ZBrushCentral

Alpha roll problems(mainly for seam/repeating rope brushes)

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi all!

So I have some problems with making brushes with tiling alphas. I’ve seemingly tried all the settings in stroke and alpha palette, but I can never seem to get it right.

Here’s a picture wtf1.jpg

So I’ve made a braided rope brush(A in the picture), but I have this problem where I can’t do any curves or it starts to get extremely mushy. I have this problem with most brushes I’ve made, and can’t seem to find a way to alleviate it :(. Anyone that can help me with this would be amazing cause I use alot of these types of things at work.

Then another problem I get with some brushes is to where it seems to repeat and have the square edges repeated on the surface, this is apparent in C and D of my picture.(These are Ryan Kingslien brushes I have just downloaded, perhaps they wern’t designed for Zbrush 4? cause I’ve noticed some changes for the stroke palette from 3.5) I’ve adjusted most settings and ended up with no fix.

Also a note, B in the picture seems to have everything just about perfect(which is my goal)(also, this brush was made by Bryan Silva), except for small lines inbetween the tiling which again, I’m not sure how to get rid of.

Any help would be amazing, thanks!

#2

Care to try and upload that picture again?

#3

image is working now, sorry

#4

Go to ‘Stroke’ menu and turn ‘LazyStep’ down to 0. That should cure the stepping problem and will also help on tighter bends. You will notice that when you turn LazyStep down that you will also have to reduce Z Intensity.

wtf2.JPG

#5

I haven’t tested it myself, but its entirely possible that the alpha for a brush made in a previous version of ZB has a slightly different mid-value basis. Try going into the alpha palette and tweaking the mid-value range slider.

I’ve also had some success correcting brushes by turning their alpha into a 3d object via the alpha palette. I tweak and refine the object, if necessary, using a bit of relax and/or polish in the deformations palette to remove rough bits around the edges.

Then I remove the gradient on the document screen (document>range>pull slider all the way to the left) and then I grab an alpha of it with the MRBGZ brush in the tools pallette.

#6

I’m referring to the problem you are having with the edges of the alpha creating a square around the stroke for above post.

#7

A mixture of all things said above fixed it. For the Ryan Kingslien brushes I just had to change the midvalue to 50, and lowering the intensity/lazystep fixes most of the problem(though I think a little bit will always be there regardless)

Thanks! :slight_smile:

#8

I’m not sure what those remaining bits might be, but another thing you might try tweaking is the brush curve. It’s a curves setting in the brush palette. Try flattening it or otherwise altering it. That sometimes helps me out.