Anyone making molds is used to the design requirement of “Put a 5 deg. taper on anything sticking off the surface” so that you don’t lock up the part in the mold.
So how does one do that to an Alpha image or an Alphabet that is a low level relief say sticking off the surface of say a Ketchup bottle or a wine bottle for an example.
I’m looking to do raised lettering on things like drinking cups etc…
Not something I do but was curious. Made some text with Zplugin:Text3D. Then Zmodeler:PolyAction:Inset PG All for the camera facing PG. Hide all but the inset polys, Mask, show all and invert mask, then drag in Z direction with Gizmo. Creates a taper on the sides of the letters. Set Transform:Draft direction and tweaked angle until It wasn’t green. If less than 5 degrees then inset further and repeat. Not elegant but workable, at least in plane, and I plan to 3D print some mazes in the future so a useful exercise. Hope this helps. Good Luck.
Hi @Chris_Fuhr
The easiest way to do this with alphas is to just make sure the incline is built into the alpha itself. An alpha with a soft blurring around the edge will have a more gradual transition. You can see this if you attach default Zbrush alpha 59 ( a hard edged square), and alpha 28 ( a soft-edged square) to a brush with a drag-rect stroke type and draw it out at a visibly significant Z-intensity. If you’d like this transition to be sharper, you can create your alpha with a thin line of sub-black gray around the edge.
The Alpha Palette has a number of ways of adjusting an alpha on the fly, including adding a bit of blur. You can also create additional effects by adjusting the alpha adjustment curve.
You can also create your alphas as 3d objects with the Spotlight Snapshot 3d feature. They can then be edited or extruded with precise control by any of the means Zbrush has for editing topology.
Good luck! 