AlphaCentury, a Terrain Creation Tutorial...

[Pixolator]

Hi :)
This tutorial demonstrates a method in which a terrain 3D object is created by the use of 2.5D brush strokes and 3D alpha based deformations.
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1032053133wcu.jpg
Above is the image that is generated by the script. The described method is quite easy to follow and it is very fast. The ZScript execution time is between one to two minutes (depending on your system speed). With this method, a terrain such as the one above can be created in an extremely short time. This method can also be used when creating a colorful terrain.

:b3: Click here to download the AlphaCentury ZScript (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/counters/increment-zscripts.cgi/alphacentury.zip?1tutes/alphacentury.zip) :b3:

After extracting the included files, place these files within your ZScript folder and open the AlphaCentury.txt zscript from within ZBrush.

I hope that you?ll find this tutorial helpful :)
If you try this tutorial, please post your images and/or findings,
-Pixolator




Previously published ZScript ::RustedGoldenIdol (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001484)
Newer published ZScript ::TextureMaster (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=002034)

[aurick]

Man, nothing like being handed the Holy Grail. :) I just finished running the script, and am in total awe. The technique is amazing, and has the potential to solve a lot of problems. Not only that, but it gave me some really cool ideas.

In addition, I can't wait now to pick apart the script text, to see how the thing was actually written. So much easier to use than the version of having to scroll through the text at the bottom. Which reminds me: Is there a list somewhere of the ZScript names for each window, palette, tool and modifier? Such a thing would be a HUGE help for writing tutorials.

Thank you for the awesome lesson!

[thelonious]

Running out of superlatives, fast!

As they say: I'm blone away ;)

[rhom]

Extra deluxe five stars!!!

[Nikko]

Awesome. Simply awesome!

Thanks, Pix!

[boozy floozie]

Many thanks Pixolator again a real eye opener into the possibilities and potential of Z-Brush.

The Flooze :tu:

[juandel]

a fantastiwonderful script, Pixolator! :D + :tu: :tu: :tu: muchas gracias!

below is the result of my first attempt... started as a red planet, but i could not stop at the right time, spoiled it and decided to give aurick’s :tu: vegetationtut a try, too, to cover some of the flaws... and again used Digits interpolate-script with Atom-Art’s beuatiful seagull-tool. the bad fog-settings are mine :D

thank you, guys... i hope you like it

- juandel

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/duska.jpg

[Digits]

I can't wait to get home and try my hand at this. Juandel your mistakes come out like wonderful music to me.

[Stargo]

:eek: :eek: Awesome turorial :tu: :tu: :tu:
Juandel your picture is wonderful :tu: :tu: :tu:

[aurick]

Juandel, the fog effect is great. If you'd put some Chinese characters in there, it would look just like oriental art. Beautiful work!

[Kathy]

Juandel your picture is just gorgeous!

Wow. :tu: :tu:

[Kathy]

Okay, ran through the tutorial Zscript.

Then I threw out Bryce. :tu:

[Stonecutter]

Great tutorial, Pix! :D
I ran it, and immediately produced a terrain in a fraction of the time it took with Bryce, and with a lot more control. :cool:
(I threw out Bryce a couple of weeks ago...)
Wonderful info!!!

[drjjwow]

the dr. says this tut. is very bad for peoples health be it makes them addicted even more, greatest tutorial ive seen yet. thanks pixolator, keep them coming please

[juandel]

thats oh so true, doctor! terraining © pixolatorway has it’s misadvantages... a tsunami of ZADDiction runs around the planet right while i’m typing this... probably there have been more landscapes created within the last few hours than within the last few aeons.

i confess: i’ve had my share... here is a quick architectonical using the pixolator-terrain-method ® with simplebrush set to square-alphas at different draw-sizes and setting the perspective dist in the drawpalette to 0 when having the 3d-plane in transform-mode.

hope you’ll like it (and thanks for compliments... can’t wait to see your vistas, ZBs!) :D

- juandel

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/templeb.jpg

[Muvlo]

:eek: I can't do much more than make incoherent oohs and ahs right now, but wow! :) That is so cool. I've never used a landscape generater like Bryce or Vue, though I have used terragen, but nothing I've seen can compare to the control and depth you showed us in that script! ZBrush is brilliant! :)
:eek:

[WingedOne]

Here's my experiment with the Terrain Tutorial.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-998959335edt.jpg

[Digits]

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-998959441hug.jpg

Okay I really am going to make a terrain, but this technique is cool for other things as well, such as this Intergalactic Waffle Iron re-entering the atmosphere of Mars. By the time the humans arrive there should be plenty of IHOPS for those saturday morning breakfasts.

[Digits]

All these images are great so far! I admit I am hooked! You gotta try it :)

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-998978084fpg.jpg

As you can see this isn't the Moon over Miami

[Muvlo]

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-999047322vcf.jpg
Great images everyone! :)
:)

[Digits]

Spectacular Vistas guys! Cept I figured we would have mapped out the known universe by now. I know I am hooked, these are too much fun to make.

This one is a moon of Uranus, complete with a river of methane. Sounds appropriate eh? Wonder if there are any of those Gnarlolites about, seem like thier kinda of place.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-999061767yyr.jpg

[Cricket]

All these images are sooooo neat! Digits, i absolutely love those three little guys standing there. Perfect finishing touch!

Sylvia

[juandel]

doing terrains the pixoway is mucho fun :D and it is a great joy to see all those fantastico vistas shown here meanwhile, ZBs... keep them coming!

here is another quick one, the first pic transmitted by the discoverers of Bloka Nui (antarctica), in which i made experimental use of a few of the new Digit’s scripts (pixolpaint in the "sea"part and the gradients for the rest) and Ed_the_Atom’s blokehead (once more ;) ).

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/blokeislanda.jpg

[Digits]

Juandel I proclaim you a Master of Widgetry, a title not given out casually! I have heard of these Bloka Nui, they later became the Polygonishuns and settled the South Pacific. You see, Every night, and it is a long one in Antartica, the great Bloke in the sky required of them to dance naked around his statutes. Needless to say they froze thier little tushes off, literaly they just broke off and smashed frozen into little shards on the tundra. Well, they soon had enough of that and buttless they built boats and sailed onwards to where the Coconut Oil doesn't freeze. And you know the rest, you can see some of these Blokes today if you travel to Easter Island.

NOTE!!!
I almost forgot another piece of trivia concerning the Bloka Nui. You know those giant fissures in the ice up in Antartica? Well they are proof that the Bloka Nui did actually lose thier butts 1000's of years ago because thier little cracks are still visible today. Incidently, some Bloka Nui found that they did miss the cold weather and so split off from the tribe and settled in Sweden to become the Vikings. By and by they discovered America long before Columbus but they were having so much fun raiding and pillaging Europe and the Indians there did not have much in the way of plunder, so they sailed back to the Northlands for better pickings. You didn't know I knew all this stuff did you?

[juandel]

no, Digits, i didn’t know that you knew! :D you keep surprising me! now among all your other skills you are the Floyd Heyerdahl (http://www.greatdreams.com/thor.htm) of BlokaNuimigrations, too! kudos!

i am very honored to have been given that title, Digits! after all i am a widgetry-newbie and most of the results i achieve that i think worthwhile sharing are a matter of good luck and the fascinating and often surprising power of your fantastico scripts. i think that is why it is so much fun and addictive to expriment with them. thank you for your generosity of sharing those wonderful tools!

i made little use of them in the one below, though. just some color-gradienting :D on the gears in the mist. the rest is the shmoov alphaterraining © pixolator move using a few gears on top of each other for the first alpha which was then applied with the 3d-brush to create the one finally applied to the plane.

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/gearlandc.jpg

- juandel
(out to have a beer and ponder strange theories about the history of gearland) :D

[Digits]

These just keep getting better and better, I love how you have gotten the curtain edge waatoosie going in the terrain and the gears in the mist itself is just cooldaddio.

Hopefully this thread won't die before we see some more efforts. I like this stuff soo much that with everyone's permission I would like to include a whole terrain gallery at Z-Place.

Hmmm, Gearland seems to be mysteriously shrouded from my far-Sight perhaps after a few of those fine Austrian beers you could tell us more about it :)

[juandel]

ahm... got a bit distracted. :D hope to be in edit-mode in about 6-8 hrs.

Zee you then
`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·> juandel <--

[Digits]

KPT masks make cool terrains too, don't worry I will soon tire of em :)

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-999303291unq.jpg

[Cricket]

Wow. I just love the wonkiness of what you folks do! Sigh. I must get in touch with a couple of my other selves methinks.

Heres' a very lame one. But, hey, it's a start. Horse added post (all the tools I made to stick there just looked out of place so I gave up) and I have my spit shield on so flaming me for that is okay. ;)

But I'll add to the thread anyway. Bwa hah hah :) At least it's better than my incredible nose hairs pic. :D

Sylvia
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-999326171jfl.jpg

[curaduk]

Thanks Pixolator. Great script. Just what I needed. I had been busy doing other things and hadn't had time to post a request so this is really really great. Like getting a present.
And Juandel your pics are lovely.
Thanks again
:eek:

[juandel]

curaduk: thank you for your compliments! :D i hope to see your landscapes around here soonissimost!

Sylvia: i lovelovelove your "lame" one. very dreamlike and welldone... i am sure you’ll meet fascinating and lovely other selfs when you start looking for them! ;)

Digits: my vague ideas of what wonkiness means have taken shape in your last wonderfully psychoartistic masterpiece :D fractalissimo! those transparent spheres below the head are outstanding details in this overall fantastico pic! doubtlessly my new favorite of yours! as i indulged into some rather hardcore-bohemian-beering yesternite i could not come up with thoughtful theories about gearland, except that i think its a place where judy gearland might dance robotic rumbas with gyro gearloose. i leave my message above unedited as a warning proof of the abuse of starobrno-beer. as for your planned galleria: count me in, amigo! :D

- juandel

[Stacey]

Sigh.....

Does everyone watch the scripts and then try to recreate everything by memory? I've tried 3 times to have 2 windows open, one to watch and one to work on, and zbrush keeps crashing. :( Not only that, when I click on the window I'm working on the script in the other window automatically progresses forward. If you guys aren't using the scripts this way, how are you remembering all of the steps? I feel like such a dumbass!

*sigh*

[Digits]

Cricket your landscape is definitely not lame, it is wonderful. If anyone spits on you in this forum let me know, I know someone who would break thier legs for free :)

Stacey
I take it you are trying to use the split-screen feature. Doesn't work that way, it only gives you a different view of the main canvas. So, you can't be working on it while a script is running because it is running in that window as well.
What you could do is slow the script down with a function in the zscript pallete. There are places where the scripts stops waiting for you to click. Use a notepad and write down the steps. Also you can just run the script over a few times til you feel comfortable with the steps.

Hope this helps

[Stacey]

Actually I have 2 instances of Zbrush open, one on each monitor. Seems funny to take something so automated and have to write it all down. Ahhh well.

Thanks Digits :)

[juandel]

though they were a bit nervous because they had left without an order "ant" and "onio" were more than happy when they saw the outskirts of Zant-metropolis. their private quest to seize the honey-grail had ended in a complete desaster but they returned with some useful informations for her majesty.

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/kamiloghar.jpg

fantastico ant-tool © Kathy, colored the alphascape using Digit’s Color_Widget. rendered with much tweaking in the adjustment-settings. the sky is basically another alphascape (the same as the ground ones - there are three identical planes on the ground with different squeezing in size-transformation mode - but rotated) hidden below a few 2.5d brushes. having worked on a standard canvas the snakehookhairs drawn at the ant’s antennas at size 2 alias like hell. i should have used the photoshop airbrush but i wanted this to be 100% ZBrush. hope you like it.

Stacey: each time i do it, i forget something else ;) but basically it’s very easy and a very neato way to make vistas, methinks. don’t know about other apps but i doubt i could do similar things there within short time. i can’t wait to see your 1st landscape around here :D

- juandel

[Pixolator]

Fantastic!!! Thank you for your very kind feedback and participation in this thread :)

The top of this thread has been updated to include links to all the images in this thread.
The gallery will be updated when new images are added.

[Digits]

Juandel I think your ant's eye view is the best yet! Great depth, color and interest, simply magic!

I wanted to save threads like this one for posterity, and Pixolator was wonderful enough to include them into the front page. I have started The ZBCentral's Thread Hall of Fame at Z-Place. From thence forth, unless I get lazy, threads of interest and threads the beat the one page barrier I will link so that there will be a quick index of goodies here that have faded away.

ZBCentral Threads Hall of Fame (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/HallofFame.htm)

I hate to have this based totally on my own questionable taste so anyone that would like to suggest a thread to be included give me a hoot.

Also anyone who has the notion, the time and the inspiration I would happily accept any web graphics that you would care to donate for the pages of Z-Place. I am a lazy webmaster :)

[Stacey]

Finally..

this tutorial was really difficult for me for some reason :( I couldn't get the look I was going for, specifically more texture. I'll work through it a few more times :)

http://www.colourz.com/terrain.jpg

I really appreciate how good all of you are, when I work in Z myself!

[Cricket]

I think the shading on that is very very nice, Stacey. The colors too. And the fog! LOL that's about everything.

I have trouble with the same thing. When Pixolator does it, it seems like his brush is simply revealing what is already there in the landscape. It's so natural. When I do it, it's a mess. :( I keep saying to myself 'The light is from the left. The light is from the left.' Then I go and paint my highlights backwards anyway. :D

[Vikki]

Wow! Thanks Pixolator for the great terrain tutorial...another one for practice, practice, practice but, I'll throw my first try in here. Not as terrainy as most but it seems I kept doing upside down stalagtites or whatever they're called. :D So, I tried to tone it down a bit.

Everyone has done some terrific terrains! I love them all!

Here's my contribution to this thread... ;)

"Getting ready for Halloween"


http://www.web-helper.net/ZBr/terrain1.jpg

[Kruzr]

[Vikki]

Good morning Mark,

Thanks for the tips...they were very helpful!

So here's my try at it after your great help :cool: :tu:

http://www.web-helper.net/ZBr/terrain3.jpg

This is almost (I say "almost" because we all know you can never have toooo much fun!) too much fun!

[Nikko]

Vikki, that last one is just plain beautiful!

[Vikki]

Thanks Nikko! :D

[juandel]

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/spiderhouset.jpg
this one was originally sneaked into the spiderhouse artist challenge thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001312) but as i a) made use of the alpha terrain technique and b) hope to see more alpha-terrain-additions in this thread and wanted to bring it back to the community’s memory i upload it here, too.
hope you like it.

- juandel :D

[juandel]

i think i’ll never get bored by the shmoove-alpha-move... and hope it’s not boring for you. next pale foggy one: the pass. hope you like it! :D

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/pass.jpg

- juandel

[AngelTwo-Six]

"awe," just isn't sufficient to describe my reaction...

[Digits]

Boring? quite the contrary, every new vista is one that has never been seen before. In fact that is the true worth of Art, it is the ultimate snowflake!

You've really created an expansive vista here, it seems to go on for miles on a grand scale. :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Zoid]

This is like an image of an ancient land from centuries ago. Less is definately more with this one. This little image does have such a grand scale. :cool:

[juandel]

thank you, my friends :)

in tonites session i went for something riverdelta/lake-like
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/autumn1una.jpg
and finally came up with these autumn-colors
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/autumn1.jpg
i’m not sure if i’ll still like them tomorrow (or even if i do now :D), but as the 2nd was done with adjustment-controls in the render-palette - which i believe to be a zbrush-feature not very much in use - i decided to upload both of them.

- juandel

[Nikko]

Beautiful, moody pieces all. Very nice stuff, Juandel!

[juandel]

thank you, Nikko! :D

ok, another try to inspire ZBs into displaying their terrains here: the first one is a humble and silly multiple tribute to the breathtaking art of stonecutter (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001831) and aurick (1 (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001815), 2 (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001793)) - well and of course of impending :D (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001572) - (sorry guys ;) and thank you so much for the great inspirations you keep spreading here): a few Sunblocked (©robotalk :D) Skydancers (Melacintalarga tropica) frolicking above their amazonian biotop
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/jungle2.jpg
the second one is a cloudscape based on a fibermade alpha (large draw-size, height about 10, width of brush 100, thickness 3, gravity 0) which turned out completely different than planned (once more! i get used to that surprise-factor :D but it remains the most funny part of doing the terrains):
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/cloudscape.jpg

hope you like it!

- juandel

[rhom]

Geez these are pretty Juandel.

[Tag]

Juandel, your terrains keep getting more beautiful, if that's possible. I still love the first one with the birds flying across it, but I am enjoying each new one you come out with. Hope you continue to do more.

[Muvlo]

Oohh, I missed these new ones Juandel. A big :tu: on these. I especialy like the cloud one and the butterfly one. Great colors. :tu:
:)

[aurick]

Hey, Juandel! Your vegetation in the first one really looks great. You've done an awesome job with the fiber brush. And the second one is a case where the more I look, the more I like it. The puffiness of the clouds is simply amazing. Very realistic landscape, and a great job all around!

[juandel]

thank you, z-friends! :D

i sure wished anyone else would still add contributions into this thread, so the fact that i am basically doing variations with the same components all the time, would not be so obvious :) here are two i did recently.

the first one is based on a fiber-aplha, and i used the terrain to play with the depth-cue render-modifier. i wanted to pick out a defined area of the terrain as an eye-catcher but last weekend when i did it, i did not realize the best way would have been to use an alpha... so i was just using the graph and therefore a whole horizontal partition in the lower third became clearer than the rest.

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/atlantisf.jpg

the second one was done today and it became mucho kitsch :D i upload it anyway, as it might show an alpha-terrain-way to make water to those of you who are interested:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/seaandgull.jpg

the alpha applied to the plane was achieved in 2 steps:
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/seaalphasboth.jpg
usually i do water using a fiberbrush-based alpha. this time it was the default simple brush. the left alpha is nothing but a doodle with it. i mrgbzgrabbed it and in the draw palette i changed the height-value to about 15, leaving the width at 100. the grabbed alpha was still active. i painted with the simple brush all over the canvas (if you give this method a try: try to do it more evenly than i did!) and got the right alpha, which was grabbed and applied to a plane the usual way (tool>modifiers>selection>alp) after returning to height 100 in the draw-window. the offset z-value in tool>modifiers>deformations was very low, about 3 or 4 only. selection cleared. some more scaling and rotation (i should have done more to make the far waves appear smaller) and activating the perspective distort in the draw window. voila!

as i did not want another foggy horizon, i created another layer and placed a yellow basic-material-plane in front of the clipping-plane. it was a bit tricky, as the z-offset of the other plane did not allow for a straight horizon, so i tried my best using fog and depth-cue to hide a few waves. the simple brush with zadd-off was applied to the new plane using the left alpha and some greyish colour, then i smudged the sky, using a 100x15 brush again and zadd-off. a few of ed-the-atom’s seagull’s were inserted and the sun was done by placing a point-light. as pointed out in this thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001422) i still do not really know how to achieve satisfying and predictable reflections on water, but i am rather happy with what showed up in here when i did a best-render with environment-scene-fov 45 (i think i could play forever with these features :) ) and some color-adjustments.

hope you like it, kitsch or not, and find the approach helpful (or come up with better ones and let me know it!)! :D

- juandel

[Digits]

I am glad you are taking up the slack Juandel, your ingenuity in coming up with new applications of this technique are amazing and lovely. Thanks for carrying on this thread, hopefully I can find some inspiration from these to keep you company.

[Nikko]

Man, Juandel, I lOVE that water scene with the gulls! :eek: :)

[impending]

Hi juandel,

Great landscapes :tu: :tu: I particularly like your water and the ingenious alpha created to accomplish it !! You are the landscape Master :D

I feel remiss for never having tried Pix's landscape tutorial - I've been creating very little in Z and certainly don't visit here as often as I would like. I've been tinkering with a Halloween image and when done shall perhaps make a . . . . landscape! I'll certainly study yours before I begin :)

Regards,

jd

[Stonecutter]

Here we are at page 4 of this wonderful thread, and I haven't said anything yet! My reason, aside from being lost in wonderment at all the different and unique variations displayed here, is that I have a secret agenda...having done a load of these type of terrains in Bryce, ( :rolleyes: ), I was fascinated to see how the same technique would show in my favourite software...
I think you can guess my final impressions...
:tu: :tu: :tu: :D :D :D :tu: :tu: :tu:
You guys have all exceeded my wildest expectations, and have revived my interest in these 'landscape' deals...who knows? I might even have to do one to see for myself!
Thanks to everybody for a :tu: :tu: :tu: experience!

Just noted my posting pushed this thread over the edge into page 5....glad I could help!

[juandel]

thank you, ZB’s! :D

FYI: i just uploaded a Zanadu-Terrain (http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/galview.mv?ZBrush_Contest+dMcXNYRiA+1003224034) to 3d-commune. to avoid any further disqualification :( i will edit this message and upload the pic here (as well as the full-sized alpha) as soon as the contest is done. in the very unlikely case of being among the winners, i - as another proud owner of a full-version - would love to pick up Stonecutter’s :tu: :tu: :tu: idea (his 3rd message in the thread) (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=5&t=000126) and award one of the demo-users who keep contributing such great art to ZBC despite of the restrictions of the demo (and i know what i’m speaking about, as i had to use the demo for 4.5 months ;)) - any ideas on how to make the choice would be mucho appreciated (please post to Stonecutter’s thread in the community-forum!)

thanks again for all the great feedback! can’t wait for your vista’s, amigas y amiguys!

- juandel :D

:b4: edited as per 11-08-01:

phew! glad to learn that i won’t have to choose among those fantastico and fantastica demo-users :D and congratulations, Ztevie, Christos and PusGhetty! you all did wonderful jobs! :D ... so here we go:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/zanadu4.jpg

it was created using this alpha, which was done with gear and elongated spheres:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/xanadualpha.jpg

seagull by atom-art, of course ;)

that was fun and quickly done... in fact it was a lunch-break-pic!

[WingedOne]

:tu: Looks awesome Juandel.

[Stonecutter]

Had to tell you what a great landscape you produced, Juandel! :tu: :tu: :tu:
This one definitely does have that 'Zanadu' feeling. As far as this contest goes, I hope one of the members does win it, and that we can get a newbie-boogie going. Think of the great rookie-demo thread we could end up with! :D :D :D :tu: :D :D :D

[juandel]

this moonshine
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/monshine1.jpg
goes to you, Stonecutter! :D :D :D :p

i’m sorry for it’s darkness, but it’s late over here, and i already pushed the "PLAY"button for a lil private PWS (Pre-Werwolfic-Syndrome) Blues :D!

the trick i experimented with in this one was applying the alpha to a 3d-terrain (one of the graphs in the initialize-menu under modifiers det to almost zero, globalambient towards zero) instead of a plane. the "moon" is a pointlight set a bit further away on z-axis than the background / skyplane’s settings. i goofed up when i tried to "improve" the pre-moonclouds in PS. mucho to learn still about perspective, antialiasing, environment-rendering - to mention just those that manage to come to my mind despite of the onset of PWS! :eek:

hooooooo-owlandel :D

edit: any owl i might do i might do goes to you, WingedOne! :D

[juandel]

Zanadu as seen from candy-forest :)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/newxb.jpg

this one was originally started to be uploaded to 3d-commune’s Zanadu-contest, but i ended up with (for my taste) way too much postproduction in PS to make it a contribution of a zbrush-contest. reason is: sillyme did it on my imac (which houses meagre 64mb ram only) at 960x1240 pixels - so it was mucho time-consuming to watch transformations getting rendered and as i want to have dinner now, i ended up doing the sky with the PS-cloud-filter instead of creating another layer for a plane to paint on in zbrush, and i stamped a lil here and there to avoid repetitions in the foreground candy-texture and some PS-smudging :(

there is just 1 alpha i made use of: as you can see in the background it was done with the gear-tool (one put above the other, slightly smaller and pushed into front in transformation w-mode) and a few 3d-cones. i then loaded Davey’s super-duper Tiler-script (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001717) and tiled the alpha the flipping way, applied it to another plane, z-offset it a few times and forgot about using the smooth-function :mad:. i increased the h- and v-repetitions in the textures-modifiers of the plane-tool and thus created the pillars and the forest-floor.

i hope you like it better than i do :D

- juandel

[Digits]

Moonshine and Candy forest are wonderful, you seem to have an unending source of inspiration stuck around somewhere. Moonshine is beautifully done and the perspective and color of the Zanadu one is considered by me to be superdooper, PS or no, I would be happy about it.

[Zoid]

:tu: Juandel,

The candy theme and the look of that tower in the distance makes me think molded custard or "flan". This also reminds me of the scene in The Wizard of Oz when they first see the emerald city in the distance. I love this terrain technique also, and here's one that I did a while ago.
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-1003453482ncu.jpg
I keep getting those grid marks which in this case doesn't look so bad. I suppose I could figure out why this is happening if I travelled backwards by 66 postings and read the instructions more closely. Let's make this thread a true "century" and see if we can push it to 100 postings :D

[Stonecutter]

Here's my contribution to the '100', Zoid, but it's not just an empty post...
I have to say that is one of the more outrageous 'terrains' I've seen done here, and that's why this thread is so interesting to watch. We're getting terrains, nouveau terrains, pseudo terrains, organic and inorganic terrains........ :eek:
What's next! Great work, Zoid and everyone else, and I think I'm experiencing terrain envy!!! :tu: :tu: :tu: to every artist on this thread!

[juandel]

ha! 100 posts? a century means hundred years, so i guess there will be much more in 2101 :D what a :tu: :tu: :tu: terrain, Zoid, grid-marks fit perfectly (don’t know what is the reason for them, probably the h-v-divide of the tools one does the alpha with or something in the realation between alpha-size and plane-size). i especially love the water - and it’s ripples. may i ask: how done? TIA! :D

- juandel

[juandel]

not done on purpose, but at a certain point i recognised what it looks like: some unspectacular landscape in northern austria flying by an intercity train’s window :)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/northernaustria.jpg

a lil more dramatic, my newest liquid terrain study: poor bloke in distress - blokehead and seagulls courtesy Atom Art (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/AtomArt.htm), open hands courtesy Martin (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/Z-Tools.htm)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/haiterrain.jpg

- juandel

[aurick]

Boy, Juandel, you really love the terrain creation method! There's no doubt that you are our resident master on this subject, as these two scenes testify. Really great stuff. The water is excellent, but my favorite of the two is the landscape. You may call that country unspectacular, but it has a pastoral beauty all its own.

[aurick]

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-1003729090ugw.jpg

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-1003729610tst.jpg

Created a while ago, but since they were made possible by and done using the method taught by Pixolator, it seems appropriate to put them into this thread.

The Fractal Garden was created using a fractal for the deformation mask, rather than a grabbed alpha. In fact, every single thing in the scene is influenced in some way by or created with fractals.

The Ruins on Coreolis Prime used the method completely as taught but focused on the Spiral3D tool to create the ruins. The head is a simple Poser import with a material created to simulate the old weathered look.

[Zoid]

Aurick, Your zscapes are are true classics. The fractal garden has wonderful sharpness and depth. I hope you do more of these.

Juandel, I'm so sorry to leave you hanging with your question about the ripples in my image. The sad fact is that I have forgotten how I did it, and I have been unable to duplicate this effect. Perhaps there is a certain expert out there ;) who knows what makes this happen? If it ever happens again for me I will let you know what it was. I love your "train window landscape". I ride a train to work every morning and I never get tired of that - landscape zipping by the window effect :cool:

[juandel]

ah, what a pity, Zoid :( let’s hope for a ripplemaster to show up here soon or that you happen to recreate it yourself! TIA

Aurick, it’s great you put those two fantastico ones up here, too :D the second one took me into it for half an hour once again. superb.

thank you both for your kind feedback!

here is another liquid-terrain study:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/checker.jpg

tried it with transparency this time which made rendering rather time-consuming, as flatten-layer has to be turned off.

the checkered layer basically consists of a 3d-terrains to which two alphas were applied. a transparent checkertexture was applied, then the terrain was snapshot, untextured, coloured, got another material & was set a bit lower. on a separate layer i did the ball, mrgbz-grabbed it (other layers were turned off) to win a texture for a later environment-rendering. this layer was merged with the checker-terrain one to reduce the amount of layers and save a lil rendering time.

on another layer i recreated the terrain, rotated it slightly, increased the materials transparency to about 95 and set it’s environmental reflectivity to about 30. this layer was duplicated and the new one moved downwards via the layers/modifiers/displaceZ by 1. one of the transparent layers was rendered with environment-texture on (where i placed a vertically mirrored transparent texture of the former ball-layer), which i hoped would give a nice reflexion of the ball, the other one with environment-scene on (as flatten-layers was off for transparency’s sake, it reflected itself and the lights only, i think) - i played with different settings for FOV for both renderings, but as the settings in the environment renderer obviously are not saved :confused: with the document i dunno which ones i finally took.

being a bit bored by the tedious renderings i imported the exported .psd in another document as a texture, filled the canvas with it and played with the settings in the render/adjust-modifiers. looking at it via my other monitor it looked too bright and so i ended up making a few additional brightness adjustments in photoshop.

[juandel]

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/bamboogh2.jpg

a lin-pao shaman waiting for pan-da, the bamboo-ghost to show up :D

this one started at 640x480 as a terrain with a mountain painted with TextureMaster’s help, which was put into the scene several times, afterwards i fiddled with the adjustment settings. the front mountain looked way to flat and the pic was mucho boring, so i tried to improve by putting in some branches but this did not help either. i exported the pic, started a new document at 480x640 this time and filled the canvas with the re-imported pic. z-brush stretched the frontmountain all by itself :D the green shadings down there (BTW: no .jpg-compression nono’s, i think this is the result of my tweaking the fog-graph) reminded me of asian rice-terraces - so i decided to put a few things in front to enforce my own impression. i was a bit confined by the lightsettings of the background and as the branches are on the background, too, the shaman is sitting just 100 points on z-axis away from the mountains :D of course, this did not allow for much work on depth-cue or depth by fog. the chinese hat came in handy to cover my poor head-modelling skills :D and the idea of the bamboo-ghost was born only after i realized that the guy sitting there looked like he would -ahem- enjoy himself (instead of enjoying the vista ;)). hope you’ll like it better, my friends!

- juandel

[aurick]

LOL, Juandel. I hadn't considered that possible interpretation of his position until you said something, and now it's stuck in my brain like a bad song that you just can't get rid of.

The picture is lovely. Without a doubt, it's the most sophisticated use of terrain generation scene creation that you have tried yet. The landscape by itself would have been very nice, indeed. The additions of the Chinaman and the bamboo add to the scene in great ways.

By the way, I love the flowers.

[upham]

What an A M A Z I N G wee picture juandel!
I just couldn't leave this thread without saying something! Magic!

[Digits]

Beautiful Juandel, I love the rice paddies in the distance and the use of greens, blues and yellows in the image. I wouldn't worry about the z values in this case you have scaled and blended everything perfectly to give that feeling of spaciousness and distance. It, as most all of your pieces, is gentle to the eye and soul of the viewer. I love it

[Stonecutter]

Very nice, Juandel!! :tu: :tu: :tu:
I love the depth and perspective you achieved in this.
As a wise old one said, (I think his name was soo-thern), 'Don't model what you can't see...)
The things you can't see in this one are there anyway, thanks to your magic!
:tu: :tu: :tu: :cool: :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Tag]

What a beautiful picture Juandel! Your landscapes are all so great, and keep getting better. It started as Pixolator's terrain tutorial, but I think you're becomming the landscape master on the forum.

The Chinese gentleman really adds a whole new dimension to this one. I would have never guessed the actual shallowness on this image. The sense of depth with the figure, branches, and beautiful flowers makes this appear like a far expanding image. Beautiful landscape :tu: :tu:

[JOLA]

I have been to China already but I never saw
such a nice place : fantastic dreamland
Juandel :eek:

[Emmanuel]

Hi,

Good to be back after all this time. I'm looking this thread with envy for some time now. I couldn't figure out how this kind of image could be done in ZBrush before and I was badly missing it. Many many thanks Pixolator for this great tut' !!! :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

Juandel, your images are real real great. Lot of colours, lot of joy. A pleasure when I see a new one. :) But your last one is really the one I prefer. Amazing !! :eek: I couldn't dream of doing so beautiful sceneries. I'll give it a try soon.

When I see what all of you, ZBrushers, have made in this thread, I think that ZBrush is a great tool that can really be adapted to anyone needs.

Many thanks to all of you, and keep up with the good work !!

Emmanuel

[juandel]

ha! thank you all for the kind comments, my friends! :D

your feedback is as comforting as a hot bath-tub - which i prefer to
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/hotspringsf.jpg
HOT SPRINGS :D

not a gentle one, i’m afraid, Digits, and not a good one, either - but as it is my first attempt to make a partially z-fire-scene i decided to upload it anyway, hoping that one or a few of you get(s) inspired to do further z-pyrotechnical research :)

i think that a clever made alpha in combination with modifying deformations, a glow-material (i used it just for the sparkles and down there in front of the main spring) and with either TextureMaster or one of the Gradient-scripts might do the trick, but this are just ideas. any additions, be they theoretical or via contributions would be most appreciated!

- juandel

[Nikko]

Juandel, you really have the ability to grasp a new concept and take off with it!
VERY nicely done! Many, Many :tu: :tu: :tu: 'S!

[Tag]

This is where I end up when I wander in ZBrushland. I started making tools for an image, then started the figure for it. The head turned out pretty cool, but didn't fit the image. Next thing you know I was playing around and ended up with this image.
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-1004199354ksc.jpg

[Pixolator]

These images deserve to placed in a gallery... and they are now! :)

The top of this thread has been updated to include a direct link to the AlphaCentury gallery at Pixologic Home Page.

This gallery will be updated when new images are added.

[juandel]

WOW! thank you, Pixolator! :D that’s a fantastico gallery.... though i miss a few wonderful vistas that have been posted outside of this thread ;): c’mon ZB-gals y guys, (re)post your :tu: :tu: :tu: terrains + scripts + tips into here :D

- juandel :D

[drjjwow]

two images for the pixologic gallery from me.. thanks to all.. http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-1006502470yxv.jpg http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads0/user_image-1006502529rdi.jpg http ://www.pixolator.com/ubb/uploaded_files/user_image-1006502633tey.jpg forgot about this one...

[juandel]

a repost :)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juju_bears2.jpg

- juandel :D

[Muvlo]

Just a quick image:
The Pleasant Lake
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1006641237kfb.jpg
Great images everyone, old and new! :)

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1006672765rlu.jpg
Thank Juandel for posting a tip on water and thank pix for the Terrain method.
i have 3 differnt 3d plane Terrain on the bottom.
1 water
2 mountain
3 another mountain with differnt material on it.
and then i tip it up for the background
and then i tip it upside down for the clouds.
never used no render on this though

[juandel]

ah, so many unbelievably beautifullies here... Tami, your 'fujiyama is gorgeous, i part. love that tree... a very much alive landscape, fantastico and full of atmosphere... Doc, these are my favorites, too, up to now, that is ;), Muvlo: superb... a very detailed and lovely z-scape this is!!! wonderful! moremoremore, please! EZ: beautiful!!! mysterious and gloomy... i think there are millions of alphas to simulate water... for instance you could give the simple brush with stroke:linear at varying brushsizes a try, or use the 3d-terrain-tool instead of a plane to apply the alpha and z-offset to! furthermore i suggest you activate that fog-icon in the render-window, which stays active in preview-rendermode and mayhaps play with the fog-depths and colors a bit... i love the fog, as it adds "realism" and allows to hide a few flaws at the same time :D

- juandel

[juandel]

with the help of Davey and Muvlo i was able to produce a script... i do not like the result
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/teraainscriptfin.jpg
but i hope you will find this or that helpful for your own projects! :D

a terrainscript (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/aterrainscript.txt)

hope it works!

- juandel

[juandel]

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/winter.jpg
yup, it’s getting cold over here :( at least i got inspired to do the above one.
if you care, i recorded a winterscapescript (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/winter.txt) of the session, including the making of a tree tool and all, but be warned, that it is :ex: very long, :ex: without notes and probably most important :ex: unchecked, so you are kind of an omega-tester :D i did not find time to check it, as i am off to other projects i want to finish tonite. hope you like the pic :D

- juandel

[juandel]

long time no scape... have to get into it again :D so here is the last one for 2001, probably, another try at a bambooscenery:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/bamboos.jpg

hope you’ll like it!

- juandel

[aurick]

That's beautiful, my friend. Completely natural-looking. You've really mastered the art of creating expansive vistas with a lot of depth to them. The haze, the water, the vegetation: all :tu:

[drjjwow]

wowzer juandel these last two are my favorite... great job on the new scenes.. i give it 1 hundred :tu: 's

[juandel]

thank you amigos! :D

haha, i thought that would be it for 2001, but then i did this today:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/riverbed.jpg

it started with an idea about doing a vast stretch of pebbles the easy way. for that purpse i created a few pebbles and distributed them via free hand and a few other strokes so the the canvas was covered with them, grabbed an alpha, applied it to a terraintool, which i had initialized in that way, that one axis-profile was set to flat and the other got rippled about 6 times, applied z-offset and argh! i did not like it at all: no matter which values i made the z-offset with, it got either too flat or too spikelike. so i positioned the terrain, snapshot it once, put the new one further down z-axis and placed pebbles including the big rocks for the "shores" manually. on another layer i had created a neato water-alpha using alphabrush 22 very often, rotating it a lot. this alpha was grabbed and applied to a plane, low offset, gelshader-material, transparency 91. behind that i did another plane, flatcolor, to mimick a sky to shine through the water-surface. to get depth/the right light i had to apply the fog using a grabbed alpha, so the layers containing the sky and the transparent water were rendered un-fogged resp. fog only below of them, and the riverbed-layer was rendered with full fog... which was no problem as i had to turn flatten layers off anyway to make the gel-shader of the water transparent. the poor pixologic-fishes were put into a reimported version of the whole pic to make it more vivid and then i started using shading-enhancer (i overdid it trying to do the waves with very high rgb-settings), blurbrush, smudging here and there and so on.

sorry for the long blahblah... i did not press the end record button as i had zoomed in and out several times... a script would have made explanations much more easier. hope you’ll like it anyway! :)

- juandel

[juandel]

red mountains, somewhere in z-world :)
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/alamut1.jpg
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/alamut2.jpg

- juandel

[drjjwow]

very cool juandel.. the king if terrains has come back to the post that he built..lol.. juandel you have made this a famous post...congrats...

[Stonecutter]

Hey Hansl, is that last 'Red Mountain' one Macchu Piccu? You've definitely established yourself as our resident landscaper, and you're doing a hell of a fine job!!
:tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: and one of these: :cool:

[juandel]

thank you, Doc and Michael! :D yup, that last one became mucho Machu Picchu like, but thats probably the formations most easily done the alphacentury way - probably one of the next will be a vista of something Guilin-like (http://www.courtneymilne.com/innerland/html/guilinimage.html) :D

here some kind of after-storm-fiberfrenzy took charge and spoilt the composition, but i liked the lighting in the bg, so i uploaded the pic anyway:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/herbstscape4.jpg

- juandel

[aurick]

Honestly, Juandel, I've sene places in Montana where the trees got to be just like that. It's a very realistic picture, and very pretty. Makes me homesick!

[juandel]

glad you liked it, Aurick! :) i’ve never been in Montana, but the pic might well have been inspired by some movies. or it was the z-rush-hour, once more, when the paintings seem to create themselves ;)

below is some vista that reminds me of a lil trekking we did in Andorra, a tiny country in the pyrenees between spain and france about 12 years ago...

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/pyrenees.jpg

the alpha was created by applying an alpha picked from the pollen database site (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=003443) to a sphere, z-offsetting it, snapshotting and replacing the snapshots of the tool all over the canvas, mrgbz-grabbing the whole thing and applying the thus created alpha to a plane to do the alpha-century-move (which i know by heart by now :D) i applied material 041 from southerns fabulous Fleshpack (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=003263) for the mountains, did a lil alpabrushing for medium distance rocks and fiber one for the trees, exported the bestrendered pic with fog and depthcue and reimported it as a texture to fill the canvas of a new document with it and started finishing... a lil smudge and simple brush, painting the frontclouds and the rivlets (shadingenhancer at small brushsize, reduced rgb-value and hitting: repeat stroke in the stroke-window afterwards). finally some tweakings in the adjustments - voila! this time i think the massive fog is ok... at least i remember the weather to be like that back then! we were freezing and dripping :) hope you’ll like it!

- juandel

here is a handy little tool for your alphacentury you might like. http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=003566
it does some of the work for you as a short cut..

[juandel]

and handy it is, EZ! another great tool out of your workshop! :tu: :tu: :tu:

the land in the below one is the first terrain i did with it, water was done the :tu: :tu: :tu: Zoid (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=003326)-Kaz (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=003498) -way as well as trying to make use of a few of the techniques Muvlo (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=003556) showed us in his beautifullious saltwaterthread. imho, it is a good example as to what might happen if an alpine soul who has not seen the sea for years tries doing a seascape without having any reference at hand: no way them waves would behave like this anywhere on our planet :D :

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/seasea.jpg

- juandel

[Zoid]

A very refreshing view! The water looks nice and clear thanks to the transparency, and the whitecaps on the waves are very convincing. Any tips on how you do those?

[juandel]

:) thanks, Zoid! i painted the whitecaps after baking the land and water layers mostly with simplebrush (z-off) using the spotted alpha with reduced heigth (mostly), both with freehand stroke and a few drag-rectangle ones... and did a lil smudging where the rocks and water meet - i think creating a crescentmoonshaped alpha would be a better way but did not succeed in creating one i liked!

- juandel

[Mentat7]

OK that does it! After seeing this thread go on and on I'm just gonna have to try doing one myself. Now see what y'all have gone and done! ;)

dont Blame me pix the one who started it ^^^LOL
i see the master land scapers posted another one juandel :tu:

[Muvlo]

Just been scrolling over all the new Lands, and what wonderous lands they are! Thanks for so many places to go Juandel. :)

[juandel]

next one:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/antsfin.jpg

when playing with the colour-adjustments it turned into something subaquatic. i liked it better than the unadjusted version anyway, so what you see here are sea-ants, a species yet to be discovered, as far as i know :D

the :tu: :tu: :tu: ant.ztl is © Kathy and the primo foliage © smiles (downloadable from this thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=002297))

- juandel

[DeeVee]

Dawn and Sunset at U-Shaped Bay Green Island.
Playing around as usual, I doodled and doodled and this is the result. Image 2 same image at sunset with a little fog added http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1012624459apk.jpg
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1014067359grd.jpg

[Mentat7]

Juandel and DeeVee those are just too cool!! :tu: :tu: :tu: + :) = :D :D

Sea Ants Juandel? Hmmm....bet there are some sea flies and sea spiders hangin' around too? ;)

[DeeVee]

Very nice underwater effect jaundel. That is the beauty of art you can create whatever comes into your mind.

[drjjwow]

excellent images... juandel and deevee.. thanks..

[Muvlo]

A new world that is very foggy and which, in the first years of this world anyway, used a lot of DepthBrush.

Howling:

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1013873752ygi.jpg

[Mentat7]

Very nice Muvlo! That turned out superb! Looks almost like a Bryce image! :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Zoid]

Fantastic modeling and lighting. I see three faces. Anyone see more?

[aurick]

The sense of depth here is very cool. And I like the colors; it's beautiful. I spotted three faces, too.

[Muvlo]

Thanks for the comments. :)

(There are actually four faces, but the fourth one is such an odd model that you probably can't see it.)

[DeeVee]

I see four faces two up top and two below them. Very easy to see really. A Very nice image BTW.

[Ron Harris]

very ultra kewlies....and yes I see all kinds of faces.....and they are looking at me..../me gets nervous :tu:

[juandel]

fantabulousissimost, Muvlo! :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: that one goes deeper and deeper and deeper and... to no end - zooper! excellento!!! wished i could make out a lil more of the waterfall! and yes, i see four faces - one upper right and three to the lowest left, one of them a bit in the fog already, right?

:confused: what DepthBrush :qu:

- juandel

[DeeVee]

On looking at this image another time, there are more than four faces. If you start at the very top and work your way down you will see that there are more than four faces.

[Muvlo]

That sneaky ol' ZBrush must of snuck a few heads in there by itself! ;)

Juandel, the DepthBrush is the tool with a paintbrush over a sphere and '3D' in the top left corner. At low intensity it can be very uselful in adding natural rock look to a smooth terrain. :)

[Digits]

Awesome vista, you are pushing the envelope! This is the best one I have seen so far.

[drjjwow]

wow muvlo this is awesome .. you did a excellent job on this one.. keep them coming my friend..

juandel i wanted to say YOU are the MASTER of
AlphaCentury From the North side to east and west and from the South Your the BEST :tu:
keepem comin i injoy seeing every Pic you Make

[Muvlo]

Here's a kind of silly image (perhaps a little ugly...), I experimented with all sorts of things, and even if they are not best represented here, they'll help me elsewhere. :D

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1013973637fdl.jpg

[Stargo]

Absolutely great images, Mulvo :tu: :tu: :tu:

stargo
________
My homepage (http://www.juergenkilp.com)

[DeeVee]

Great Image my man. Looks like a real tropical downpour.

[Smiles]

You made it rain in ZBRUSH lol Great image love how the fall came out!

[DeeVee]

Revisited AlphaCentury doodled myself into the following image. The aim was to check depth of field and also to bring different areas of the image into sharp focus. It is amazing how varying the modifier settings produce such a wide range of effects. http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1014012388acy.jpg

[Muvlo]

Very cool image Deevee. :) For some reason, it looks like a large and misty room of plants, though I don'tr know what it is that gives this illusion. :)

[DeeVee]

Reaquainting myself with AlphaCentury and TextureMaster, I did this image as an exercise. The results looked interesting so I thought I would share it with the group.
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1014038925moe.jpg

[Muvlo]

Your image is very interesting DeeVee, it lets me look for all sorts of things while it is busy looking very cool. :tu:

[drjjwow]

very creative joe.. me likes it..

[juandel]

fantastico ones, DeeVee and Muvlo!!! thanks for making the "Depth-Brush" clear for sillyme (according to the .pdf i always called it 3d-brush - just saw that the tool-palette calls it depth-brush :)), Muvlo!

next request: how did you do the rain? looks terricifo!

here is something unrainy:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/springscape3.jpg

i know it does not look like a terrain with all that grass - but the foreground is! :) included: my first attempt at Kaz’s :tu: :tu: waterfall-technique (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=003689) :D

- juandel

[juandel]

a vista from the island of Zali:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/zali.jpg

the basic alpha was done using the spherebrush (2.5d) with tweaked depth-settings and heigth-width-ratio (drawpalette) and a few geartools strewn into there with freehand-stroketype. i only realized this gonna be rice-paddies after i made the z-offset-move, therefore i could not make any use of the original texture. rather severe 3d-(depth :))-brushing (mostly with the default grass-texture on), a lil fiberbrush, fiddling with material and light-settings, shadingenhancerbrush for a few rivlets, light fog-colour for depth2, dark one for the foreground, depthcue graph almost reversed - voila! hope you’ll like it!

- juandel

[Muvlo]

Those both look really good Juandel! :tu:, but especially the second one... I love the lighting and the shapes.

About the rain, I used the Kruzr way, in the image he posted here (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001502).

[DeeVee]

Nice work as usual jaundel. I like them both. I will contact you in the not too distant future.

[DeeVee]

I have been playing with diferent views. since I have not seen this airial view here I thought I would post it. This was an exercise in painting water and rocks. http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1014514116pdv.jpg

[juandel]

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/butterfliesadja.jpg

nothing special, but i thought a terrain would be the right warm-up for myself after a few z-less weeks. then, as i had severe difficulties to connect into here yesternite i spent my time in adding flowers and butterflies so the terrain got out of focus :) basic butterfly was created from a circle3d-tool in edit-move-mode with z-axis transformations disabled (in transformation-modifiers-subpalette) and adding colour in edit-mode with z-off.

hope you’ll like it!

- juandel


:b4: edit: i posted a how-to for the butterflies here (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=004151&p=4)

[juandel]

next one was done trying to create a jagged mountainscape...

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/wildscape.jpg

SH and SV were turned off for the plane and some noise added to the editbrush. as you can see in the wildscape-script (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/wildscape.txt) i recorded, it was no good idea to use edit-scale at one point :). there was minor postwork done with bumpbrush after i ended recording (and the pic would need much more postwork and additions) but i hope the script might be inspiring for those interested in landscapecreation the alphacentury way! :)

- juandel

edit: and another rather gloomy one :) no textures or whatever, a grey basic material. all colours came with fog/coloured lights.

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/wildscape2.jpg

[Slosh]

JUANDEL!!!! Where do I start? I love the butterflies picture (my mother, too, since she is a big fan of butterflies).

I have done your alpha century script about 5 times and can't get the hang of it. This is obviously your forte, and these last two pictures prove it. If I ever get the technique down, I will post a picture for your approval.

Brian

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

Juandel, your landscapes are beautiful! I think you are definately the master at landscapes in Z.

[Muvlo]

You speak of you landscapes in such a casual way, but they are fantastic! You add on wonderful animal/plant life, that is what really brings them to life! :)

[juandel]

thank you for your very kind words, amigos! :)

no life, this time, i’m afraid, Muvlo, but as i happened to accidentially tweak the basic material in a way that it became a kind of backlight rockmaterial (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/rockmateriala.zmt) i could not resist to work in stone only ;) surprise: gel is set to 2 and it looks like rock, though :D

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/wildscape4.jpg

a version of this material was used to do the last pic i posted as well.

to get the effect in the sunset-one there are a few things i had to take care of in addition to applying the material to the z-offsetted plane:

color of plane: medium grey
mask: remains on (or gets inverted after applying z-offset) to add another shade
lights: sun1 in default position, clicked once to make it a backlight, color orange. sun2: increased intensity, color grey. sun3: activated, orangecolor, radial.

tweaking the diffuse and specular sliders and graphs (and saving reloading another version of the material) and applying it here and there or on another terrain of its own is adding to the diversity.

i hope its not too dark for your gusto.

- juandel

[impending]

Hi juandel - Holy Cow this thread has 150+ messages. It never would have been this successful without your wonderful contributions. Keep them coming . . . your work is always a pleasure to view !!!!

jd

[juandel]

thanks joe! :)

here is something a little different:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/alphaomega.jpg

the way i did the alpha might be inspring for those on the quest for the omega :D the attached alphaomega recorded session (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/alphaomega.txt) shows a way how to combine default alphas. in case you find this helpful: happy experimenting! :)

- juandel

:ex: edit: ARGH! silly me was so taken away that i did not turn a grabbed texture into the alpha. i was combining nada in the recorded session. doh! no: DOH! :D :D :D +
:mad: ok, as a scusi i uploaded the alpha i wanted to use :rolleyes: and a 2d-pic:

omega-alpha (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/omegaRGBGrab.psd) hugh! its a .psd!

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/scusi.jpg

[wenna]

Hi sorry for the repost but Juandel said I should post it here.. :)

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1020982261mfz.jpg

[Belleski]

No apologize needed Wenna...Its a beautiful landscape! ;)

[juandel]

thank you for adding your :tu: :tu: :tu: landscape, wenna! :)

here is a recipe for a fastfood "vista a la croc":

:b4: go to zoo (or if available: your local crocodile or alligator swamp) and make photo of croc. :ex: dont go too close, use zoom!

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/krokophot.jpg

:b4: if needed, digitalize photo. import into z-brush via textures palette. fill canvas (command+F)

:b4: choose mrgbz-grabber-tool and select a portion of the crocs skin, grab it.

:b4: check out alpha-palette... err, just a white rectangle, right? go to the grabbed croc-texture in the textures palette and press the "make alpha" button below. this becomes the active alpha automatically.

:b4: clear canvas of croc-photo, create hi-res-plane and apply the croc-alpha the alphacentury way. build landscape with offset z and a little pushing/pulling in edit-move-mode, mayhaps with a lil noise added to brush (transformation-modifiers). apply grabbed texture. sky was done on separate layer (in fact its the untextured crocplane turned upside down, stretched and high perspective distortion added in draw palette, different material), grass added to baked layer. depthcue graph (render-palette) turned upside down + additional fiddling with its depth - voila!

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/crocscapef.jpg

:b4: of course you can make use of less snappy models like for instance treebark, pebbles or - yes: mountains as well :D

- juandel

[jibberish]

wow! great idea, jaundel! thanks for sharing the tip w/ us. i've got to try that out!

josh

[Stargo]

Nice image, Juandel :tu: :tu: :tu:

stargo

[Stonecutter]

Now THAT is a Kool technique Hansl!!!
Another gem from the Alpha-Lapidary par excellence!!!
:tu: :tu: :tu: :cool: :tu: :tu: :tu: , and more :tu: 's... :)

[ztevie-rae]

That's a beautiful landscape Juandel! :cool:
The definative master of A.Century.
Keep em comin bro ! :tu: :tu: :tu:

Stevie-rae

[juandel]

thank you, amigos! :D

following the above playing with textures i tried a few alphatechniques that were new to me. applying alphas in editmove-mode i knew, but Scougall’s approach (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=005729) to apply them on a rotated plane was very inspiring. to make the below water i created an alpha with the spherebrush in linear stroke, mucho reduced heighth and increasing drawsize towards the bottom of the canvas to fake perspective, grabbed it and applied it several times to the slightly rotated plane in editmovemode.

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/alphawaterb.jpg

some tweaking of the reflectemapmat, setting sun on top and enabling environmentrender-scene with fov 90 to make reflections...

to get myself dry i went back into the mountains and - inspired by thelonious :tu: :tu: :tu: explorations into lowpolymodelling created a mountainscapealpha by basically making a mountainscape in lowpoly :D for those who are interested: the creation of the alpha is available as a recorded script here (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/mountain2a.txt) and i uploaded the mountain material (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/mountain2.zmt) (which surprised me by its reactions to light, both colour an position) as well.

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/rmountain2.jpg

i hope to be able to explore lowpoly-landscaping techniques further, as i think they could be of great use for foreground rocks, for instance.

i hope you’ll like them :D

- juandel

[Stonecutter]

I had already logged off, Hansl, and was getting ready to leave my studio, and had a feeling I should check the Forum one more time...Weeellll...Ya drew me in Z-Bud! These last experiments are wonderful!
(When is your book, 'Strange Worlds And Fractal Dreams' coming out? ;) )
:tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: and another :tu: !!

[Sarum]

the water is beautiful and the landscape too :tu:

[juandel]

thank you, Sarum & SC! :)

the publisher just informed me that, if the book will be printed at all, it will happen posthumously - but that i should please pay my share for printing expenses in advance (=right now) :rolleyes:

ok, next is another combo of modelling and alphacentury:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/volc5.jpg

i set out with a default plane and created a volcano (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/creatingvolcano.txt). then i doubled the default canvas size (in order to get an higher-res-alpha - i am not sure if that is necessary, but thats what i did), filled it with a colour and placed the volcano into its center (seen from above) and with simplebrush and a few default alphas created the surroundings... this bird-view was mrgbz-grabbed, the document reduced to its default size and the grabbed alpha applied to a 320x240 initialized plane for which the height-setting in the draw-window was reduced to 75. negative z-offset at about 30 was applied twice. mucho fiddling with materials and default-textures to get something looking lavalike. sky and greenery (palmleaves are at hand in mine and the Z-Tool-box (sorry, searchfunction does not work right now) and a few foreground lava-rocks were added on layers of their own. only when reimporting the exported pic i realized that it was too boring so sillyme started adding the eruption with alpha- and bumpbrush to the flat pic :rolleyes: finishing with shadingenhancer + sharpen/blur-brush and fiddling with adjustments in render-palette.

i hope its not too dark on your screens, ZB’s!

- juandel

[Stargo]

Wow, Hansl thats a really great Vulcano :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:
Thank you for the script :) :tu:

stargo

[Stonecutter]

It's fine on mine, Hansl...
And that's another Alpha MeisterPiece!!!
:tu: :tu: :tu: :cool: :tu: :tu: :tu:

after seeing juandel volcano pic i had to re do mine to add a little life to it :D http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1022901318mbn.jpg
i used this Tool to make the Lava / lava Rocks http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=005739
on page 2 is the old volcano pic.
i used this as (Material Texture)Not Texture but (Material Texture)and set the bumps up with reflectivty high using this pic called hot Lava http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1022901480xcj.jpg

[Kevin]

Well, this is my second attempt at making a texture using the AlphaCentury procedure. (The first one didn't have much depth and it fell victim to the delete key.) I do have two questions. Once I create the alpha and the texture, is it possible to keep the alpha and add more color to the texture? If so, how?

And in my attached picture, if you look at the lower right corner of the picture, you'll see a place where the landscape mesh wasn't sized quite right. (There were two layers in this picture, the landscape and the sky.) I merged the two layers and select color from the surrounding area, but I can't seem to get it to blend in to cover up the area. When I apply the color, it comes out very dark in that area, even though I sample colors from that area in the picture before I paint. Even closing down ZBrush and restarting doesn't seem to help. So what am I missing? http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1023757748evp.jpg

[juandel]

thats a hotissimost volcano, EZ! in german we have a metaphor for going beyond the limits of something which translates literally as "blowing up the frame" and thats exactly what yours is doing :cool: :cool: :cool: :D thank you all for your kind comments!

Kevin: thats a very peaceful vista with a lovely imbedded z-river and very nice color-scheme! :tu: :tu: :tu:

as for your questions:

:b4: i do not know about the merging part (as i use the merge layers scarcely only, i love to have things on separate layers) but it might help to place another version of your landscape tool in front down there and pull it into front (dragging downward outside the gyro in move or rotate-mode) and scale/rotate/move it towards the right so that only one or two peaks of it are left to be seen on the canvas to cover up the problem zone.

:b4: as for adding more colours to your texture without changing the terrainized plane there are at least two ways (that come into my mind at this early hour):

first thing i would do is to duplicate the texture (textures>inventory>dup) to save your original version in case you like it better than the one you experiment with. now with this texture selected you could

a) either create a new layer, deactivate all the others, and fill the empty canvas with the texture by hitting the f-key. now you can apply all colours you want with for instance simple brush or any other tool, then use mrgbz-grabber again to capture it as yet another texture, deactivate/delete the layer, load the terrained plane again (having placed a marker helps a lot :)) and apply the new won texture to it after entering edit-mode. or

b) with the duplicate texture applied load the texture master script and paint onto the editable landscape-tool with any tools you want.

another way to add colours without refining the texture is to play with the colours of the light(s) and/or fog at depth 1 and 2. some of my vistas are monocolor tools without texture and all colour in them comes with lighting/fog. you might even leave the mask of the applied alpha on the tool to achieve additional colourshades.

just a few ideas. of course you can apply colours directly onto the snapshot landscape without doing any of the above. this works much better when the landscape is on a layer of its own as there wont be no spillovers to the skylayer (take care to paint with z-off)

i hope this helps!

below is my first try/study at creating something mesa-like :) obviously there’s still a lot of explorations to do alphawise or i change my mind and go for ruins :D

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/me2f.jpg

- juandel

[Kevin]

Thanks for the tips, Juandel. And very image is very nice. It looks alot like a photograph.

Kevin

[DeeVee]

I was fooling around with AlphaCentury the other night and came up with this image. http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1023830414wqu.jpg

[juandel]

ahh, those are lovely reflections, DeeVee! :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

i have made use of your excellento watermaking technique (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=005924) in the below one:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/isf.jpg

and found it reasonable to include a few of ed-the-atoms(blahblah :)) seagulls once again into a vista :D i used a reflected map material for the water with the grabbed texture of the island and sky in S1 instead of a default one. surf as well as shadingenhancer and highlighter work was done after exporting and reimporting a bestrender as a texture and filling the canvas with flatmaterial on.

the below smog-cityscape was quickly done with an alpha i grabbed after running one of WingedOnes great SpaceStation scripts (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=006253) (i think it was the third one or the one for creating a texture).

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/cityscape1.jpg

thanks for viewing!

- juandel

[Mik]

Wow Juandel that cityscape is really incredible, I would greatly appreciate an insight into how you created it.
I have tried to do the same in the past but gave up after getting totally frustrated.
:eek: :tu: :tu: :)

[juandel]

hi, Mik! :)

thank you for your enthusiasm!

as mentioned above i used one of WingeOnes great scripts he posted with his spacestation project as a basic alpha. i just rechecked it: it was number 3. anyway, this script as well as his fantastico random.txt (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=003199&p=) (see a bit further down there) make use of changing the canvas-size, so i am pretty sure they wont work properly in demo-mode. as far as i remember it is not possible to import alphas in demo-mode as well, so i am afraid it wont help you when i post the final result of the script here as a .jpg for you to import it as a txture and grab it with the mrgbz-grabber and use as an alpha the alphacentury way :(

hmmm, in case you are good at scripting (i aint) you could try to edit Winged-Ones script, delete the canvas-size changing part and modify the values for the center cube and the random specifications to those of the default canvas.

anyway, i made use of bigger canvas-size myself: after i had pirated WO’s alpha i doubled the default canvas, filled it with a greyish colour and used the simple brush with drag-rectangle stroke type. i just filled one corner, then hit shift+s to snapshot it and then "w", dragged it to another place, hit "e", changed a little size, snapshot it once more, "w" dragged it somewhere else and so on. it helps to rotate the alpha to add to diversity now and then. then i grabbed this multialpha-layer and thus created a hi-res alpha consisting of multiple WingedOne-alphas. this one was applied to a hi-res plane (SH and SV off), and negative z-offset values were used to let them boxes grow.

to achive the perspective i held down the shift key while clicking the perspective distortion button in the draw palette and then clicked into the value slider left to it and, without releasing the mousebutton i picked a spot on the canvas where i wanted the perspective to be. only then i started drawing the plane and placing it in gyro-mode... some fiddling with fog-depths, intensity and back/front colours, a best render: voila! thanks to WingedOnes great script it didnt take more than about 30 minutes.

in demo-mode and without a script, i am afraid its a bit harder: choose the cube-tool, switch off SH and SV, paint a cube, snapshot it, displace it in move mode, scale it, snapshot again, move (drag some in front by moving the cursor downwards outside of the gyro) and so on, until the canvas is filled with different sized cubes sitting above each other seen from above. then use the mrgbz-grabber and make an alpha out of it, that can either be applied directly to a plane or used with 2.5d-brushes in dragrectangle-mode to achieve even more detailed alphas.

hope this helps and sorry for the length of my reply! :)

- juandel

[cneofotistos]

here's my first alpha terrain work. I too plundered WingedOne's borg texture script.

nothing to explain, Juandel masterfully did it all. 100% zbrush - cloudy sky painted on a plane3D and then placed at an angle with the ground. all in all, 2 hours

kisses

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1025009361emj.jpg

[WingedOne]

cneofotistos, your image is missing. :confused: I'd love to see it.

Nice work on the city scape Juandel. :tu: :) I'll have to try that sometime myself. Reminds me a little bit of Courascant from Star Wars.

[DeeVee]

jaundel you did a great job on that seascape. I like it a lot.
Also the modifications used when creating the water.
It appears as if that script is being used.

. :tu: :tu: :D :D :tu: :tu:

[Northstarr]

My goodness, all these are absolutely georgeous!! I am so jealous! There must be something I am missing. I ran the script 10 times, made notes and I have yet to get past the mask point. Everytime when I clear the mask. There is nothing left but a flat absolutely blank plane. PLEASE can someone tell me what I am missing or doing wrong??
I purchased this program on the strength of what I saw it can do.. but for the life of me I cannot make anything work!!
:(

north star try this on the top pic and the link to the left of it is the same thing http://www27.brinkster.com/ezbrush/mainTools.html
look for (alpha Century Builder) it a tool it kind of a short cut to help you make these pic the ending was left out because that a option for the user to deside what he likes

[Muvlo]

Essentially, NorthStar, you have to use the Offset deformer before you clear the mask. (And make sure the orange X, Y, and Z modifiers are set correctly.)

But EZ's script should take care of all that. :)

[Northstarr]

EZ thank you I will try that suggestion.

And Mulvo I did have the deformer offset on z as per the script and set to -50 as per the script. But it seems to reset itself to 0 before I clear the mask. Any idea why it would do that??

I really appreciate the help you people are offering. I intend to master this thing if it take all of my whole 2 weeks vacation to do it!!! :rolleyes:

[Northstarr]

:D
Hey, I actually did it!! 8 hours later, and it ain't perfect but it is my first decent one after about 12 failures. Here it is. It is called Underground Quartz Mine, (fitting since I live in mining country)
Comments are welcome, how else will I learn?
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1025551800pfd.jpg

Hey Got to start some were's
and thats a Pretty Good start :tu:

[DeeVee]

Great first landscape. i am pleased you stuck with it. youwill see that things will just take off now.
Looking forward to more, more, more :ex: :ex: :tu: :tu: :D

[Northstarr]

Thank you both for the encouragement! I noticed something that I may have to overcome. I tend to apply the same techniques in my digital work as I do in my oil paintings. That's why everything kind of comes out sort of surreal. I did that subconciously. Hmmm. :eek:

[juandel]

very good one, northstarr!

first vista i did with premiere 1.5 - and the 1st 4 legged animal i managed to create thanks to zspheres. it’s a cow, btw :)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/alm.jpg

- juandel

[Vikki]

Very very nice Juandel! I love the vegetation and your cow is terrific! :D

[WushuGuy]

Great looking mountains. Sort of like Machu Pichu !
I am sorry but at first glance I thought it was a cat ! I think it was because the tail is up in the air. But, it works either way :D :D Terrific work.

[juandel]

lol, WushuGuy! ya, it looks like a cat :)

ok, here is a quick lunchbreak upload of what i did this morning: an alphacentury water (alpha done with fiberbrushed aplpha, one transparent layer above bottom) and some 1.5 premiere spraybrush-spray (done with new tool paintbrush!) :)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/waterspray.jpg

hope you’ll like it!

- juandel

[DeeVee]

Jaundel you have me salivating :ex: Great stuff. Thank you for sharing your exploits with 1.5. Looking forward to seeing more.
XX :tu: :D :D

[[ Vincent ]]

My Terrain experience:

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1027947839dhz.jpg

[DeeVee]

I like this :ex: It has great depth of field. It could easily be an impressive underwater image.
Congratulations :ex: X :tu:

[DeeVee]

Jaundel there is something I always wanted to ask you, Is it very foggy where you live? I notice that a vast number of your images have a large amout of fog.

DeeVee,
Joe.

[WingedOne]

Juandel, that water looks awesome! :tu: :tu:

[Northstarr]

Oh yes I like that very much! You managed to get the fog to work for you very well. Congratulations!

:tu: :tu: :tu:

[juandel]

that is a truly magic experience you are sharing with us, Vincent! :tu: :tu: :tu: i particularily like the bright green glow there and there and there... merveiloso!

thank you, Joe and WingedOne :) this was very unplanned water, i originally sat out to do some trees with the fiberbrush, goofed up and decided to mrgbz-grab the screen just for fun - from there on zbrush took over ;)

DeeVee: it can get "pretty" foggy over here, especially in winter, but other than you i am not trying to depict my "world" in my landscapes: that would be cityscapes, all of them. in most cases i used the fog mainly to hide flaws, especially when i was snapshotting and moving a terrain several times in a pic for depths sake and ran into problems connecting them :D

below is a fogless one in which i made little use of alphacentury only, in fact just the plain is terrained that way. the "rocks" (i know i should have taken more time with them) and cacti are two tools created the superneato new alpha-skinning way, which will help 1.5 users creating props within a minute or even less :D i hope this is not regarded to be off-topic anyway ;)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/desertoa.jpg

- juandel

[DeeVee]

Thanks for the answer Jaundel. I like this image. It brings back fond memories of a trip made to Arizona for US Hydroponic Society meeting. That was the type of landscape we saw for miles and miles. I think you captured the desert very well. :tu: :D :tu: :tu: :tu:

[juandel]

well, since today this isnt the longest thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=007358) on the forum anymore - looks like its time to catch up and add a little alpha centauring :)

in the premiere version (i havent downloaded the full one yet, but i guess its the same there) i found - with a lil help of some friends :) -an option to make polygons visible other than in dots mode. of course, this feauture is a major modelling help, but why not trying to make a mask from it? you will probably know this by now, but here is what to do to make the polyframes show up:

:b4: preferences->switch on: quick edit + pf
:b4: preferences->modifiers->draw: choose polyframe colour and opacity if needed

this done i created a sphere, and in edit-move-mode distorted it a lil bit, in edit-scale i blew one part up. with the default mrgbz-grabber i picked both alpha and texture. i did the alphacentury-move by applying the alpha to a plane and z-offsetting it. as step 2 i converted the grabbed texture into an alpha as well, applied it to the already deformed plane and did an z-offset with the same value as the first one. well, thats it basically... hope you will like :)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/meshscapeurb.jpg
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/meshscapea.jpg

- juandel

[juandel]

zspheristan :)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/zspherelandb.jpg

making use of Mentat’s fabuloso GreyscaleBaseMaterial (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=007963) - and what comes up when i run his doubtlessly wonderful poseable figure script (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=007967) (whacky abstract :() for creating the terrain-alpha :D

- juandel

[Stargo]

Very nice and abstract.
I like it :tu: :tu: :tu:

stargo

[Sarum]

i like it :)

[Digits]

Zspheristan or a Zsphere Graveyard? Nonetheless I can almost feel the dry wind blowing up those zsphereian canyons and over the zspherian lakebed. Neato imagination my friend!

[rhom]

Hansl:That is one beautiful image you've created there-for me it is right out of a madmans brain......no,no,no I'm not saying you're a madman.....just a hell'uv an image.
Well done friend!

[juandel]

thank you amigos :) madman is fine with me :D

nada special, except that the terrain and frontrocks where made with adaptive skinned zspheres at density 1, birds at 2... no colours were used, except for the fog and the colorize diffuse of the material and some goofedup tweaking in render>adjustments:


http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1032075539lib.jpg
- juanloco :D

[Stonecutter]

Three gems in a row Hansl... :tu:
(And I know gems!! :D )

:cool: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :cool:

[juandel]

thank you, gem-meister :)

but now: end of gems and two first views at a finding* about alpha-century planes i made by chance yesternite and that some of you might find interesting:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/cloudsfrac.jpg

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/aftermathfrac.jpg

the irregular shapes in there appeared when i used the new command that comes with all 3d-tools: unified skinning. i have had very lil time to explore this further, but here is what i found out until now (please keep in mind that i tend to be a very stupid researcher, so dont take all i say below for granted and put a great "METHINKS" ahead of each of the sentences :)):

:b4: the effect will appear on unified-skinned "flat" 3D-tools only: plane, circle, terrain, no matter if tools are masked or not.

:b4: for plane and circle you have to add some "z-depth" to get the effect (the default terrain has a "hill", so its not needed there, but of course it gets different when applying deformations) - meaning that you’ll have to use some deformations (like the alpha-century z-offset or gravity applied after rotating the plane/circle in the tool-preview window) on circle and plane.

:b4: the more deformations or the more complex the alphacentury applied masking produced deformations (z-offset and others), the more unpredictable the outcome - kind of fractal-like, sometimes. the things depicted on top are skinned variations of their ground terrains. with the undeformed default terraintool you might get something regular like this:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/terrainmand.jpg


:b4: the variations depend on the resolution of the original tool - and most likely depend on the resolution you choose for the skinned version as well

of course the skinned copies can be treated as all 3d-tools via: deformations>inflate, for instance :)

i hope that some of you might find this worth of further explorations - i for my part hope to be able to use this for applying those foamy rings of white to waters, for instance.

- juandel

* dunno if it was ever mentioned yet, but in case it wasnt - well, its a finding :)

[Digits]

Neato explorations Juandel, I see all kinds of capabilities judging by the super surrealism here. I love those clouds!

[Flycatcher]

Well, you saved the best "gem" until last, Juandel. I think that magenta landscape with the birds is excellent. :tu: :tu: :tu:

I shall have to revisit Alpha Century one day - my efforts were pretty feeble. Perhaps I was disillusioned compared to what I had been able to produce using height-field maps in Terragen.

I found your experiments of last night very intriguing. This is definitely an area worthy of further exploration. Thanks for the idea. :tu:

[Stonecutter]

Wow Hansl, that second one is amazing...!!
It looks like a truly alien spacecraft to me hovering above a planet...And your experiments are always fascinating! :)

:cool: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :cool:

[DeeVee]

Interesting JuJu. I really like the cloud effect, I can see myself making use of that technique. :ex: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Muvlo]

Cool experimentations Juandel! :tu:

[Northstarr]

Really interesting results here, I like the pink shaded one best.
:)

[juandel]

thank you all for the very nice comments, ZBs! :) Flycatcher: i never had a look into terragen (or any other landscaping app) so the alpha-century-way is the only way i know - and i loved it right from the start. i am pretty sure that anything you might miss at the current version will be added in future ones - and probably a few more things that no one even dreamt of (except Pixolator, probably ;)). as this thread is not a onemanshow i would really love others like you contributing into here and sharing their results... :)

having had no luck until now integrating the irregular shapes i mentioned in my last post when doing water i did a quick one yesternite using the technique i described on Page 11 (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=001312&p=11) of this thread ("vista a la croc") by importing a cropped part (the bodies) of this mongoose (? mongeese?) photo
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/mongoosekl.jpg
i recently took at the zoo as a texture, converting texture to alpha and so on. surprisingly it looked like a landscape you can find south/southwest of Vienna :D i added a few quickly sketched and grabbed trees the :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: DeeVee-way (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=008115) and turned the exported result into grayscale in PS, reimported it and played with render-adjustments - hope you’ll like!

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/sleepingkinggreysc.jpg

- juandel

[DeeVee]

Very inovative Jaundel. I like the landscape, it looks very similar to what I saw in the restricted zone on Montserrat. Thanks for sharing, it is very much appreciated.
Joe
DeeVee

:tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

[juandel]

thanks, DeeVee! :) luckily any volcanoes that might have been active here once upon a time have been geologically replaced - though the place the front part in the above pic reminded me of is located along a seismically rather active line - it is the northeastern end of the alps. some occasional rumbling - i hope this stays so.

next one is somewhat baroque:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/lifelab3a.jpg

muchas y ultimativas gracias go to url-meister monsieur Frenchy Pilou, who pointed towards artificial life (http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html) apps in cameyos fantastico custom filter thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=008036) for the first time and kept providing me in personal correspondence with links until he found the ultimate Artificial Life page for Mac-users (http://www.kasprzyk.demon.co.uk/www/ALHome.html), too. with one of the apps there i managed to create this symmetric alpha

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/lablife3.jpg

with the about 10th try. i imported and did some alpha-centurying + a little inflate. once the plane was set i put a marker and did a second plane on another layer, which i brought into front in gyro-move-mode and whose material was set to transparent 95 and render>flatten-layers off. i changed the editbrush in transformation>modifiers graph and did the rings. a vertically switched texture grab of layer one was inserted as reflective map into the materials slot, and reflectivity + transparency graph were increased/tweaked. a slight sharpen was applied in PS postwork - omce i got cameyos brushes saved this wont be necessary anymore, i guess.

i hope you might find this as inspiring as i did Pilou’s research! those life-apps look like fun to no end!

- juandel

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Juandel
It's not baroque :)
It's like an electron microscope view of atomic level of matter.
And it is ! Sugar, selt or other geometric strutures :)
Amazing connection between different scaling vision mixed with different sort of programm ! Generating - Imaging - Sculpting :cool:
Thx for praising my research :) It's just for fun :)
A very good site for Alife is http://www.rennard.org/alife/
Made by a frenchy :) But in english too :) great links inside !
And don't forget the "Game of life" http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html
Here You can "play" to be "god creator" in direct and may be discover a new start generation of wonderful worlds ! Careful the addiction :)
Have happy ZBrushing and Gamelifing :)
Pilou :cool:
Ps Here you find a lot of programme about Artificial life :)http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Artificial_Life/Cellular_Automata/
Coming from http://dmoz.org
Better than Google, the best research motor moderated by the Internauts themselves !!! Open Source philosophy :) Try it !

[juandel]

ahhh, the grip of duties is less vigorous these days, so i find a lil more time to spend with zbrush... once again, to get back into it, i did a few alphacentury experiments to start into z-world:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/wildabstract.jpg
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/mountainrangexsx.jpg

both have in common that i was experimenting with modified filterbrushes (5 type) before grabbing their alphas. in the first one it was a spraybrush filled canvas with helix-tool, the second one a 2d layer with two colors sprayed here and there, then filterbrushed, then grabbed.

hope you’ll like them :)

- juandel

[boozy floozie]

I've watched this post grow over the months and had assumed that is was people offering thanks for Pixolator's initial tutorial.
Little did I realise what a wonderful area of the Forum it had become with a life and creative exploration all of it's own. :tu: :tu: :tu:

[juandel]

:)

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1039120118smb.jpg

another try at creating a seatype alpha with the fiberbrush/drag rectangle/continuous orientation off. textured the plane with a vertically turned version of a background grab and fiddled with the three shader of double--spherical-intensity-mat... everything above sealevel is 2d, land done with dragrectangle stroke 3d-brush at varied rgb-intensities and zadd-off. done at default size, reimported as a texture to a customsized canvas with less height to stretch things a bit and to do postwork with several brushes ;) hope you’ll like it!

- juandel

<font color="#949494" size="1"> December 05, 2002 Message edited by: juandel </font>

[Digits]

That is a truly beautiful vista Juandel, a bit like the "Land Time Forgot"! You must have been inspired with this one, it looks like one of the old masters come to life. I love it :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Ron Harris]

very nice hansl....and ditto to digits....very very well done :tu: :tu:

[Frenchy Pilou]

He,he inspiration come back :)
The King Kong isle for sure !
Good multi-reflection clouds+landsape !
A little paradise :cool:
Pilou

<font color="#949494" size="1"> December 05, 2002 Message edited by: Frenchy Pilou </font>

[DeeVee]

Welcome back Janudel. Nice image. Thanks for sharing :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Flycatcher]

Your hopes are realised - I like it a lot. Excellent work. :tu: :tu: :tu:

[Muvlo]

Beautiful work Juandel, it looks lovely! :)

[DM]

Really nice work Juandel, first class. :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:
Dave

<font color="#949494" size="1"> December 06, 2002 Message edited by: DM </font>

[Mentat7]

Very top notch work especially on that glorious water! :tu:

[juandel]

thank you, ZBs! that was a fun one to do and even more fun to find it as appreciated and welcome! Digits - i might return there to add a bronto or two, neck reaching out of water :)

well, after trying my luck at something located in less favorable climate for the winter challenge (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=009165) yesterday, i returned to a warmer beach for the below one :) :

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/beachflatbcrstr.jpg

i am trying to create an oceanic alpha including surf with the help of the filterbrush and this is one of the results. alpha (done at double size) was applied to a wavy terrain tool. though its far from perfection i like the foreground - i was kind of lucky to achieve some specularity where the water flows back while smudging but am unsure if i could reproduce the effect. to show you the effect i decided to upload at almost original size, so its a somewhat larger file, sorry for that. a lil contrast brush was used for the front surf. hope you’ll like this one too :)

- juju

[Digits]

I am sure your snow image will be just as awesome Juju but I am with you, when the coconut oil starts freezing (around 61 degs) it is time to head on down south!

you have definetely captured the power and force of the sea in this one. The spray and whitecaps generated by a brisk wind, time to get out there sailing! :tu: :tu: :tu:

[juandel]

thanks, Digits :D

still freezing cold over here, but with bright days - brisk air!

another study of surf below... wavey terraintool, manually applied mask, bluewhite colours, y-offset only for a basic shape followed by an incomplete yet strenuous smudgejob :)

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/surfdstr.jpg

- juandel

<font color="#949494" size="1"> December 11, 2002 Message edited by: juandel </font>

[DeeVee]

nice work as usual jaundel. I like the surf image a lot.
Joe.

[ztevie-rae]

Jaundel ,your seascape from the previous page
is a wonderful piece of artwork ,Kudos Bro !

Stevie_rae.

[Flycatcher]

I have to agree with the last two posts - the seascape is excellent, and this latest surf study is also top notch. :tu: :tu: :tu:

[gummie]

Wow, that is one of the the best surfs I have seen and it looks so photo real awesome work Juandel :D :tu: :tu: :eek:

I have always liked all of your vistas in this gallery. :) :tu:

[juandel]

thanks, guys :D - and now for something completely different: listen to the stars (can you hear alpha century? :))

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/listensq.jpg

- juandel

[juandel]

two i did this evening:

i started by applying alphabrush18 to a default 3d-plane and z-offsetting it with rather high values. i pushed this pyramid into a wavelike form in move-mode. in gyro-rotation-mode i typed 0-0-0 into the transformations-info sliders and took an mrgbz-grab.

when waves dream...
http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juandel/wavesdream.jpg
... they probably have wet dreams :D

for the above one i applied the gained alpha to a hi-res-plane (512x512), which made the grid show up^after z-offsetting. material is doublesphericalintensity (the last in the default material palette of 1.51) with texture15 in shaders 1 and 2.

for the below mucho kitschig one, i filled a canvas with a multitude of (the same) wavealpha-simplebrush drag-rectangle strokes, made another mrgbz-grab and applied the alpha to a hi-res-plane. this looked kind of oceanic, but i finally ended up with this very low alpha-century-effect :D

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juandel/auww.jpg

hope you’ll like!

- juandel

[DeeVee]

Great work as usual! It is nice to see you posting again!

[Flycatcher]

Kind of hard to believe either of these would come from the Alpha Century technique! I prefer number two - just the sort of place I like to go hunting flies - but both are very good. You really are the king of this method! :tu: :tu: :tu:

[gummie]

Yes, I agree juandel you are great with using this method. Just great pictures you turn out. I really like the views. :tu: :tu: :)

[juandel]

thank you, ZBs! :) i just hoped someone would join me here! as mentioned before, this isnt a one-man-show ;) and as we can see with Sarum’s :tu: :tu: :tu: explorations for instance others can definitely do better than me!

with :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: cubical skinning at hand now (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=009399&p=1), it is very easy to create cityscapes... the below one took me about 15 minutes - the basic alpha came from a few spherebrush-strokes, made 3d with mesh 0... which was placed on a new layer, that i filled with snapshots of the new tool. mrgbz-grab. hi-res-plane. alphacentury-technique. playing with materials and lights made the top parts/roofs look white, while the vertical areas remained dark, which gave me the idea to make it a winterscape (an additional inspiration was todays real life view when i looked out of the window - virgin snow! :D) to add the snowflakes took almost as long as creating the city. fog for faking the sky i saw today over here - voila - a 30 minutes blizzard!

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juandel/wintercitywide.jpg

- juandel

[Flycatcher]

Very nice image - captures the feel of a snow storm very effectively. :tu: :tu: :tu:

And the view from your window sure beats mine - all too familiar virgin rain here! ;)

[DeeVee]

Well done jaundel. Very authentic looking winterscape :) :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu: :D
As might be expected here is my effort.
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/zbc_uploads/user_image-1041195390blq.jpg

[juandel]

mucho refreshing looking ocean, DeeVee! powerful surf if there ever was one! :tu: :tu: :tu: was the basic terrain alpha centuried? i partl. like the translucency of the front breaker!

here is one you might like for vegetational purposes:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juandel/terraces.jpg

it seems like i suffer from an urge to cover the cubicalskinned terrains with something, in the wintercityscape on previous page its snowflakes, this time palm- and other trees:

frontfronds were done the way showed here (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=008779&p=2), middle ones are a zspheretool (http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juandel/palmtreeZSphereCopy1.ztl), the ones in background 2ds done with simplebrush/drag retangle with an alpha mrgbz-grabbed from zspheretool. terrain was done creating a multisphere, multimarker object, making a unifiedskin with no smooth, mrgbz-grabbing that cubil look and applying the alpha to a plane the usual way.

- juandel

[DeeVee]

Thanks for the links jaundel. This is the type of surf that is best enjoyed by looking at it and not to be in it. :)

[juandel]

an attempt to get rid of softridged mountains and to win a texture the material-way:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juandel/glacaul.jpg

terrain was done by painting with simplebrush on colour filled canvas the alphacentury way, but i wasnt filling the canvas. mrgbz-grab, alpha-make 3d-cubical way. applying alpha (i had to switch to UVP-texturing, i think), inverting, some z-offset. making unifiedskin of alpha3d-tool the cubical way, then dragging on slopes in move-mode to get rid of uniform terraces. deformations of various kinds, i remember noise, negative and positive smooths at different axis, inflate z to get some kind of snowcaps... the materials are two variations of gradient sky with changed colours in S1: white-white-brown-white and a few modifications in S2. for the front part i reloaded the saved mat with less noise and painted over the materials whites to fake nearby snow. GI-render, export, reimport to new (stretched) document in 1.51, trying to loose the blocky look in front (midground was easy with lowintensity smudge), then decided to enforce it with filterbrush. best-render + adjustments. hope you will like it!

- juandel
( :mad: at retarded isp and hoping it’ll upload)

[The Namek]

beautiful image
great idea to use cubical skinning this way , wonder what you come up with next :)
:tu: :tu: :tu:

[juandel]

thanks, Namek :) like always, right after uploading it i saw many things that could be done much better, but didnt return to improve - too lazy or distracted or whatever :mad:

same will probably happen this time:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juandel/redseax.jpg

starring
Dave’s :tu: :tu: :tu: Seagull (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=009514) and making use of the deformation-magic explained here (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=009595). the terrain was made when an experiment at creating a 3d-wave-tool from a spiral-3d failed - the awkward tool was mrgbz-grabbed from above and so on along the traditional alphacentury-way. it looked terrible. but when making alpha from texture things started to work out - thanks for viewing!

- juandel

[DM]

That's fantastic sea again Hansl, you really do an excellent job of it. When Aurick gets a chance to see what goes wrong with those scripts you sent me, I shall look forward to studying your methods. If you are looking in Aurick, I do appreciate you are busy, but when you get a chance to check Juandel's script I sent you, It would be much appreciated, Thanks. :tu: :tu: :tu: :tu:
Dave

[juandel]

thanks for compliments, Dave :)

one of my basic believes derives from the alchemical sources that say that what shows in makro is represented in mikro and vice versa - so i believe the main ingredient to a successful (not that i was really satisfied with any of them) seascape to be a sealike alpha. for the above one i created alpha via texture>make alpha :) *

rest is tweaking of materials (including grabbing texture of sky) + adjusting lights. when using a gelshaded material like i did i recommend to use main lights placed below and/or backlights.

* heres the texture i won the alpha from:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juandel/reedseatexture.jpg

this texture was dragrectangle-painted with simple brush using an mrgbzgrab of a deforemed very low coverage spiral-tool.

- juandel

[juandel]

some more kitsch:

http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/juandel/moonihifla.jpg

lets have the first z-convention on las islas lunaticas (still to be discovered) :D

- juandel

[Digits]

Muy Beatifico! where be my skippin stone

brings me back to those silken caribbean nights under the moon listening to reaggae drifting across the water in time to the waves crashing on the reef. Nights so clear that you could see where you were going on the white sand by starlight without the aid of the moon.

ah, and here I am in commuterland, bummer