required). Sculpting Tips by Thomas Mahler (Quicktime required). Modeling With Your Texture by Ryan Kingslien (Quicktime required).

Here we have begun to bring the forms into focus alittle more. The cheekbone is clearly marked. The Jaw is defined by the hard line and everything is still lining up with our image planes just fine. At this stage we are using the Clay Brush set to around 30. We are using th Freehand Stroke and Alpha: Brush 28.

Now we divide our model to get more geometry to work. Press Tool: Geometry: Divide. Learn more about it in the Geometry Sub-Palette. Then start to use the RakeSmooth brush in the Macro: Macros: RapidBrushes sub-palette. The RakeSmooth brush is a a preset of several settings: The Clay brush, a custom alpha, Freehand stroke and others. The RakeSmooth brush is great for smoothing forms together and really getting in and developing the details of a model.

Here we use the Ramtool brush preset. This is another RapidBrush macro. This brush creates a very clean and deep stroke that we use to clearly define the temporal line and the outer edge of the orbit of the eye.

Going back to the RakeSmooth tool we further develop the skull. We have refined the form and made the nasal area more clear.

Our final image shows the development we have done to date. The major forms are outlined. We could now go further and create more specific form such as the teeth.

Tutorial: Using Photoreference

From ZBrushInfo
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Texture source image. In this section, we'll show how to paint a head using textures taken from photographs. Some of the steps will be the same as in the previous example, so we'll be referring you back to that at times.

[edit]

Loading and Capturing Textures

Loaded ref images. Of course, the first thing to do is to get some textures to use. To do this: 1. Load your photographic reference image using Texture:Import. It'll show up as a thumbnail in the texture palette. 2. Display the image in the canvas by pressing Texture:CropAndFill. This will actually resize the canvas to the size of the image, and then fill the canvas with the image.

3. Change the rendering mode to Render:Flat. This eliminates the shading effects from lighting, and gives you the clearest and brightest view of the reference image. 4. Use the Tool:MRGBZ Grabber tool to extract specific portions of your photographic textures, as desired. To do this, select the grabber tool, and then Shift-drag out a rectangle on the canvas. The dragged area will be added to the texture palette (at the full resolution of that area--it will not be scaled or cropped). 5. Repeat the above as many times as necessary, to capture all of the textures you want. In preparation for the next steps: 6. Using Document:New Document, create a new, blank canvas, on which the polypainting will take place. 7. Reset the shading mode to Render:Preview. [edit]

Using the Spray Brush for Painting Skin

The Stroke:Spray brush is a great brush for applying copies of a texture over a surface, without the obvious visually repetitive effect that would be seen with other methods, such as texture tiling. Let's start off with painting the model's skin. 1. Follow the steps described in the previous example to set up the head for painting; ensure displacement sculpting is off, set a base color for the skin, etc.

1. To ensure that the textures we are using are not applied to the model as a whole while we are trying to use them, press Tool:Texture:Disable UV. Note: Disabling UVs has another major benefit. Without UVs, your model will occupy significantly less memory space. This might provide increased speed, or the ability to perform another level of subdivision, or both.

Painting the skin using a selected skin texture

1. Now choose a texture appropriate to the area of the model you wish to paint. For example, to paint the chin, you might want to choose a texture, taken from the photo reference, that shows unshaven stubble. 2. Choose Stroke:Spray and an appropriate brush size, and paint the skin of the model. As mentioned before, the random nature of this stroke will prevent repetitive texturing. In addition, the smooth falloff provided by the alpha and brush falloff lets the edges of the stroke blend smoothly with whatever other painting exists on the surface of the model. 3. Continue, using different textures, until the base layer of the skin is done. Of course, this is just an example of how to quickly paint realistic texture over large areas of a model. There are many other ways this could be done, and other techniques would be applicable to painting details.

At any point, you can check to see the effects of the texturing without shading by pressing Render:Flat. This lets you see what the texture colors will be once they are unrolled into the final texture map. Remember also that you can mask portions of the model's surface to prevent painting over masked areas.

[edit]

Using the Spray and DragRect Brush for Painting Hair

We can use the Spray brush with hair painting as well, to quickly paint in hair without obvious repetition. However, since we are painting a directionally non-uniform texture (hair has a visual flow), another consideration applies. When painting with texture, ZBrush maintains a connection between the direction of the brush stroke and the orientation of the texture. To put it another way, the orientation of the texture is not independent of the direction of the brush stroke. If you paint a woodgrain texture using vertical strokes, and then make a horizontal stroke across that painting, the grain in the horizontal stroke will be perpendicular to that from the previous strokes. In particular, ZBrush orients the texture being painted so that the texture's vertical axis aligns with the direction of the brush stroke. For our hair painting, this means that to obtain the smoothest and clearest hair painting, we should choose a hair texture patch wherein the flow of the hair is close to vertical. With that bit of explanation out of the way, let's proceed.

1. Choose the Spray stroke, and select as the texture a patch of hair with the hair flow close to the vertical. # For the smoothest strokes and hair flow, you might also want to activate the Lazy Mouse feature.

1. Now paint in the hair, with your strokes going in the direction of the hair flow. In addition to eliminating tiling effects, the Spray stroke will also introduce some randomization into the orientation of the applied textures, which results in better blending between different strokes. 1. Some of the randomization done by Spray is affected by the orientation of the surface over which it is drawn. If you don't like the effect, just paint over it until you get something you prefer. And that concludes the use of the Spray stroke to lay down the base of the hair. Now we'll use the Stroke:DragRect stroke to add highlights to the hair. DragRect is particularly useful when painting (or sculpting) with textures (or alphas), because it allows precise placement, sizing, and orientation of a texture, all with one stroke. In addition, since DragRect does not paint along a path, we aren't constrained in our selection of texture by the direction of hair flow in that texture. 1. Choose a texture to use when highlighting. In our example, we chose one that was brownish, compared to the black of the base hair.

1. Click on a point on the hair where you want the texture to be centered, and then drag out from that point to size the texture, and around that point to rotate the texture. Here is a DragRect stroke applying a selected texture. Notice the rotation. The texture can easily be aligned to match the existing hair flow, or put at an angle to show different patches of hair crossing.

1. Repeat in other locations or with other textures, as desired. And then simply continue using the above (or other!) techniques to finish the model. A few parting notes:

You may want to capture overlapping areas of the photoreference at different sizes. This lets you easily use large-area textures with large brushes, and smaller areas with small brushes to draw on top of larger areas, while maintaining a uniform scale for the textures. Don't forget about the vertical alignment of textures when used with directional brushes. You can paint with very detailed textures, but try to make sure that the pixel count of the texture approximately matches the polygon count of the area over which you are drawing. (And if your computing resources permit, using higher polygon counts can never hurt.)

Tutorial:ZProject Texturing
From ZBrushInfo
(Redirected from Image:ZProject rgb 11.jpg) Jump to: navigation, search by Pixolator In this tutorial we will look at how you can use the new ZProject Brush to transfer texture information.

To begin we start with a canvas like the one to the left. You can create a document like this in Photoshop and import that into ZBrush by pressing Document: Import

1. Draw your model onto the canvas and enter Edit mode by pressing t on the keyboard. 2. Divide your model several times till it has at least 1 million polygons. 3. Select White in the Color palette and press Color: Fill Object to begin PolyPainting

1. Press 'W' on the keyboard to enter Transpose. Click on the Target mesh first then drag towards the part of the image you want to use as the Source

1. 2. 3. 4.

Press 'Q' on the keyboard to enter Draw mode Make sure Draw: RGB is on and Draw: Zadd is off Turn the visibility off for all other subtools. Paint away on your model.

If other SubTools are visible, the ZProject will transfer details from the other visible SubTools to the currently selected SubTools. If no other SubTools are visible it will transfer details from the canvas to the currently selected SubTool.

To fix the ear texture: 1. Press 'W' on the keyboard to enter Transpose 2. Click on the base of the ear and drag towards the base of the ear on the source image. 3. Press 'Q' and paint the ear onto the model.

Here is our model's texture after fixing the ear.

So far we have only worked on the side view. Now we need to fix the texture stretching that resulted. Rotate the model so it is a Front view. 1. Press 'W' to enter Transpose. 2. Click on the model and drag to the source image. 3. Press 'Q' for Draw mode and begin painting on the model again.

We have cleaned up some of the texturing here.

Here is the final image.

Polypainting
From ZBrushInfo
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To Learn More About UVs Click Here

Polypainting allows painting on a model's surface without first assigning a texture map. A texture map can be created at a later time, and the painted surface can be transferred to the map. Polypainting offers significant advantages compared to standard workflow:

The resolution of the texture map need not be decided in advance. This is particularly valuable if you find you need more detailing on an area than you thought you would. Instead of repainting a new, larger texture map, you can simply transfer the existing surface painting to a new, larger map, with no rework necessary. Similarly, the UV unwrapping need not be fixed in advance. If one unwrapping proves unsatisfactory, simply create a different unwrapping and transfer the surface painting to that map. Removing UVs from your model frees up system resources and allows you to work with more polygons.

Contents
[hide]

1 The Polypainting Concept 2 Overview 3 Polypainting Example o 3.1 Set Up a Model o 3.2 Texturing the Model o 3.3 Time for Hair o 3.4 Working in Projection Master o 3.5 Assign UV Coordinates o 3.6 Create the Texture Map o 3.7 Finished!

[edit]

The Polypainting Concept

To understand how polypainting works, first consider a 2048 by 2048 texture map, which provides reasonable resolution. It has a total of a little over 4 million pixels. The new version of ZBrush is fast enough to handle models with large polygon counts. If you work with a 4 million polygon model, then in terms of surface painting, simply assigning each polygon a uniform color gives the same amount of information as the 4 million pixel texture map. (Actually, somewhat more, since significant parts of texture maps are typically left blank.) So, with polypainting, you can put all of the painting details directly onto the model's polygons, and then transfer that detail to a texture map when the painting is complete. [edit]

Overview
Remember three points when using polypainting:

Polygon colorizing is enabled in ZBrush when the Tool:Texture:Colorize switch is on. It is off by default, so remember to turn it on before starting to paint. Working without UVs will allow you to use more polygons and get more detail out of your model. Whenever possible, delete your UVs from your ZBrush model. You can always reimport them at the end of the process. When rendering, ZBrush gives precedence to textures over polygon colors. This means that if a texture is active, then any polypainting you've done will not be visible. While painting, or to view your polypainting, ensure the selected texture is the Texture Off.

With this in mind, polypainting a model and producing a texture map is a simple process. 1. First, get a model. For this description, we'll assume that you don't need your UVs and can add them at the end of the process. 2. Set your subdivision level to 1.

3. Press Tool:Texture:Disable Uvs. This will delete your UVs. Make sure to have a back up OBJ file if you wish to use those UVs again. 4. Subdivide the mesh to get the number of polygons needed to match the map resolution you have in mind. 5. Paint the model, using alphas, masking, etc. Of course, you can sculpt at the same time you paint. Remember to turn on Tool:Texture:Colorize before starting to paint. 6. Once painting is complete, create new UVs by pressing Tool:Texture:Auv or Guv. If you want to bring in UVs you made outside of Zbrush see Remapping UV Coordinates above. 7. Set the resolution of your desired texture map with Texture:Width and Texture:Height. 8. Create a new texture map at that size by pressing Texture:New. 9. Press MRGBZ in the shelf and set RGB Intensity to 100. 10. Press Tool:Texture:ColTxr. ZBrush will create the texture map, put it into the texture palette, and select it. You will now be viewing the model with the texture map applied. 11. If you wish to continue Poly Painting the model, set the texture back to Texture Off. If you don't do this, the new texture will be used to render the surface of the model, and you won't see any effect from your painting. ZBrush's standard behavior is to create a new texture map every time ColTxr is pressed and no texture is selected. If you want to preview the result of the final texture map as you work, without creating multiple copies of the map, then select your texture map (if it has been created) immediately before pressing ColTxr. The new map will replace the selected one. [edit]

Polypainting Example
Let's look at polypainting in action. Note: Your ZBrush distribution includes a ZScript that goes through the following head painting in more detail. [edit]

Set Up a Model

Starting Model. You'll need to set up a model. Below, we've brought in a head model (of a few million polygons), and filled it with a good base color on which to paint skin details. Our model is broken into subtools (head and eyes/teeth), so we can set things up so that painting affects only the head. You can find out more about subtools in the appropriate section of the documentation. In more detail, we've set up our model and environment as follows: The model is about four million polygons--about right for the 2048x2048 texture map we're going to generate. In general, the number of polygons in your model should be approximately equal to the number of pixels in your final texture map. Limits on this will depend on your system. On with the tutorial. 1. Make sure that Transform:Edit and Transform:Draw are both on, so you'll be in normal sculpting mode. 2. Ensure ZAdd and ZSub are both off. Since we're just creating a texture, we don't want to affect its geometry.

Disable UVs. 3. Turn on Tool:Texture:Disable UV, to prevent textures from inadvertently being applied to the model during the polypainting. Note: Disabling UVs has another major benefit. Without UVs, your model will occupy significantly less memory space. This might provide increased speed, or the ability to perform another level of subdivision, or both. It's much better to use this method than to simply set the texture to 'Texture Off'. 4. Turn Tool:Texture:Colorize on to enable colorization of individual polygons.

After Color:Fill Object. 5. Choose as the primary color a shade to use as the base skin color, and press Color:Fill Object. This colors every polygon in the model with the current primary color. [edit]

Texturing the Model

It's time to start painting the model's polygons. We'll begin by using a trick that make-up effects artists have used for years. Use the Colorized Spray stroke with a low Color Variation to simulate the use of an airbrush at low pressure. To do this:

1. Select alpha Brush 25 to provide an irregular dark/white pattern to our texturing. Other alphas could also work. 2. Choose the Stroke:Colorized Spray stroke, and set Stroke:Color to a low value. This last setting is actually the color variance setting. Together, this stroke and the color variance setting will create a spray with subtly different shades of the selected primary color. 3. Paint, adjusting the brush size as appropriate to the area you are painting and the effect you wish to achieve. 4. With that layer completed, the skin is already looking much more realistic:

5. Of course, you can continue painting as you like, using different colors, alphas, stroke types, and other options. [edit]

Time for Hair

The hair looks much different, but creating it is just a matter of selecting the appropriate strokes, tools, etc., and continuing to paint the model. In this case, a dark brown color, the Brush 07 alpha, and the Dots stroke type. [edit]

Working in Projection Master

The edges of the hair from the previous step are rough and unrealistic in appearance, due to the coarseness of the stroke used. It would be possible to fix that using using additional polypainting, but it's quicker and simpler to just drop into Projection Master, and use the additional selection of brushes there.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. [edit]

Press g to enter Projection Master. The model is dropped to the canvas; you won't be able to rotate it until you exit Projection Master Select the Tool:Smudge tool, and a small brush size. Paint with strokes in the direction of hair flow, to smooth the hair edges as shown below. Press g again to exit Projection Master. Rotate the model and repeat the above steps as necessary to paint the entire hairline.

Assign UV Coordinates
Our model started without UV coordinates, so it's time to assign them. To do this:

1. Set Tool:Geometry:SDiv to 1, the lowest subdivision level of the model. Your model should appear similar to the figure shown. 2. Press Tool:Texture:AUVTiles. ZBrush will automatically assign UV coordinates according to an internal algorithm that will evenly distribute detail over a texture map. [edit]

Create the Texture Map

Everything is else is done, so it's time to create the texture map. 1. Set Texture:Width and Texture:Height to the desired dimensions of your final texture map. Width and height values that are powers of two work best.

2. Press Texture:New. A new texture filled with the current primary color will be created, and will appear to overwrite your polypainting. This occurs simply because a selected texture will override polygon colorization when a model is being displayed. Your polypainting is still there, it's just hidden by the newly created texture (as shown in the image). 3. Set your subdivision level to its highest setting.

4. Finally, press Tool:Texture:ColTex. This will transfer polygon colorization to the newly created texture map. You'll see this reflected in the texture map's thumbnail, which will appear similar to what is shown to the left. [edit]

Finished!
The final model, displayed with the newly created texture applied. The polypainting has transferred precisely to the texture map.

Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/wiki/index.php/Polypainting"

ZApp Link
From ZBrushInfo
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Overview

ZAppLink V2 is a ZBrush plugin that allows you to seamlessly integrate your favorite image editing software into your ZBrush workflow. Call up your image editing package while in ZBrush, use it to modify the active ZBrush document or tool, and then go straight back into ZBrush. ZApp Link v2 can be accessed from your Document palette. ZApp Link v2 will allow the artist to do the following:

Create New Layers in Photoshop Create ZBrush Stencils in Photoshop via selection tools Mask out parts of the ZBrush canvas using Photoshop's Layer Mask Store views for your model to be painted in Photoshop Generate a character sheet with all the views of your model Create ZBrush Stencils via Photoshop's selection tools Save and Load views and much more

Installation

Extract zip file anywhere on your hard drive Move the contents of the ZAppLinkv2 folder to the ZStartup\ZPlugs folder of the main ZBrush application directory, and restart ZBrush. If that directory doesnt exist, just create it.

Requirements: To use ZAppLink, youll need a Photoshop compatible image editor, i.e. one that is capable of opening, editing, and saving .PSD files. You can set this to your own program of choice by pressing Set Target App in the ZApp Link dialogue box.

ZApp Link
Basic Use
Click the ZAppLink button in the Document palette to bring up the ZAppLink interface. You will be presented with one of three different screens.

If you do not have a model in edit mode, you will see a dialogue box with the text, "Edit visible layers in the external image editor." Click OK to continue. This will export one .PSD file with all your ZBrush layers as separate .PSD layers. If you have a model in edit mode, you will see a dialogue box with the text, "ZApp Link Projection." Click Drop now to continue. This will export this one view of your model to your external editor. If you have views stored of your model, you will see a dialogue box with the text, "Edit multiple views of the current tool." Press OK to continue. This will export one .PSD file with all your views stored as separate layers.

Once in the external program, edit the data any way you want, activate the Save command in the external editor, return to ZBrush, and confirm you want the edited data applied. The edited data will be applied, by layer, to the ZBrush document, without any need to export or import files!

Load / Save Views

You can save a set of view transforms for a Tool under the ZAppLink Properties sub-palette in the Document palette. To define a view, rotate your tool, then press the view button to store the transform to; the opposite view will also be defined (unless it already is). Repeat for any other views. If the transform is already defined, and you want to change it, then first press the Clear To switch followed by the button of the transform to clear. Then press the transform button again to store it. The LEDs should indicate which views have transforms stored. Use the Save Views button to save the .vws file for your tool, that way you can use the Load Views button to get them back if you need them later. You can use ZAppLink to edit these multiple views by enabling the ZAppLink Views switch. This will let you apply texture reference, for instance, to the front and back views of your tool in Photoshop, and accept the changes to your Tool in ZBrush.

Character Strip
Character Strip allows the artist to quickly create a .PSD document with all the views stored for the model.

Stencils From Selections in External Editor

You can import an Alpha Channel selection from Photoshop and have it automatically become a stencil in ZBrush. To do this, use the Save Selection... menu item in the Select menu, and be sure the word stencil is in the new channel's name. After you return to ZBrush from ZAppLink, and accept or cancel your changes, the final stage will import your stencil alpha channel as an Alpha brush and set it up as the current stencil. This powerful feature lets you use the selection tool from Photoshop to create selections in ZBrush.

Adding Layers To Your Canvas In External Editor

When you add a new layer in your image editor, and then go back to ZBrush, ZBrush looks for a number embedded in the layer name to determine which ZBrush layer the external layer is imported into. For example, if the name of your layer in Photoshop is "Squid11", the image in that layer will be imported into ZBrush's layer 11 Note: When creating a new layer in your external image editor, make sure the number in its name is higher than the highest-numbered existing layer in ZBrush. Otherwise, you may import the new image over top of an existing ZBrush layer. The Z values of the new layer's pixols will be chosen to place it before all layers that are beneath it. Any parts that are hidden by layers above will be pushed behind those layers pixols. This makes all visible new layer parts have the same Z depth. When you accept the new layer, it will be applied with blending. You will also be given the options of reapplying the new layer without blending. Note: The Flat material will be used for any new layers, while the existing material is used for edits on existing layers.

Editing Existing Layers

If you edit the colors of existing layers they are reapplied in ZBrush using the corresponding Z value and material. The only exception to this is if you edit the mask.

You can edit the mask associated with the layer, and this will change the visible parts of the layer upon return to ZBrush. If no mask is present, you can add one in Photoshop by using the Layer menus Layer Mask items Reveal All command.

Deleting Layers
If you delete a layer, you will be asked whether to delete it when returning to ZBrush. If you delete a layer, then add a new one; be sure to make its number larger than the existing ZBrush layers that were transferred so that the new layer is not inadvertently matched to an existing layer.

ZDepth
When exporting all of ZBrush's layers, ZApp Link will include an 8 bit depth mask of your canvas for Depth of Field and other post-processing effects.

Restrictions
If you want to merge layers, its better to do this in ZBrush, as the pixol depth will more properly be taken into account there. Merging layers externally will cause one layer to be deleted, and the other layer to accept the edited values at a fixed Z depth, for areas over the background, and at the existing Z depth, for areas that overlap the existing layer. Layers should only be reordered in ZBrush. Reordering layers in an external editor will confuse ZAppLink, and it will not recognize the edits.

A Few Ways to Use ZAppLink

Some of the uses of ZAppLinkusing it to access external editors for special needs, or just editors you happen to know extremely wellare obvious. For example, to paint text on the ZBrush canvas, it was previously necessary to create the text in another editor and then import it for use as a stencil. With ZAppLink, you can circumvent the time consuming import and export steps; just use the external editor to paint text onto the canvas directly.

Of course, once you have the text in ZBrush, you can do much more with it, like converting it to an alpha or stencil and using it to paint the text onto other parts of the canvas or onto models. Want to insert another letter into the text? Draw the text on the canvas, activate ZAppLink, use the external program to make space for and then insert another letter, and pop back into ZBrush. It doesnt take any more time than switching between modes in a single editor.

Tutorials

Sky Replacement Tutorial - ZApp Link ZApp Link Views

MatCap
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by Meats Meier What if you could create a surface material and lighting environment simply by painting an object so that it looks like you want it to look? What if you could create that surface material by sampling points from an existing image that already features the material and lighting environment you want?

No tedious tweaking of numerical material values. No need to set up any lights.

For a great many (probably the majority) materials and lighting environments, this is exactly what MatCap (Material Capture), a new ZBrush proprietary feature, allows you to do. [edit]

MatCap Basics
A material capture is simply a matter of defining a set of normal corresponding to a lit surface you want to emulate. With a few samples, ZBrush performs some calculations and produces a shader that can duplicate that look on models. Here's a simple example.

1. Pick a photo that shows a material you want to capture. o The material itself should be uniform, i.e. of one color, roughness, etc. o The picture should show the surface at different angles, to capture all of the possible lighting conditions. o The surface can be illuminated by multiple lights, of any color.

Define normal vectors for some points on the surface.

o o o

Make sure the MatCap tool in the Tool menu is selected. Use the Flat Shader material in the Material menu, so that the shader you're defining doesn't affect the picture you're using. Click and drag on the image to define a normal for point you clicked on. This tells ZBrush what the angle of the photographed object is at that point. o Do this a few more times, to give ZBrush enough information to work with. Choose parts of the surface at different angles. 4-8 samples is usually enough.

MatCap gives you feedback as you go along

o o

The red arrow, and circle around it, let you see the surface angle you're defining as you create a normal. The lightball that appears whenever you define a normal shows how the cumulative effect of all of the normals will look on a sphere.

Define specular normals.

 o o

Normals defined as previously shown apply to the diffuse color of the material (and shouldn't be sampled at specular highlights). To define specular highlights, set a normal on top of a specular reflection on the surface, and then without releasing the mouse button, press and hold the Ctrl key and move the mouse to adjust specularity. o The direction of the normal will not change, but the distance and direction you move the mouse will determine the appearance of specular highlights. o Watch the lightball for visual feedback as you adjust the specularity.

Once the material has been captured, apply it to a model as with any other material. [edit]

MatCap in Action: Photo Integration

Let's start off with a quick example to see just how powerful MatCap really is. Details of using MatCap are in later sections.

Because MatCap can easily recreate a lighting environment on a model's surface, it's ideal for realistically incorporating 3D models into photographs of actual scenes. Let's take a look at this in action. The photograph is of chilis in a vegetable bin. We can see subtle color gradations, specularity, and (as will become apparent) other environmental lighting effects. We'll start with a simple chili model, and set it up with a MatCap material initialized to an orange color sampled from the scene.

The model with an orange MatCap material applied. A simple chili model. Let's sample the reddish tinge at the top right rim of one of the photographed chilis. As the mouse is dragged to position the MatCap vector, the light ball updates to indicate the effect that vector will have on the created lighting environment. The new MatCap lighting is applied to the model when the mouse is released.

The light ball at the upper right gives continuous visual feedback. Once the mouse is released, the shading is applied to the model. Creating the specular lighting is similar, except that Ctrl-dragging out from the vector determines the sharpness of the specular effect.

Ctrl-click on a defined vector... ...drag to sharpen the highlight... ...for a very shiny surface.

After defining a few more MatCap samples (total of perhaps six were used for this example), and standard sculpting and other operations in ZBrush to place the chili (but not a single stroke of painting!), we're left with the final result:

Chilis just don't come from plants anymore. [edit]

How Does it Work?

The appearance of light on a surface point depends in most cases on three different things; the surface normal at that point, the point from which the object is viewed, and the setup (orientation and types of lights) illuminating the object. In many cases, a simple photograph can provide all the lighting information we need. It can provide information about the light source and also about the material properties of the objects in the scene (the diffuse and specular material properties). MatCap uses calibration markers to capture lighting from photographs. Calibration markers sample the color at one point on the image and define the surface normal at that point. They also define the specularity of that one point on the image. Using multiple calibration markers, MatCap is able to derive a material map that simulates the lighting and material properties from the photograph. [edit]

MatCap Materials

The MatCap process uses special new MatCap materials that are included in the Material palette, such as the MatCap Pearl Cavity or MatCap White Cavity material. MatCap White Cavity is a good material to use when starting. Note: You'll actually want to work on a copy of one of the MatCap materials when creating a new material. We'll discuss this in the examples. [edit]

MatCap Provides Immediate Visual Feedback

Before we get into the examples, we'll mention one other feature of ZBrush that is immensely useful in creating materials via MatCap; the ability to have near-instantaneous feedback on what the material will look like when applied to an actual model. This comes simply from the fact that the ZBrush canvas is, and always has been, depth-enabled. Let's say you have a model to which you will want the final MatCap material applied. Create an instance of your model, apply the MatCap material with which you'll be working, and 'drop' that model to the canvas. (This will happen automatically when you change from 3D Model mode to Paint mode; use the t key to toggle between the two.) Now whenever you change the MatCap material, that change will be immediately visible in the dropped model. We'll see how this works in the following examples. [edit]

Sampling From Photo Reference

[edit]

Setup
To create a material by sampling a reference photo, you'll need to set up a ZBrush document. At the least, it needs to contain the reference photo. You'll also probably want to drop a model or two onto the canvas for feedback on how the material looks as you create itjust as was done in the previous section.

The basic steps are: 1. Place the reference photo on your canvas. 2. Decide on the MatCap material you want to use, create a copy of it, and ensure that copy is selected. 3. Drop a copy of your desired feedback model onto the canvas, making sure that Draw controls are set so that material is applied. This will cause the pixols onto which the model is dropped to be assigned the matcap material. (See the previous section for details on this.) Here's the document we'll be working with.

Initial Document: Photo reference on the left, head with matcap material applied on the right. Conveniently, you can download a copy to experiment with. [edit]

Defining Surface Normals

It's time to define the surface normals that MatCap will use when calculating the new materials. First, select the new MatCap tool in the Tool popup inventory: Using this tool, click on any smooth area of the object in the reference photo, and drag. As you do so, an arrow will be created and then change direction as you drag. Eyeball it so that the arrow is pointing in the direction of the object's surface normal at the point you clicked, and release the mouse. Here's what it looks like as the stroke is being drawn:

Drawing out the first stroke. A bit of imprecision in drawing the direction of the normal won't cause any problems.

As you can see above, the arrow indicating the surface normal gives a couple of cues as to its direction. The arrow itself is drawn as a solid object (cylindrical shaft, conic head), and it is surrounded by a torus that indicates the plane the arrow is defining. In addition, whenever you're drawing out a MatCap surface normal a popup light ball appears near the arrow; in the figure above, it's below and to the right of the surface normal arrow. The light ball provides immediate feedback as to the effect your normal will have on the computed material, after it is combined with all previously defined normals. Once the mouse is released, you'll see this:

Immediately after the mouse button is released, the new material is captured and shown on the head at the right. A single surface normal isn't enough to give a good material. The matcap material is always recomputed after every creation of or adjustment to a surface normal. However, MatCap needs at least three different surface normals to get a good result, so the first normal just results in something similar to a flat shader.

So, let's define a few more normals:

A second stroke... ...and a third one. After just three or four strokes with the MatCap tool, we get a material and lighting that's already close to that shown in the reference photo:

It only takes a few normals to make things look pretty good. Here are a few guidelines for the best results:

Define surface normals on smooth areas of your object. Doing so on a rougher area (such as in the gargoyle's hair) is difficult because the surface normal can vary widely over a distance of just a few pixels. Define normals that cover a wide range of directions. If you choose the directions correctly, you normally need to define only a small number of normals; say 4-10. In particular, you don't need to define multiple normals that point in nearly the same direction. If you've defined a normal incorrectly, don't try to define other normals to make up for that; instead, just adjust the errant normal, as described below. Don't draw normals in areas of the model that are affected by ambient occlusion or other similar local effects; stick to areas that show the true effect of the global lighting environment. When defining the basic normals, don't draw then on specular highlights; see below on how to handle specularity.

[edit]

Defining Specularity

When you define normals as described above, you're only giving MatCap enough information to define diffuse shading. Fortunately, providing the information for good specular results is really no effort at all. Just 1. Using the MatCap tool, define a regular surface normal at or near the middle of a specular highlight. 2. Ctrl-click on the resulting normal marker, and drag out a line that will refine the specular effect. Watch the light ball as you drag, to see the specular effect as you drag. That's really all there is to it. You can see this in action below.

First, define a surface normal as before... ...then Ctrl-click on the new normal and drag to define specular properties. [edit]

Adjusting Normals

If you think you've defined a normal with an incorrect direction, it's easy to adjust it. Whenever the MatCap tool is selected and the mouse cursor is near previously defined MatCap normals, they'll appear as seen below near the right side of the image:

MatCap normals near the cursor show up as small green squares. To adjust a normal, just click on its box and drag. To adjust its specularity, Ctrl-click and drag. [edit]

Fine-Tuning
During or after defining all of the surface normals, you can adjust special MatCap controls at the bottom of the Material palette, to tweak the appearance of the captured material. You don't typically need to do much.

MatCap controls can be adjusted to fine tune the appearance of the captured material. After defining specular normals (as described above) and a bit of tweaking, the final material is very similar to the photo reference.

We've produced an extremely good representation of the reference photo material in a very short period of time. [edit]

Capturing Real-Time Materials From The Canvas

Use the MRGBZ tool to capture Material Maps from the canvas. To do this, Select a Sphere3D. Press Tool:Make Polymesh to convert it to a polymesh. Draw it on the canvas and press the '.' key to center the sphere. Divide the sphere several times to make it smooth. Select the Basic Material and modify it. Select the MRGBZGrabber tool and, when ZBrush asks you for confirmation about leaving 3D edit mode, press OK to drop the sphere to the canvas. 7. Drag out a rectangle around the sphere to select it. By default, AutoCrop is on so the texture will be cropped tight around the sphere. 8. Now, to add the cavity map properties, adjust the material properties of your basic material to your liking. 9. Press and hold Ctrl and, using the MRGBZ tool, drag out a rectangle around your sphere. 10. The new texture will be added right next to your previous texture and you will have two sphere to represent your real-time cavity enabled material! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. [edit]

Capturing A and B Material Maps

Their are several reasons an artist would need to create a Material Map for high points of the model that is different from the cavity areas of the model. Lets look at two situations and how you use MatCap to accomplish this.

Reptile skin: The whole model may be one material type but the exposed areas of the reptile are just shinier. Metal pipes and corrosion: The cavity areas of the model may be completely different. The exposed areas of the metal may be shiny while the cavity areas may be corroded and dull.

MatCap Markers are stored with the MatCap tool and are different than regular markers. Making the reptile skin will require only one MatCap tool. The metal pipe example will require two MatCap tools. The difference is that you can create two different sets of markers. One set would be for Material Map A and the other would be for Material Map B. [edit]

Reptile Skin Example

This example is representative of surfaces where the high, exposed surface of the model and the low, cavity surface of the model are only slightly different. In this case, you need only one MatCap tool. The markers you place between Material Map A and Material Map B won't need to change. Instead, you will only need to make one of them shinier or more dull. Material Map A is the default material map. If you have one spherical image in the Material Map thumb than you are using Material Map A only. The procedure is as follows: 1. Place MatCap markers onto your image for the exposed, high points of your model. 2. When done with the high points, press Material:B (near the bottom of the palette) and continue placing MatCap markers for the cavity areas. This procedure uses the same markers for A and B. Returning to Material Map A will require you to delete the markers you placed for Material Map B and turn off Material:B near the bottom of the Material palette.

[edit]

Metal Pipes Example

This example applies to surfaces where the high, exposed surface of the model and the low, cavity surface of the model are very different. In this case, you need two MatCap tools. The markers you place between Material Map A and Material Map B will be very different from each other. The procedure is as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Place MatCap markers onto your image for the exposed, high points of your model. When done with the high points, Press Tool:Clone to clone your MatCap tool. Delete the current MatCap markers by pressing ALT and clicking on them. Press Material:B (near the bottom of the palette). Create new MatCap markers for Material Map B.

Remember to save your MatCap tools with your document to keep the marker information. To return to Material Map A, select the other MatCap tool and unpress {{Ctl|Material:B. Retrieved from "http://www.zbrush.info/wiki/index.php/MatCap"

Cavity Masking
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Finely detailed surfaces in the real world often show a color difference between their raised areas and their lowered areas, whether through actual color differences, or because of ambient occlusion. Consider the surface of a brick. We all know that a (stereotypical) brick is a sort of reddish-brown, but of course it isn't. Any brick that's been out in the weather for any length of time will accumulate dirt in its pits and grooves, and those areas will actually be dark gray or black. A texture map for the brick should reflect this.

ZBrush's new cavity masking feature makes it easy to accomplish this sort of painting (and some other similar effects, too). Put simply, cavity masking allows you to automatically mask out fine recesses (or fine high points) as you work, so that your work affects only the high points (or low points) of the model's surface. Even better, ZBrush lets you work with cavity masking in two ways:

In the first, you simply paint (using a 3D brush and the new Polypainting feature of ZBrush) with cavity masking for brushes turned on. Cavities are automatically calculated as your brush passes over the surface. In the second, you can mask your entire model, and then work with the masked model. This is the same as directly painting a mask onto a model and then sculpting or polypainting the surface of the model; the difference is that cavity masking gives masks that you could never produce by hand.

Let's see how all this works. [edit]

Using Cavity Masks with Brushes

ZBrush's new Brush Palette contains new controls related to cavity masking. Use CavityMask (which turns cavity masking on or off) and CavityInt (which controls the strength of the masking effect).

Left: High-resolution wrinkled mesh. Middle: Masking as produced using the cavity mask features. Only the low areas of the wrinkles are defined. Right: A quick polypainting stroke with cavity masking on (though the mask is not visible.) The stroke colors only the high areas of the skin. The mask prevents the grooves from being affected. Adjust the CavityInt to increase or decrease the effect of the mask. A setting of about 80 to 90 tends to produce the best results.

[edit]

Applying Cavity Masking to an Entire Model

You can use cavity masking to apply a cavity mask to an entire model; the mask is persistent, as with masks you paint manually. A mask applied in this way can be modified by standard mask application techniques. The controls that affect model cavity masking are in the Tool:Masking submenu; Mask By Cavity and Blur (which controls how sharply or smoothly unmasked areas blend into masked areas). To apply a cavity mask to a model, set Blur to an appropriate value, and press Mask By Cavity. Watch The Cavity Mask Movie Download The Cavity Mask Movie