ZBrushCentral

How to nicely apply fish scales to an object? (Yes I already googled).

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi guys,

I’m having a lot of trouble trying to sculpt fish scales. I keep looking for tutorials but the only ones I find are really old with dead links or lone gone workflows.

I have this little creature:
o add scales to him in some areas so I thought the roll option on the brush would be good but two issues seem to arise when I do this. The first is that you can’t get a nice overlapping look because the fish scales interrupt each other (look at the center where they overlap):

What is a good way to do this? Is the roll feature on the brush maybe the wrong way to go about things? I looked all over the place for a way to add things like scales but either the links are broken, or they use broken features of ZBrush (like Projection Master). Any help is greatly appreciated.

Attachments

ss2.jpg

ss4.jpg

OfJBzpr.jpg

#2

You could set the H and V repeats to a greater value. Use as a mask and pull out your scales with move or move topo rather than adding material with the dots stroke.

#3

Try using the noise maker plugin (comes installed with Zbrush). You can find it in the Tool->Surface section in noise and edit. From in there you can click on the NoisePlug and there’s a scales options.

You’ll need to adjust the sizing, tiling, and strength to get the look you want. It’s also based on view so edges might be tricky.

#4

Do you have LazyMouse turned on?

#5

Thank you everyone for the suggestions, sorry it took so long to reply this week has been insanely busy. Unfortunately I couldn’t get a satisfactory result :frowning: but the combination of suggests may have given me an idea:)

@Doug Jones I think masking may be the way to go on this, I’ll have to make a different alpha since the one I have was just a test and is “buggy” (unequal grayscale values).

@MentalFrog It’s a cartoony fish and the type of scales noisemaker makes is close to what I want. I may use noisemaker to make a new alpha to use in conjunction with Projection Master to place scales on the fish.

@][-][4Z4R][)) I turn it on and off but I’m not sure what it was in this picture. Would that make some kind of difference?

#6

http://docs.pixologic.com/reference-guide/stroke/

#7

Wait you can move strokes after you make them? I knew curves let you do it (although honestly I can’t get those things to work right to save my life) but this makes it look like a regular stroke can be modified. Ill have to try this when I get home.