I am new to Zbrush and am finding it hard to replicate the flat area’s of the lower wing feathers on the original. My feathers all seem to come out bumpy - any suggestions on how I can improve my technique ?
Attachments
Maybe with the line stroke option and the depth brush thingy and after pickup the smooth (shift) brush. Like this maybe:
Good Luck!
Lemo
I’ll give that a shot - thanks and sweet image - nice use of of abigious space 
You should definitely try Bas Mazur’s mindbending morph target trick to make feathers, it uses morph target and the create diff command.
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=30049&page=6&pp=15
in this page you can find the script that explains how he did it.
Hope it’s not too difficult, otherwise just try alternating the smooth and the pinch modes while drawing in edit mode.
Hope this helps,
Federaik
Btw 1 month to christmas!!
We’ll all have a ball!
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](javascript:zb_insimg(‘22474’,‘ChristmasBall.jpg’,1,0))
The feather trick is great for redering in ZBrush, but exporting is another matter – the process creates an unusable amount of polygons. Doesn’t matter once you drop to Pixols. But there are no Pixols in VRay. Nor anywhere else outside of ZBrush…
That’s not to say you couldn’t use it as a tool inside projection master, though…
>The feather trick is great for redering in ZBrush, but exporting is another >matter – the process creates an unusable amount of polygons. Doesn’t >matter once you drop to Pixols. But there are no Pixols in VRay. Nor >anywhere else outside of ZBrush…
Yes actually I was thinkin about painting not a complex feather but just a kinda rhombic stylized one over the wing with PMaster and then with create diff make a thin “blade” of these feathers :
+ () = bumpy wing from side view,
+Store morph target
+Drop
+ [() = bumpy wing from side view with say ‘layer brush’ painted rhombic stylized feathers
+Pickup
+Create diff
- [ [color=DimGray][color=DarkSlateGray]= resulting thin wing from side view
- Smooth at will…
but maybe I was just over-enthusiasth with this technique and wanted to use it also to make coffe in the morning, sorry if that’s the case 
Federaik
No worries, and sorry if I came across too critical.
Learning is good. Sharing is better. You’re doing both, and I commend that. Who cares if the feather trick solves this problem? Knowing it will solve a different one later on down the road.
Plus, I think there’s something to the “apply cut-out feathers in projection master” idea.
This community’s all about taking each other’s techniques into realms we wouldn’t have considered alone, and ZBrush itself encourages that – there’s a reason our meshes are called “tools”…
That feather trick sounds really interesting. I will definetly look into it. I have been slammed by another part of this project (morphing this baby out graffiti on on a wall) and will have to come back to the modelling in a couple of days. I will give the script a shot then.
Thanks for you help.