ZBrushCentral

merging alpha and the texture on the canvas?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hi

I am trying to fill the canvas and the active document layer(not the 3d layer) with the depth from the alpha and with the color channel with the texture. Doing any of these will over write the other. For example if I crop and fill with an alpha, it will overwrite the color channel (not just the depth information) also. If I fill with the selected texture, it will clear the depth pixols as well. So I am wondering if there is a way to fill the canvas (the active layer) with the currently selected texture for the color, and with the currently selected alpha for the depth information?

it seems to me that any kind of fill operation will clear or overwrite the depth information no matter if it is a color or an alpha.

I can do what I need by merging them manually in Photoshop and import back to Zbrush, however it will be much more convenient if one could do this in Zbrush.

#2

Place texture in texture, deselect Cd(clear depth), make alpha. Under texture, select fill layer. make sure both alpha and texture are present before doing the fill.

#3

Yes, as Doug Jones says (thanks Doug :slight_smile: ), you need to turn off the Alpha>Cc (Clear Color) or Texture>Cd (Clear Depth) switches that are beside the CropAndFill buttons.

#4

Thanks for the tip guy. I missed those options.

Filling the layer while the alpha is on is not doing it for me, meaning that no alpha is transferred to the layer canvas during filling with texture(while alpha is on). But it seems to me that one has to do it those operations separately. SO you fill the canvas with the alpha(uncheck cc), then fill with the texture(uncheck cd). it does not seem to happen at once.

#5

This didn’t work for me either. The following is what I did to get to work.

  1. Select texture and turn off ‘cd’ (clear depth).
  2. In the Texture palette on left, click ‘Make Alpha’.
  3. In Alpha palette, turn off ‘cc’ (clear color). then click ‘Crop And Fill’.
  4. In Texture palette, click ‘Fill Layer’.
#6

Missed that bit, sorry. I had ZBrush open at the time too.