How to create inverted Matcap or material

[alexanderlee.art]

I’d like to create a matap or standard material that has inverted light and shadow, like in this reference image:

It’s useful for me as an alternative to viewing the reference normally, to help read the forms. I’d like my Zbrush model to look the same so I can compare it more effectively to the reference.

Some of the Framer matcaps look similar to this, but they’re not quite right. I think the basic materials included in Zbrush would work fine if I just had the ability to invert all the final displayed colors on the model.

Any ideas?

Attachments

[Altea]

That is a straightforward negative, and to get similar quick and easy results you could use negative filter in render>bpr filters>filter>negative and set negative and opacity at 100. It will do a color negative but you always can add another filter and desaturate.

[alexanderlee.art]

great tip, thanks! Here’s my result.
This will be really useful as is, but is there anyway to apply this sort of effect to the Preview render, so it looks like this while I am sculpting?

[Cryrid]

Since Matcaps are driven by the material image (see Materials: Modifiers: Material Texture 1), you could always export the matcap texture, invert the colors, and then apply the inverted version.

If you don’t have an external image editor handy, you could do this in zbrush relatively fast by creating a square document and then framing a sphere (in orthographic mode). Apply the matcap you want, then use the Texture Palette to grab the document (Texture: GrabDocAndDepth), followed by Texture: Inverse to invert it. Then just apply that as the matcap texture.

[Altea]

This is simply a ball with a real time material and inverted. You need to clip a bit the edges. Then load it in a matcap material (in the bottom of modifiers)
You need to set off the real time shadows in render properties otherwise it will create small dark shadows.
Included a sample zbrush inverted matcap material in this link

[alexanderlee.art]

awesome guys, this is exactly what I was looking for!

I inverted a basic gray matcap and messed around a lot with the Modifiers, and I’m getting decent results already, but I’m going to tweak it more to remove some of the excessive rim highlights.

[Altea]

Not necessarily your case but unwanted rim is created if the sphere used to create the matcap doesn’t clip a bit. For example if outside of the sphere is red and it is not clipped then we will have a red rim.