ZBrushCentral

How do you paint details to a displacement map?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

OK, in this tutorial:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=3204

I have a few questions about how things were done.

  1. How was the grid-like scaly pattern painted on? Like what tool/settings exactly? Because for all my searching I can’t find anything that does that. I’m expecting to find a texture painting brush that you can paint a texture with varying opacities as if it tiled over the screen entirely, like the texture feature in photoshop.

  2. The texture detailing on the legs etc, it’s darker green in the crevices and more yellow outside, how was this done?

#2

After dropping the model to the canvas with Projection Master, select the Directional Brush and the DragRect stroke type. Choose your color, Draw settings, and also an alpha for the appropriate pattern. The Alpha palette also has a slider to control radial fade so that the edges of each stroke are soft and will blend together.

Now draw on the model. You can rotate the alpha while you draw the stroke out, getting exactly the results that you want. Immediately after drawing a stroke, you can also activate the gyro and use it to move the stroke around the canvas, snapshotting as you go.

Regarding how the two color were achieved, my guess is that he started with a dark green texture and then used yellow while building up the details. The alpha then controlled both the color and depth intensity with a single stroke.

#3

Ok, two more questions then…

are all details applied one alpha at a time? what if you wanted to apply something that had to be consistent, like a metal grating, would you need to very carefully align each one?

how do you apply the alpha to your texture as you draw? converting it to a mask and then applying it to pixols requires you to subdivide an extreme amount.

#4

If something like the grating you would need an alpha with more repeats in it or to be very carefully like you describe.

As for the second question, the color and depth are both linked to the alpha. If Zadd is turned on and Mrgb/Rgb/M are turned off, then the alpha is used to paint depth. If Rgb is on and Zadd is off, then the alpha paints color. If Rgb and Zadd are both on, then then alpha paints color and depth together – exactly the result you’re looking for.

#5

Alright, in the tutorial he created the depth by painting onto a bump map, not by adjusting pixols. What I’m trying to do is apply the alpha as a stencil when painting the texture.

The only way I can figure out how to do this is to:

  1. have the alpha selected that you are using with the displacement map options
  2. subdivide the mesh as far as it can go and/or select that subdivision.
  3. use tools->masking->alp to create a pixol mask
  4. proceed to paint the pixols with projection master. now you can be sloppy and your crevices etc will be painted correctly.

This is not an optimal method, because with a high res texture you can’t subdivide the mesh enough without running out of ram to accurately paint the texture. And if you have to subdivide so far you don’t really need to paint your texture map via texture master anyway, you can just paint your pixols and you get the same results.

It should be theoreticallly possible to apply the alpha as a texture-space stencil before or after you enter projection master. If this is possible in zbrush, I am not sure.