Greetings, everyone!
Something that you’ve seen me use in projects like the two butterfly pictures and in my recent Poser-to-ZBrush projects involved the use of Transparency Maps.
As many of you know, you can make any texture into a transparent texture, which makes any parts of an object that are covered by a black texture invisible. There are two drawbacks to this method. First, what if there are some black parts of the texture that you want to keep? Second, transparent textures sometimes leave a subtle, yet annoying, black edge.
Necessity being the mother of invention, catalyzed by Joe Dorsey’s “Size Matters”, I hit upon the technique that is taught in this tutorial script.
Edit: For the script to work in version 1.51, you will need to also download this text file kindly provided by Jaycephus and use it to replace the text document downloaded with the Zip file above.
The technique is useful for a variety of purposes, both in 100% ZBrush work, and in texturing or modeling using objects imported from other programs.
To run the script, just download it by right-clicking on the link above, then unzip it to your ZScript folder. This will create a new folder for you called “Masking”. There are two files in it, which must remain together if you choose to move the script to another folder.
Please let me know what you think! I’ve been very careful this time to keep it completely within the realm of what the Demo version can do, so it can be played by anybody.
Cheers!