ZBrushCentral

TUTORIAL: Making Gradient Textures

One of ZBrush 2’s many new features is a powerful and versatile way to make use of the foreground and background colors while painting. The key to this feature is the new Texture>Grad button, which makes it easy to create colored gradients. These gradients enable you to paint with foreground and background colors when using any paint brush that utilizes textures.

Let’s take a look at how this works:

The first thing that you need is a grayscale gradient. The Alpha palette provides a ready source for these gradients, and thanks to the AlphaAdjust curve, you can quickly modify them to get the exact effect that you desire. For this tutorial, we’ll begin with the straight gradient shown here (brush 27).
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Turn the gradient into a texture by pressing the Alpha>Make Tx button.
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Now we’ll select our foreground and background colors. Simply choose the background color, then press the Switch button. Follow it up with your choice of foreground colors.
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Here comes the fun part! Click the Texture>Grad button. This recolors your texture based upon its color values. Any part of it that is black is colored to match the background color. White becomes the foreground color, and everything in between becomes a gradient blend between the two.
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Now all that’s left is to select an alpha to define the shape of the brush and an appropriate Stroke type. You’re ready to paint away!
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Feel free to experiment with various brushes, alphas, and gradient textures. <center>

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A few tips:

 :small_orange_diamond:     :small_orange_diamond: Different brushes use the texture in different ways.  For example, you'll get very different results using the Simple Brush, Directional brush, and Deco brush.  

 :small_orange_diamond:     :small_orange_diamond: Some brushes don't use a texture at all.  For example, the Single Layer brush.  

 :small_orange_diamond:     :small_orange_diamond: If you use the AlphaAdjust curve to customize your alpha before making it into a texture, be sure to press the Make Modified Alpha button.  Otherwise, the texture will be created from the unmodified alpha, as if you hadn't changed the curve at all.

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Thank You for the :cool: Making Gradient Textures tut aurick,
I did a texture plate using every tool I could find that used alphas and textures. Started in Flat Render mode went to Best render mode and contuined using your tut on Making Gradient Textures.

Wow how cool, so glad you take the time to show these little suprises. Thanks Again

Thanks Aurick a lovely tip which I’m sure could be used to create many other wonderful effects.

nice and usefull tips Matt.
thx to share.

I’m glad you find it useful. :slight_smile: Here’s another very interesting little tip:

In the large picture, you see the small cluster of shapes in the upper right corner? These are partially transparent spheres. However, I didn’t use a transparent texture to create them.

If you set the Z Intensity of a 3D object to any value less than 100%, the currenlty-selected Alpha will become a visibility mask for the model. Like with a transparent texture, the alpha is wrapped according to the model’s UV coordinates.

This means that you can actually use the Alpha palette as an alpha channel for the rendering engine, with visibility based on an image that is completely different from the currently-applied texture.

Have fun!

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If you set the Z Intensity of a 3D object to any value less than 100%, the currenlty-selected Alpha will become a visibility mask for the model. Like with a transparent texture, the alpha is wrapped according to the model’s UV coordinates.

This means that you can actually use the Alpha palette as an alpha channel for the rendering engine, with visibility based on an image that is completely different from the currently-applied texture.

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Hmm that is pretty cool … thanks for the tip :slight_smile:

Thank you for the tip, Matthew :+1: :+1:

Stargo

Here’s my entry Matt. thanks for the awesome tut… no post work except the name.
enjoy.
The image below i had a little fun with in photohop 8.0 … I couldn’t help myself.

Not only can you make some radical textures out of just the standard alphas with this method, you can also use it to modify the color values of any texture, i.e., change a dark wood to a lighter or more contrasty wood:

[img]http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200405/user_image-1083568194kfk.jpg[/img]

Two of the wood textures shown above are variations of the original ZBrush wood texture, Txtr27 (middle wood texture above).

The fourth texture swatch shown above is a re-colorization of the rocky brown texture (Txtr02).

The funky orange/green/purple background texture above was created by using the Grad button on a Texturized Alpha to create a ‘colorized’ alpha-texture, then using the DirectionalBrush Tool in conjunction with the Spray Stroke, and different alphas to act as blending masks. Two of the Gradient Textures used are shown above (bottom two swatches).

Seems one more time some magical function :cool:
Pilou

yes - its a wunderfull feature - you can make clouds and fire with little z-intensity
fast try

make your own alphagradient and use it

I know I must be blind, but exactly where do you chage the z intensity of a 3d object?

Thanks,
blind Crabby lady!

:slight_smile: Cool tip, Thank you :+1:

Hi Crabby
I suppose that you want the % of Z intensity 0 to 100 ?
That is in Menu Draw with also the RGB Intensity !
And The Mrgb, RGB, M , Zadd, Zsub, Zsub parameters !
The most important indeed!
I suppose that in the Zb2 you can also see it when you press the “right clic” for obtain the Contextual menu :slight_smile:
Hope this help!
Pilou

Thanks Frenchy!
I see now.

I missed this completely. Thanks alot Aurick, should come in real handy. :+1:

Wow, more supprises from Zbrush.

:confused: I’m suprised these 2 features (gradient texture, 3d alphas) were not listed in the help docs. They are quite important.

this is a gr8 feature. Can be used for more serious texturing than the little painting i did.
Thanks for the tutorial. :slight_smile:

Attachments

tree.jpg

@aurick
hi there.
thanks for tutorial but images removed. could you reupload the?