How to apply a traditional alpha mapped texture, (slight nudity).

[jk]

This forum has more great information than almost any expensive computer book. I finally get to contribute something that you folks might find usefull.

These two threads got me playing around and I fell into this technique by accident.
http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=003997
http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=005999

Here is an example of the technique:
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200308/user_image-1060017909nqi.jpg

This is what I did:
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200308/user_image-1060017976kkw.jpg

I picked up Pea**** butterfly from these guys: http://butterflywebsite.com/

That's whats on the left. On the right is the alpha mask I made from the first image.

The I applied the transparency mapped butterfly to the nude image.

Here is script that will set your 3D Depth brush to paint alpha mapped images.
3DepthAlphaBrushButton.TXT (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200308/user_file-1060018254eke.txt)

And then here is another script that will simply demonstrate the technique.
3DAlphaBrushShowAndTell.TXT (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200308/user_file-1060018301tjs.txt)

[50'sKID]

Hi jk, Thank you for the script and technique. Very usefull! One thing though, maybe I'm missing something too obvious. How do you switch from the 3d brush directly back to an editable object without redrawing or marking the object? Your script seems to do it quite smoothly. Thanks again. Rich.

[jk]

I forgot to mention that I was using TextureMaster during that script. It does look like magic, huh.

[jk]

Watch out. I was doing some work with this technique and I found a way to reliably crash ZBrush on two different Windows XP machines.

[juandel]

ha! at the very end my mac started stuttering (probably due to listening to music while running the script), too, but it recovered within a minute and the show went on :) thats a very nice technique, i often use 0-z brushes and the 3d-brush in particular for its gyro-qualities, but never did the depth 0 thingie, which seems to be crucial - thank you for sharing your :tu: :tu: :tu: insights!

- juandel