Glass/water?

[Gareee]

I googled and used the search here, and it seems almost every link for matcap glass is broken. The only glass I see in the download section is greenglass, which isn’t quite what I need.

I’m doing a stream with a water subool, but I can’t locate any matcap that is transparent, but pics up light reflections.

Can zbrush just not do a semi transparent matcap at all? I’m surprised something as simple as water or glass was not included with the r4 install… unless I’m missing something?

I don’t care about bpr rendering… just something semi transparent I can sculpt on to get the top water flow looking good.

Any suggestions?

[MealeaYing]

I googled and used the search here, and it seems almost every link for matcap glass is broken. The only glass I see in the download section is greenglass, which isn’t quite what I need.

I’m doing a stream with a water subool, but I can’t locate any matcap that is transparent, but pics up light reflections.

Can zbrush just not do a semi transparent matcap at all? I’m surprised something as simple as water or glass was not included with the r4 install… unless I’m missing something?

I don’t care about bpr rendering… just something semi transparent I can sculpt on to get the top water flow looking good.

Any suggestions?

Actually its weird.
You can make things transparent and you can even make them seem reflective if you make or use the right Matcap.
The trick to making things transparent is in Display Properties, you will see the slider. and once you turn up transparency there you need to turn it on in the Render Properties.
The weird part you will run into is that things like water or glass or what ever do not BEND light and so they do not look much like the way they should.
I think it SHOULD be possible to do something sort of complicated by making a render of everything “under water” and using that nicely distorted in an image editor as the matcap of your water, however I have no tried that, its just a random idea I had once.

Good luck!

[Gareee]

I’m not concerned about proper light bending… I just need something that is semi transparent to sculpt on so I can still see it, but I can also see whats underneath it as well. (For instance, I have a rock or stick sticking up through the subtool water plane, and I want to sculpt the current flowing around it.)

And of course, now I have ZB4R4 to learn as well now… :sigh:

What palette is the display properties you mentioned in? Subtool, or material?

[MealeaYing]

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I’m not concerned about proper light bending… I just need something that is semi transparent to sculpt on so I can still see it, but I can also see whats underneath it as well. (For instance, I have a rock or stick sticking up through the subtool water plane, and I want to sculpt the current flowing around it.)
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And of course, now I have ZB4R4 to learn as well now… :sigh:

What palette is the display properties you mentioned in? Subtool, or material?

Oh my, Im sorry, its in the tool pallet on the right near the bottom, also I just noticed, you need click BPR Settings in that pallet as well (new as of 4R4).
Heres a picture of the pallet open:

To make something transparent you do this:
Turn ON BPR Transparent Shading.
Move the Visibility Slider down depending on HOW transparent you want your object.
Decide if you want it to have shadows or not.

Also for this to work it must be turned ON in the Render Properties like so:

Nice arrows huh? I drew those my self… and now I will go hide some place.

Anyhow, that should do the trick, its just a mater of playing with the settings a bit.
Sorry I was unclear before!

Cheers!
Mealea|

[Gareee]

Thanks, but isn’t that for renders, not sculpting previews? I was looking for a matcap that displayed transparent while sculpting, not just after a render. They highly reflective matcaps looks close, but I just need them with a transparent look during sculpting.

(I looked at the display properties palette, but didn’t look at the bpr settings, since thats not what I was looking for.)

[marcus_civis]

You might try using the new Grid system in the Draw palette (ZBrush 4R4). If you set Fill Mode to 3 you can then adjust the transparency of the subtool against the background image. With the Transp (subtool transparency) button off all subtools will be affected.

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[Gareee]

That would be perfect. Thanks for the solution again, Marcus!

I know once I start working in ZB4R4 that I can’t go back to R3… any caveats?

[marcus_civis]

I know once I start working in ZB4R4 that I can’t go back to R3… any caveats?

You will still be able to use 4R3 if you need to, as 4R4 is a separate install. But you will not be able to open files saved in 4R4 in the earlier version, so you would need to export as OBJ (for example) if you needed to.

[Gareee]

That was my concern… I find a showstopping R4 bug, and have to go back to R3, but am stuck because my project is now R4 only.

I’ll just keep the WIP files around JUST in case.

[Gareee]

Does this only affect transparency against the background? I was hoping to get transparency for one subtool against others.

When I attempted this, for some reason, fill is ghosted out when I opened the draw palette. (Is there something I need to do to make it active?)

I had to open the installed grid3 file to get it to operate, but that made all my subtools transparent against the background.

I noticed in your example both objects are transparent against the background. Could the cup subtool be solid, but the water subtool be transparent?

(You mentioned a subtool transparency button… I see none under draw… is that located elsewhere?)

[marcus_civis]

The Transp and Ghost buttons are both in the Transform palette. In the standard UI they are also placed lower down on the right hand side. You need to have Transp on in order for the Ghost button to become active.

To just have the selected subtool transparent with an image on the Grid you need to do this:

1. Make sure Transp is on and Ghost off.
2. In the Preferences >Draw menu set Front Opacity to 1 and Back Opacity to 0.

You can then adjust the E Enhance sliders in the Draw palette to get the effect you want.

[Gareee]

Thanks! I woulda never thought of looking there. (And yeah, I did look all over in the usual places for it… LOL!)

Some day everything in zbrush will make sense to me. And then ZB5 wil be released, with a all new interface!

Again, many thanks!

[MealeaYing]

So all that went a bit past where I thought it was headed and now I would love to see what you are doing.
Believe it or not I spent about a year trying to do what I think you are doing and came up with the stuff I posted, all this other stuff (for making things like water or glass anyway) is new to me and seemed to have other purposes like seeing parts of subtools that are hidden.

I need to follow the instructions from Marcus and see what they do I think…

[Gareee]

We watch 3 hours of the Olympic opening ceremony last night, so I’ll be getting into this again today. (I had to paint up a willow branch with drooping leaves for fibermesh.)

I’m working on a scene with a fallen willow which has a stream running around its roots… its based off a fallen willow I saw here in real life, but stylized somewhat.

The willow in real life fell over because of its size, and because a stream hade loosened its root system before a big wind storm here. The reason for explaining this, is that the willow actually kept on sprouting branches and leaves along the top of its trunk! The end result wa the big arch with willow branches and leaves drooping on the top. its in a yard, and the space beneath the tree was so large, the owner hung a hammock under it.

For some reason it caught my fancy, and I’m cobbling it into a scene product for Poser.

I’ve been boning up on fibermesh the past day or so hoping for Marcus’s solution for the stream, and plaing with the new features in Z4R4. Now I want to add some curvemesh vines around the roots of the tree, and scattered on the ground as well.

I’ll post a pic once I have the transparency set up… the botom of the stream bed is already sculpted, but I wanted to add some rocks and trigs, and then resculpt the stream surface to appear to be flowing around them.

[Gareee]

I got it working somewhat, but I don’t think its doing what I’d hoped for.

I don’t have any background images loaded at all. I want a blank background, 2 solid subtools, and one subtool that is transparent. Using what Marcus recommended, I get transparency, but all subtools are transparent against a backdrop image. (It preloads the default head front and back images when I trun the settings on.)

I’ve got a feeling this isn’t what it was intended for and won’t work, BUT I hope I’m wrong.

I’ll post a pic to illustrate what I’m attempting.

Here you can see the stream bed, with pebble sculpting and texture. In the top picture, you can see thats 100% obscured when I’m sculpting the surface of the stream above it. If I place new subtool rocks in the stream that stick out above the water, I can sculpt “around” them simulating the water flow, but I was hoping for a solution to make the water subtool semi transparent, so I can see the transition of the stream bed texturing, and adjust the water surface so it matches that underwater textureing.

Maybe this will help illustrate what I’m attempting to do.

[Daimondo]

MealeaYing, I followed your thorough tutorial regarding transparency to a “t”, however once I select BPR for a preview (see attached pics), some weird shading occurs to the grotto. Further, when I do Best rendering, there’s no change at all.

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