So I’m trying to create a detailed brick wall ( actually more of them ) for NYC style buildings.
I have sculpted a wall using alphas, it looks great. However I’m having trouble texturing it - since the brick pattern comes from zbrush, I can’t just throw a large brick pattern texture on it.
I’ve tried painting one by one but it takes ages… what am I missing ? Is there a problem with my workflow?
Hello @hyperviktor ,
I think that Spotlight is probably what you are looking for.
Extremely basic workflow example:
Download the Brick 11 texture from the ZBrush website. This is a nice, fairly uniform brick texture.
In ZBrush, load a polymesh 3d cube, and subdivide it several times to a level sufficient to capture the incoming detail.
Fill it with white color with Color> Fill Object while the RGB channel button is active.
Load this image into ZBrush and add it to Spotlight.
Position your texture over your model. Set the stroke type to the standard brush at its default settings to “drag rect”.
Again make sure that the RGB button is active. Since we want to inset the lighter values, start in the center of the image and drag the stroke out while holding ALT to invert the displacement. This will draw out both color and displacement at the same time with a circular application starting at center.
Disable Spotlight. You can see the brick color has been stamped into the mesh with pretty reasonable results for the default settings. Disable Tool> Polypaint> Colorize to switch off polypaint, and you can see that the bricks were also displaced at the same time.
Have fun! 
I kinda tried this workflow before but the problem is you never get good displacement from a color texture since dark / bright values on a color image do not correspond directly to height.
Also, it feels that this modifies the surface level too much.
Normally I’d use a high res alpha with surface details mode on, so it doesn’t really shift the geo surface and I get really good results, then I keep sculpting further details with a number of other brushes until the surface is fine - keep in mind it’s not a flat wall we’re talking about, but a shopfront with a number of pillars, entry ways etc. where bricks go around the corner.
And then comes my issue, I want to use certain colored textures but it seems the only way to do so after sculpting fine details is brick by brick which is doable but very slow, would take a day to paint an asset. Although we’re talking about film quality assets, so not necessarily an issue.
Any thoughts ?
Anyone ? I really need to solve this problem … 
Hi @hyperviktor ,
As I said that was an extremely basic workflow. Most situations will not be as simple. You may need to use one brush with specific settings to displace the detail, and another to apply the color. These two things needn’t be done in the same pass. The quality of your alpha or texture will also matter. Images may benefit from pre-processing to make them more tonally consistent, or to emphasize certain qualities. Spotlight has light image editing functions that can help you adjust an image on the fly for different effects, or to isolate different areas.
There shouldn’t be any need to paint brick by brick. I get the sense that you may not be making use of ZBrush’s broader toolset for isolating geometry. Remember that Polypaint=Masking=Polygroups. Any of these things can be converted into the other.
Please see the following illustration of the basic principle. I have applied the simple brick pattern that comes with ZBrush as polypaint onto a cube. That polypaint can be converted to masking with a variety of options in the Masking palette. I could have also simply applied the alpha as masking directly, but this way is more Spotlight friendly.
Once I derived masking from the pattern, I used Tool> Deformation> Inflate to inflate the bricks. This could also be done with alpha displacement or Spotlight.
Then with the masking still intact, I used Color> Fill Object with the RGB channel button active to fill the brick portion with one color. Ctrl-clicking in empty canvas quickly inverts the masking and I filled the mortar portion with a separate color. Ctrl+H toggles off the display of masking while keeping the effect intact, and a hotkey can be assigned to Tool> Polypaint> Colorize to quickly toggle polypaint display on and off.
As long as that masking is intact you can keep inverting it or modifying it with mask-shaping options in the masking palette to target different areas. If you create UVs for your model you can save out polypaint as textures or masking as alphas so you can re-apply them at any time.
In the event that you did not plan the process out this way from the start and merely have surface displacement detail, the Masking palette also has options like Cavity and Peaks and Valleys, which may allow you to create masking only in the recessed areas after the fact.
Hey Spyndel,
Thanks but I think I need to attach what I’m aiming for, as I understand your techniques but I’m aiming for photoreal results and my brick displacement is irregular to begin with - varying brick size, varying gap etc. so the resulting sculpt is more natural / organic looking and then of course no texture pattern can match that, so I was painting brick by brick today to get the desired look. Tomorrow I will try to post images to explain what I’m doing and you may point out where I’m wrong 
Again, I’m only illustrating basic principles here. You can do the same thing with a far more complex, organic looking alpha or texture if it effectively isolates the recessed areas. I’d look for tutorials or instruction courses on using Spotlight.
Remember that you can use Spotlight as a basis, and further enhance the sculptural details of the mesh with additional alphas, surface noise, contrast brushes and free sculpting. Program features like ZAppLink will let you paint any surface with the full functionality of an image editor like Photoshop, where you can easily use multiple images and layers to isolate portions of the image.
Please also be sure to see the Adjust Color and Masking by Polypaint features. These give you the ability to finely tune masking or polypaint color for only certain tones or color ranges.
Good luck!
Here’s the problem, now I have images to attach. I have a sculpted wall and I have a texture I like and I wanna use, sculpting the wall from a texture is not an option because of low quality result and when sculpting I rely on a ton of different alpha and brushes and techniques. So once I got a cool result, I wanna texture it with a specific texture from megascans, how do I go about this without painting stone by stone?
