I’ve been using this technique to apply tattoos to my creations. A simple and elegant approach.
You can use any method that you like to create the background layer. In this case (which in retrospect may not have been the best example, after all) I wanted to apply the butterfly wing to the woman’s texture. Since I already had the wing as a tool, I used the approach that I’ve illustrated.
On the other hand, the background layer can also be created in Photoshop. All that you need is the element that you want to add to your texture, set against a background that matches the texture in the area where you want to apply the photograph. If you’re very careful with the cloner brush, you can even get away with a black or white background.
Ringbearer: There are two ways to create a tool out of a photograph. The first is to make a texture with a black background. When you apply the texture to the object, turn on the Texture>Transparent Texture button. Everything that is black will disappear. The butterfly had black parts that I wanted to keep. So I had to use a more creative approach. 1) Import both the texture and an alpha of the wing’s shape. 2) Create a plane with modified initialization settings to give a very high polygon count. 3) Tool>Modifiers>Selection>ALP to apply the alpha as a mask. 4) Also in the selection menu, click Hide Pts, followed by Clear. The shape of the plane will now match the shape of the texture. 5) Apply the texture.
Again, all of those steps aren’t necessary for this cloning method if you simply make the background image in Photoshop.
Hope that clears up the questions. When I wrote this, my butterfly pictures were still fresh in people’s minds so I guess that they followed along a little more easily. LOL.
Ah, I think I’ve got it now. Awesome technique. I’ve learned a lot here.
Just a quickie thrown together to see it work.
THANK YOU!! That makes a lot more sense to me now and it’s good to know several ways to do this.
Arleen
aurick
Thanks for the excellent tut
I can’t get this tutorial to work in ZBrush Version 2! It’s as if the Cloaner Brush doesn’t work!
Does anyone else use this method to put textures on their models??
Carmen.
Hi Carmen from " "
It’s an old tutorial 
But Aurick has made a sort of Upgrade
Wait 5 minutes, I shal try to refound it
Pilou
Ps Yep that is one
Slide the page!(bottom )