Tutorials
Maya
Beginners: Intro to Maya
How to Make a Normal Map (2 Ways)
Photoshop
How to Make Brushes
zBrush
Brushes
Learn about Brushes | Alpha Brushes Tutorial | Masking Brushes Tutorial
Brushes are a time saver. It also helps accomplish details onto things whether it is a matte painting, textures, or sculpting. I will go over some fun techniques that you can do with brushes in both Photoshop and Zbrush (my tool of choices) and leave you to decide what you can do with it artistically.
This is plain and simple. Grab any texture that you have created and bring it over to zBrush. As simple as that! To do this, first, get your textures and sample mesh ready. Save it as a targa tiff or bmp.
Go ahead and open up your mesh in zBrush (any kind of mesh you want to apply this brush to.) Go to the alpha section then click import. Look for the texture you have created. Here I have a brick texture and the default cube mesh they have in zBrush.
Once you've imported the brush, select the alpha. That's it! Happy brushing! Just go nuts and start painting with your new brush. With textures like these, I prefer clicking and dragging my textures into the mesh. I find it gives me the best result. To do this, just go click on the box icon above the alpha section and select DragRect.
Don't limit yourself with texture you've found online. Always take it to the next level and try to tweak those textures found and create something beautiful!
This process will include going back to Photoshop for alphas. It's tedious but worth it.
First we need a texture. I'm going to use a simple brick texture and bring it into Photoshop. The reason being is that we want to make an alpha channel for a softer edge effect.
If you don't know what alphas are, make sure that you visit my alpha channel tutorial. It explains what they are and how they are used and the process of making them.
With this tutorial I'm going to use this cracked concrete texture I found. In CG Textures
So now that I have that opened and running I'm going to click on the channel section of my layer. I'm going to make a new alpha layer and grab a circular brush. Go ahead and brush your way into the center. Make sure your alpha looks something like this.
Notice the nice and soft feathered edges?
Pic
Once you're done, save the file as a targa file. Make sure you save it under 32 bit. If you choose 24 or 16 bit, your alphas will not show!
Pic Pic
Now back to zBrush.
Pic
Do the same process done in the beginning. Have your mesh ready and import the texture.
Pic
Notice when you import the texture you get that nice fade of alpha onto your brush? Well that's exactly what we are trying to go for! We don't want a sharp edge, we want our sculpt to look as smooth and seamless as possible!
If you haven't already, check out my tutorial called "The Basics of zBrush" for more info on how to mask. If you already know how the masking deal works, well, you can use this as a mask as well!
Just hold ctrl and drag select the mesh. This will draw a stencil over the mesh. The dark spots are the mask like mentioned in the tutorial above will not get affected when you run the brush over. This is an alternative way for sculpting with your brushes!
Pic
Just like any other mask, you can invert this by holding alt and clicking left mouse button once outside the canvas. To exit out of mask mode just drag instead of clicking.
Well that's about it for this tutorial. Don't stop here! The possibilities are endless! You can make different types of brush and different types of effect with the alpha etc.
Happy sculpting!
To find out how to make a normal map out of what you created please check out my normal map tutorials.
Brushes Hints and Tips
Using Preset brushes found online.
Brush sizes
If you have any questions, please contact me via email.