ZBrushCentral

Lined Metal Armor?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi,

Can anyone suggest how I could achieve the lined metal
armor like the character X-Men’s Colossus? Is there a matcap or simple way? Thx

#2

Surface Noise / Noisemaker would be worth looking into.
docs.pixologic.com/user-guide/3d-modeling/sculpting/surface-noise/noisemaker/

I did a very quick test using the “Stripes” pattern, and I think it seems promising enough to warrant some exploration. For a more complex shape like a human, you’ll probably want to have it driven by UVs. The trick would be keeping them as proportional as possible while sharing the same directional alignment, with your seems keeping the pattern and flow in mind.

8PD2aXY.jpg
8PD2aXY.jpg1386×758 182 KB

Note: A similar effect can also be achieved with displacement maps, although any revisions would require you to change the the displacement texture or UVs rather than surface noise sliders.

Alternatively if you don’t expect there will be heavy revisions and you’re comfortable altering the geometry itself, you could attempt to turn your edgeloops into individual polygroups and then use Panel Loops.

4KK44se.jpg
4KK44se.jpg1916×1050 304 KB

#3

Thanks so much! I will give these methods a try!

#4

I love the noisemaker option. Works with the base mesh I am using.

My question is however, when I apply it to the base mesh, how can I get the angle to look more horizontally? If I just want to do one body part at a time how can I only apply noisemaker to a certain part of the mesh? I tried masking the area I don’t want with noise maker but it still covered the whole mesh.

Thanks

Attachments

Capture.JPG

#5

AFAIK you can’t do multiple Noise settings on the same subtool. Surface Noise is really just an interactive preview that gets displayed across the entire mesh; you can click the “Apply to Mesh” button to convert the preview into the vertices of the mesh. This would leave you with a few options:

  1. Mask or visually isolate an area and then apply the noise to the mesh. It will only apply to that area, and then you can repeat for the others. Doing this means that the lines will no longer be a preview that you can easily tweak through sliders.
  2. Split each part into its own subtool. Then each subtool can have their own unique Noise setting.
  3. Switch Surface Noise from 3D to UVs. Then you can control the direction based on the UVs, giving you a single mesh and all the interactivity.