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AlphaCentury, a Terrain Creation Tutorial

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#141

a vista from the island of Zali:

the basic alpha was done using the spherebrush (2.5d) with tweaked depth-settings and heigth-width-ratio (drawpalette) and a few geartools strewn into there with freehand-stroketype. i only realized this gonna be rice-paddies after i made the z-offset-move, therefore i could not make any use of the original texture. rather severe 3d-(depth :))-brushing (mostly with the default grass-texture on), a lil fiberbrush, fiddling with material and light-settings, shadingenhancerbrush for a few rivlets, light fog-colour for depth2, dark one for the foreground, depthcue graph almost reversed - voila! hope you’ll like it!

  • juandel
#142

Those both look really good Juandel! :+1:, but especially the second one… I love the lighting and the shapes.

About the rain, I used the Kruzr way, in the image he posted here.

#143

Nice work as usual jaundel. I like them both. I will contact you in the not too distant future.

#144

I have been playing with diferent views. since I have not seen this airial view here I thought I would post it. This was an exercise in painting water and rocks.

#145

nothing special, but i thought a terrain would be the right warm-up for myself after a few z-less weeks. then, as i had severe difficulties to connect into here yesternite i spent my time in adding flowers and butterflies so the terrain got out of focus :slight_smile: basic butterfly was created from a circle3d-tool in edit-move-mode with z-axis transformations disabled (in transformation-modifiers-subpalette) and adding colour in edit-mode with z-off.

hope you’ll like it!

  • juandel

    :b4: edit: i posted a how-to for the butterflies here

#146

next one was done trying to create a jagged mountainscape…

[img]http://www.cyber-webs.com/zbrush/wildscape.jpg[/img]

SH and SV were turned off for the plane and some noise added to the editbrush. as you can see in the wildscape-script i recorded, it was no good idea to use edit-scale at one point :). there was minor postwork done with bumpbrush after i ended recording (and the pic would need much more postwork and additions) but i hope the script might be inspiring for those interested in landscapecreation the alphacentury way! :slight_smile:

  • juandel

edit: and another rather gloomy one :slight_smile: no textures or whatever, a grey basic material. all colours came with fog/coloured lights.

#147

JUANDEL!!! Where do I start? I love the butterflies picture (my mother, too, since she is a big fan of butterflies).

I have done your alpha century script about 5 times and can’t get the hang of it. This is obviously your forte, and these last two pictures prove it. If I ever get the technique down, I will post a picture for your approval.

Brian

#148

Juandel, your landscapes are beautiful! I think you are definately the master at landscapes in Z.

#149

You speak of you landscapes in such a casual way, but they are fantastic! You add on wonderful animal/plant life, that is what really brings them to life! :slight_smile:

#150

thank you for your very kind words, amigos! :slight_smile:

no life, this time, i’m afraid, Muvlo, but as i happened to accidentially tweak the basic material in a way that it became a kind of backlight rockmaterial i could not resist to work in stone only :wink: surprise: gel is set to 2 and it looks like rock, though :smiley:

a version of this material was used to do the last pic i posted as well.

to get the effect in the sunset-one there are a few things i had to take care of in addition to applying the material to the z-offsetted plane:

color of plane: medium grey
mask: remains on (or gets inverted after applying z-offset) to add another shade
lights: sun1 in default position, clicked once to make it a backlight, color orange. sun2: increased intensity, color grey. sun3: activated, orangecolor, radial.

tweaking the diffuse and specular sliders and graphs (and saving reloading another version of the material) and applying it here and there or on another terrain of its own is adding to the diversity.

i hope its not too dark for your gusto.

  • juandel
#151

Hi juandel - Holy Cow this thread has 150+ messages. It never would have been this successful without your wonderful contributions. Keep them coming . . . your work is always a pleasure to view !!!

jd

#152

thanks joe! :slight_smile:

here is something a little different:

the way i did the alpha might be inspring for those on the quest for the omega :smiley: the attached alphaomega recorded session shows a way how to combine default alphas. in case you find this helpful: happy experimenting! :slight_smile:

  • juandel

:ex: edit: ARGH! silly me was so taken away that i did not turn a grabbed texture into the alpha. i was combining nada in the recorded session. doh! no: DOH! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: +
:mad: ok, as a scusi i uploaded the alpha i wanted to use :rolleyes: and a 2d-pic:

omega-alpha hugh! its a .psd!

#153

Hi sorry for the repost but Juandel said I should post it here… :slight_smile:

#154

No apologize needed Wenna…Its a beautiful landscape! :wink:

#155

thank you for adding your :+1: :+1: :+1: landscape, wenna! :slight_smile:

here is a recipe for a fastfood “vista a la croc”:

:red_circle: go to zoo (or if available: your local crocodile or alligator swamp) and make photo of croc. :warning: dont go too close, use zoom!

:red_circle: if needed, digitalize photo. import into z-brush via textures palette. fill canvas (command+F)

:red_circle: choose mrgbz-grabber-tool and select a portion of the crocs skin, grab it.

:red_circle: check out alpha-palette… err, just a white rectangle, right? go to the grabbed croc-texture in the textures palette and press the “make alpha” button below. this becomes the active alpha automatically.

:red_circle: clear canvas of croc-photo, create hi-res-plane and apply the croc-alpha the alphacentury way. build landscape with offset z and a little pushing/pulling in edit-move-mode, mayhaps with a lil noise added to brush (transformation-modifiers). apply grabbed texture. sky was done on separate layer (in fact its the untextured crocplane turned upside down, stretched and high perspective distortion added in draw palette, different material), grass added to baked layer. depthcue graph (render-palette) turned upside down + additional fiddling with its depth - voila!

:red_circle: of course you can make use of less snappy models like for instance treebark, pebbles or - yes: mountains as well :smiley:

  • juandel
#156

wow! great idea, jaundel! thanks for sharing the tip w/ us. i’ve got to try that out!

josh

#157

Nice image, Juandel :+1: :+1: :+1:

stargo

#158

Now THAT is a Kool technique Hansl!!!
Another gem from the Alpha-Lapidary par excellence!!!
:+1: :+1: :+1: :sunglasses: :+1: :+1: :+1: , and more :+1: 's… :slight_smile:

#159

That’s a beautiful landscape Juandel! :sunglasses:
The definative master of A.Century.
Keep em comin bro ! :+1: :+1: :+1:

             Stevie-rae
#160

thank you, amigos! :smiley:

following the above playing with textures i tried a few alphatechniques that were new to me. applying alphas in editmove-mode i knew, but Scougall’s approach to apply them on a rotated plane was very inspiring. to make the below water i created an alpha with the spherebrush in linear stroke, mucho reduced heighth and increasing drawsize towards the bottom of the canvas to fake perspective, grabbed it and applied it several times to the slightly rotated plane in editmovemode.

some tweaking of the reflectemapmat, setting sun on top and enabling environmentrender-scene with fov 90 to make reflections…

to get myself dry i went back into the mountains and - inspired by thelonious :+1: :+1: :+1: explorations into lowpolymodelling created a mountainscapealpha by basically making a mountainscape in lowpoly :smiley: for those who are interested: the creation of the alpha is available as a recorded script here and i uploaded the mountain material (which surprised me by its reactions to light, both colour an position) as well.

i hope to be able to explore lowpoly-landscaping techniques further, as i think they could be of great use for foreground rocks, for instance.

i hope you’ll like them :smiley:

  • juandel