Hi,
Although I found other threads regarding the issue, nothing solved it for me. When I import alphas and use them, they always have stepping/banding and look like they are 8bit files, although they are 16bit TIFF files. The preview in ZBrush also say they are 16bit.
However, exporting the same Alpha as PSD works fine without any stepping/banding. The TIFF files I am using do not havy an alpha channel, they should be fine.
Is there anything that might help? Thanks in advance!
Hi @DanielB
It’s probably because TIFF files have color information (CMYK) and therefore not a good choice for alphas. The images that work the best in ZBrush should be 16 bit grayscale PSD files. If you have Photoshop, and you convert the TIFF file to 16 bit grayscale and save it as a PSD file, it will remove the color information.
Hi @zber2
Thank you for your help! Pure grayscale TIFF files do have color information in them? That I didn’t know. The TIFF files I am using are exported directly from Substance Designer as well as trying from another tool.
I tried with very simple setups, using only a grayscale workflow and output. I tried to export the same alphas with the same setup one time as TIFF and one time as PSD, nothing else changed, just the file type. The PSD files are working perfectly, while the TIFF files are not.
Unforuntately I do not have Photoshop, but I loaded the TIFF files into GIMP and Krita, both saying they are pure grayscale. However, after exporting them with GIMP and Krita as TIFF files again, I am getting the same result. When exported as PSD files from both of those applications, ZBrush does not like them and wont load, but give me an error.
It seems that PSD files are the only way to get a clean result though. I will try further to see if I can get TIFF files to work. I just hope it wont be needed to get a PS subscription.
No, you definately don’t want to do that.
PSD is an Adobe proprietary format. GIMP doesn’t handle PSD files very well IMHO and ZBrush definitely doesn’t like PSD files from Krita. Something you might try in Krita though is open your TIFF file from Substance Designer and in “Image > Convert Image Color Space”, change “Model” to “Grayscale/Alpha” and “Depth” to “16-bit integer/channel” and leave the rest the same. Then export out of Krita as TIFF and in the export options, enable “Store alpha channel”, “Flatten the image” and “Save ICC Profile”. Then try that in ZBrush.